My iPhone 3GS still works fine. Instead of buying another phone for a second line, is it possible to use the iPhone 3GS just for phone calls and no data plan? I'm currently with AT&T. I want to buy the next iPhone when it comes out but I don't want to toss my 3GS away if it'll work with just another cell phone line added to my current plan or family plan.
All supported carriers REQUIRE a data plan with an iPhone. In most cases, when they detect that you have an iPhone, they will either automatically add a data plan to it and bill you for it, or they will terminate the account. It varies by carrier.
In the case of AT&T, it is required. If you just toss a SIM in it that has no data plan on it, they will automatically add the 300MB per month data plan to your bill.
I wanted to add my experience.. The other posters are correct that AT&T requires a data plan for the iPhone. I feel as a customer out of contract, you should be able to use the iPhone as you see fit. They disagree and feel it necessary to force all iPhone users to pay $100/mo for service, requiring a cellular data plan, which is just ridiculous.
Fortunately, T-Mobile does not... I called them and they have a sim only service that is fully compatible with the iPhone - I have iPhone 4. In this case, I paid about $1 for the new sim, and the monthly service (NO CONTRACT) was only $30! This includes 1200 minutes/texts - more than necessary for me.
Some people wonder why you'd use an iPhone without data... well, for me, I'm mostly at home right now, so the times I need cellular data is rare. T-Mobile made it incredibly easy (2 hrs to move my phone number) and cheap... it was an absolute no-brainer.
Good luck, Jon
aliasthatisnottaken wrote:
... I feel as a customer out of contract, you should be able to use the iPhone as you see fit. They disagree... requiring a cellular data plan, which is just ridiculous.
Then complain to your congressman. No-one here can alter reality.
Fortunately, T-Mobile does not... I called them and they have a sim only service that is fully compatible with the iPhone
Except for the fact that they are not a supported carrier. Oh... and that their 3G network, with a very few exceptions, is not compatible with the iPhone. And that MMS messaging, facetime and iMessage have known problems with activation, and that visual voicemail does not work, and that they can not properly provision tethering so that the personal hotspot feature works.
I won't even mention the fact that in much of the country, their coverage is so bad as to be completely unusable for basic voice services.
Joh, that is exactly why I asked this question. My wife is a student and at school she always have wifi and when she's home, we always have wifi. Therefore, there is no need for getting a data plan. However, it's a bit late. She's already in a contract for two years. I already purchased an iPhone 4s for my wife with a minimum data plan.
One thing though, I'll never go back to AT&T store because they charged $35 for restocking fee on a cell phone I took home for one night and bring it back with everything complete as when it left the AT&T store. I was told that any other stores such as BestBuy, Walmart and others would not charge this fee.
One other question I have is that when the new iPhone is out and I decided to upgrade my 3GS to this new iPhone, do they change my contract so that I will no longer have an unlimited data anymore? I paid $30/month for the unlimited plan, and I barely use over 3GB anyway but it's nice to have.
LCMan,
I think AT&T is grandfathering people with unlimited plans until you make the change yourself (not sure if this will be true for iPhone5. However, keep in mind, AT&T is the type of company that will keep trying to stick you wherever possible... (been a customer for 8 years)
Case in point is that the real limit of the "unlimited" plan is now 3GB. If you get near or exceed that, they will throttle your bandwidth until you pay more for additional GBs. Now, how they arrive at defining "unlimited" as 3GB I wish I could say was a mystery, but it's not - it's just plain theft.
Good luck-
Jon
no.
Thanks!
I see. Thanks for the information. I'm very much appreciated!
Is it possible to use iPhone without data plan?
