Seriously, here in the US cellphone service providers charge waaaay too much for their contract plans. For Verizon, they charge a $40 "base fee" for smartphones, and to add 1GB of data is $50 which is $90 a month! AT&T is slightly cheaper at $85 a month, and T-mobile offers a better deal at $80 a month for 2GB of data, but let's not forget that there is tax upon these which can increase the cost to well over $100 a month. I use carrier Boostmobile and currently pay $55 a month for unlimited talk, text, and 2.5GB a month (will shrink down to $40 a month after a year and a half, which is admittedly pretty nice), but the downside is that I'm limited to older phones and since they get their data from Sprint, that means they still use the dead WiMax for their supposed "4G". I'm lucky that the city I live in has coverage for WiMax, but even still it's not total coverage all over the city.

For what I can afford right now, Boostmobile was the best choice, but I wish I didn't have to compromise. We need a revolution in this industry, similar to Google Fiber. These US carriers charge too much for their contract plans and something needs to be done about it.

I absolutely agree.

What I hate is that if you have a smartphone you HAVE to geta data plan and those plans are ridiculously expensive.


I have (2) phones on my plan with AT&T and it costs me ~$150+/month.

You can get a smartphone without a data plan (I think), but you're basically shooting yourself in the foot if you don't since most smartphones use data as their life-blood for most of the features.

I'm still grandfathered into ATnT unlimited data for $30/mo so my phone bill is a total of $100/mo with unlimited text and data and mobile calling. I only have 450 minutes a month but that's for lan lines (I almost never call lan lines anymore so I have close to 1200 rollover minutes that just expire every year so I cant complain.

That's ridiculous! i'm paying 25 Euro a months for unlimited calls, unlimited data and 1000 free messages.

had to pay 150 Euro for the S3 though.

Wow, that must be pretty nice. I'd love to have that kinda plan. 

not any more. at least on verizon. you are required to have a data plan for smart phones even if you have bought an unlocked phone. really sucks.

If you have some good friends or family that you trust, you should look into a family share plan. Will bring your cost down. Also make sure your phone is set to automatically join wifi so you dont use as much data. We share 2gig over 4 phones for data and we never go over. Cost about 180 I think after tax through verizon for 4 smart phones with shared data.

I'm with Wind, ( in Canada) and I have the 29$ contract.
I get:
Unlimited texting Canada Wide
Unlimited calling in the local area.
I can use it anywhere in the local are (Local area is Toronto)
Unlimited Data.

I'm on a plan with an S2 in Australia for $80/month, which gets me 1.5gig and a bunch of texts and calls. I probably could have paid about half the amount but it would have been with a crap provider.

It's the first and last time I'll be going on a plan though. I'll be buying my next phone outright and I can get the same amount of data and calls for less than $20 a month, not on a plan. I'll be compromising a little on service but plans suck!

Google Fiber isn't a revolution yet. The big Telecos will swing all their weight to make sure it spreads at a snail's pace. Could be 20 years before google fiber is even capable of reaching 1/3rd of Americans.