Based on this article at Get Rich Slowly, I decided to compare my current AT&T contract price for my iPhone 4 against purchasing a no-contract iPhone 4 of the same model on a pay-as-you-go no-contract plan.
My current plan is: 450 minutes nationwide (with rollover) - $39.99/month; unlimited messaging - $25.00/month; 2GB of data/month - $25.00. With taxes and bullshit fees, it’s around $88.33/month. If I multiply that by 24 months and add the price of the phone ($299.00 for the 32GB iPhone 4), that gives me a two-year cost of $2418.92.
Now for the details on AT&T’s GoPhone plan: Unlimited nationwide calling and unlimited messaging is $50.00/month; add in the largest data plan (which is 1/4 the amount I’m currently paying for, at 500MB) - $25.00/month. Multiply by 24 and add in the cost of the unsubsidized 32GB iPhone 4 (which is a whopping $749.00), and it comes to… wait for it… $2549.00. (I’m sure there would be bullshit taxes and fees, too, but I don’t know what those would be).
That’s for a worse plan (no rollover minutes and far less data), although the benefit would be portability. Of course, the only GSM carrier I can use the iPhone 4 on and get 3G speed is… AT&T (T-Mobile is a GSM carrier but their data network is on a different frequency and my phone would revert to EDGE speed).
I’m glad I did the comparison. I suppose if I can find an unlocked iPhone 4 cheaper, I could save some money that way, but I doubt I could find one cheaper than $299 new-in-box. And even on the GoPhone plan, I’d only be saving about $10/month. Not worth it to me at this point.
Next step is to compare with a no-contract Verizon plan…
