AT&T Unlimited 4G data $60/mo.

[RMtnMik]

I noticed that there are now several sellers of AT&T Unlimited 4G data on Ebay. One is a Sim card for $60 per month renewed monthly. No contract, no throttling, cancel anytime. Another is pretty much the same thing for $65 per month with a monthly rental. That's not bad if it is truly unlimited.
Seems worth checking into for someone who needs a lot of quality 4G data while on the road. AT&T has good coverage too.

 

[Riverman]

If you can pay ATT or their authorized agent, the deal is pretty good. If you have to pay an individual, I would not do it.

 

[John61CT]

I don't think anything offered nowadays is *truly* unlimited.

What would the advantage of these be for the hotspot plans at half the price?

 

[NickTheoBennett]

I say this in a lot of threads, but you can get genuinely unlimited data on ATT towers from Cricket for ~$60/month. It is limited to 8Mbps for LTE and 4Mbps for HSPA+, which isn't bad. Practically, I get about 400kb/s download speed on the slower network or 800kb/s LTE download speed. I have used over 100GB every month for the past year or so and have never have a problem. They do throttle people who use a lot of data, but only if there is network congestion and you have used more than 22GB in the month. Even in cities I don't get throttled all that often.

I know a lot of people advocate the grandfathered plans you can get from ebay (there was even a seminar about it at the RTR). While undoubtedly a screaming deal and probably okay, the downside of any of those is that you are working outside the TOS of the cell provider. Generally someone is selling you an old plan that they own with grandfathered in rates/terms. The problem is that ATT (or whoever the provider is) can shut down these plans without any notice at all.

As with many things in life it depends on your risk tolerance. I tend to side with what Riverman said above about never paying an individual and only doing business directly with the company or through an authorized reseller.

 

[jimindenver]

I use to have Cricket. They do throttle you and can deprioritize you IF you use over 22 gig a month IF you are on a congested tower. It is the same language used on my AT&T Mobley account and my PC4P Sprint account. The original 4Gcommunity unlimited Sprint account did not carry that language, my 4GAS T-Mobile account will deprioritize me on a congested tower even if I have not used 22g.

People freak out at the possibility that they MIGHT be deprioritized IF the right situation happens. The thing is you rarely hear of it actually happening. Just being on a congested tower sucks even if they do not deprioritize you. I swing the directional antenna around until I find a uncongested tower.

 

[John61CT]

Is Cricket OK with "unlimited" if it's all used by hotspotting?

 

[NickTheoBennett]

I haven't asked and I wouldn't recommend asking, but I've been doing it for a year or so and haven't had a problem. I stream Plex now and then to my phone but 90% of my usage is sFTP transfers on my laptop. There's no way that looks like normal mobile traffic if Cricket were even slightly inclined to check.

It might not be for everyone but I've had good luck with using Cricket out in the national forests, though common wisdom says that Verizon is still better in the boonies. . For someone like me using 100GB+ though it is by far the best deal I have found without going with one of the grandfathered in resellers.

 

[jimindenver]

Cricket has hotspot usage on phones sold by Cricket with a fee for doing so. Like with all carriers there are people that find ways around it but you risk losing your number if they decide to check.

Cricket is AT&T except it has no roaming. I had Cricket for 20 years and can tell you that it was rare that I did not have a signal since it was bought by AT&T in 2014. It did not work in the Grand canyon and had issues in the Rockies at times when my Mobley worked fine. Otherwise it did very good. I used Google voice with the phone connected to a usable hotspot when there was no signal. Now some of their phones have wireless calling so you would not need GV at all.

Cricket also works great in Mexico.

I can also tell you that in the southwest that there has been more times that AT&T did work when Verizon did not than vice versa. Even when you have both Verizon has double the users so the chance of them being over loaded is much higher like in Quartzsite the last two RTR's and the Rockies this last summer. Having all four carriers will surprise you because Sprint and T-Mobile are working hard to expand their footprint. That means they have the newest equipment and the fewest users. Last year Sprint was only 3G in Quartzsite but it was still faster than Verizon which had crashed from being overloaded. Cricket worked just fine the whole time. This year Verizon stayed online but was dead slow while AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile were zippy.

Right now outside of Parker, Az No Verizon, AT&T 3.7 Mbps, Sprint 13 Mbps, T-mobile 26 Mbps. Big red has some work to do.

 

[Technomad]

When you’re throttled, what kind of data rate do you get throttled to? Enough to do VOIP calls? Or google hangouts without video?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[jimindenver]

Hmmmm, never knew that I was being deprioritized on Cricket when I had unlimited. Had no problem getting the 8 Mbps of full service and the speed after my gigs ran out (before unlimited) was a solid 128k. Good enough for anything besides video streaming. I can not imagine the deprioritization being any slower than that.

 

[NickTheoBennett]

I have streamed SD video in most places when my service was on the slow side (rare but most often in cities in the evenings). Plex has had to downgrade the quality a fair bit once or twice but it was still streaming fine. If it can handle even low quality video I can't imagine VoIP being a problem.

As always, YMMV. In the real world data speeds fluctuate for many reasons and it's hard to identify if you are being intentionally throttled vs overloading vs. larger network issues.

 

[RVTravel]

https://netbuddy.co/ is another site selling the 60 buck plan.

 

[DannyB1954]

https://netbuddy.co/ is another site selling the 60 buck plan.

At $60 for a hot spot, wouldn't you still need to pay for a phone service?
This would put you at about the same price as a phone that you could use as a hot spot.

 

[John61CT]

The $60 is the monthly fee for data, low price for a legitimate "unlimited" plan as opposed to those scamming the provider.

The hot spot mifi is a separate purchase.

Some people don't want to try using their phone for that.

 

[RVTravel]

There are those that believe even these are not legitimate plans but are the up-priced reselling of tablet sims ($30) to be used in hotspots.

 

[John61CT]

Howard Forums will reveal the true skinny.

 

[jimindenver]

I am told the Mobley and the unlimited plan can be had if it is registered to the vehicle. The Tablet plan was still out there the last I heard. $60 a month is not a good deal anymore.

 

[Cammalu]

Att sucks for customer support. I asked about the Mobley the other day and they told me it isn’t offered anymore and also no more $20 a month WiFi thingamabob. Thankfully I already have one thingsmabob but was seeing if I could get a Mobley

 

[tx2sturgis]

The Mobley itself is still listed on the ATT website....I dont know what the current plans are tho.

Mine is still working well under the 2 year contract I bought last year.

 

[RVTravel]

The Mobley website told me only 2017 and newer vehicles could be eligible.