Prepaid USA SIM with voice/text/data plan

[Stephen Gallagher]

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On 07/29/2013 07:19 AM, Gianluca Sforna wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 7:13 PM, Stephen Gallagher
> <sgallagh at redhat.com> wrote:
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>> 
>> On 07/26/2013 12:20 PM, Tim Flink wrote:
>>> On Fri, 26 Jul 2013 09:37:37 -0600 Tim Flink
>>> <tflink at redhat.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> <snip>
>>> 
>>>> pay-as-you-go: - Add multiples of $10, $20, $30 or $100 to
>>>> the account using prepaid cards (or a credit card, but I
>>>> suspect buying the topup cards will be easier)
>>>> 
>>>> - Data costs $0.30 per MB, phone calls are $0.05/minute, sms
>>>> are $0.05 and mms are $0.10 - all of this would be deducted
>>>> from the amount deposited with the topup cards. If you bought
>>>> a $20 topup card, that would be ~ 66M of data if you didn't
>>>> call or text
>>>> 
>>>> Monthly: - $40 for a month of "unlimited" text/call/data,
>>>> $50 gives you international calling
>>>> 
>>>> - can be paid with a topup card bought ahead of time - don't
>>>> have to give them your credit card
>>> 
>>> To make it simpler, including SIM costs for h2o you'd have:
>>> 
>>> $20 - 33M data OR 200min calling OR 200 sms $30 - 66M data OR 
>>> 400min calling OR 400 sms $40 - 100M data OR 600min calling OR
>>> 600 sms (or some combination) $50 - "unlimited"
>>> data/text/calling $60 - "unlimited" data/text/calling + some
>>> international calls
>>> 
>>> With readysim (7 day sims), you'd have:
>>> 
>>> $20 - "unlimited" talk and sms $25 - "unlimited" talk and sms,
>>> 500M data
>>> 
>>> readysim is clearly cheaper and less complicated for a short
>>> visit but it seems designed for that while h2o is a better deal
>>> if you're paying for a whole month or if you have a phone that
>>> can't handle tmo-us's network.
>>> 
>>> Honestly, I don't think it's going to matter a whole lot which 
>>> option we end up using. If we're talking about buying a bunch
>>> of SIMs for "resale" at flock, readysim sounds like the way to
>>> go - it's cheaper, less complicated and will work with at least
>>> 2G data on pretty much all GSM phones. I'm not sure that the
>>> added complication of having 2 options or a more expensive
>>> option that requires the purchase of multiple cards is worth it
>>> but then again, I don't use much data on my phone; not having
>>> it for a couple of days wouldn't affect me much.
>>> 
>> 
>> For the record, I talked about this with Ruth and we really don't
>> have the budget to front any of these and resell them. However,
>> if people want to get together and arrange an order, I'll
>> volunteer my services to actually place the order (cash up front,
>> please) and bring them down to Flock.
> 
> Ok, so what about something like:
> 
> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-9MLkBrAdyGB8cc2fgaTR1bfXKN7g4NB6dpcG4MgZYQ/viewform
>
>  it captures more or less what we said here.
> 
> Misses three things: 1. where to send money upfront 2. where to
> collect SIMs 3. deadline for requesting one
> 
> Once fixed, we can send it to the attendees list, collect names
> and payments, then buy them.
> 


Hmm, we also need to consider that different phones accept
differently-sized SIM cards. I'm beginning to think it might just be
easier to send people a link to the available places to order a SIM
and the address of the conferennce hotel and just recommend that they
order them and have them sent to their room at the hotel. It's
probably easiest (and the hotel will hang onto them if they arrive early).

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