AT&T GoPhone
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GoPhone is the trademark for AT&T Mobility's pay as you go service. The GoPhone trademark was acquired by Cingular in its merger with AT&T Wireless. Unlike many other pay as you go services when GoPhone was acquired by Cingular they began to offer two options; the first is a conventional card-based pay as you go service, for which the customer purchases a reload card with a preloaded dollar amount, which is then deducted from an account based on usage. The second, called Pick Your Plan, is prepaid, but has features which are more similar to conventional post-paid calling plans and is automatically billed every month. This variation was added on by Cingular. Pick Your Plan includes Cingular's Rollover Balance which allows customers to preserve unused account balance for up to a full year (vs. 3–6 months for other carriers' prepaid services; T-mobile To Go is an exception, giving a one year expiration for any recharge once $100 has been purchased in the life of the account, under the name Gold Rewards). Payments for both the Pick Your Plan and Pay as You Go are handled by Vesta, a payment processor for many cell phone companies and MVNOs.
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[edit] Pick Your Plan
In mid 2006 Cingular decided to offer its popular MEdia Net plans on Cingulars PYP GoPhone service. Using PYP requires automatic payment with either a credit/debit card, or ACH from a checking account. If the payment fails, the customer must call and make payment within 4 days, or they lose their "roll-over" minutes.
Since the consolidation of Cingular and AT&T Inc, the company has begun offering prepaid data options on Pay As You Go. Data rates run from $4.99 for 1 MB of data, to 5 MB for $9.99, up to unlimited data usage for $19.99 per month. However, the unlimited data package became grandfathered as of November 12 2008 and is only available to customers on PYP that already had the feature package, or new customers who have the iPhone 2G which requires the iPhone PYP Data Plan (which includes unlimited data) These so-called Feature Packs, can be added to a user's account monthly by calling 611. The data plans do not renew automatically.
[edit] Pay As You Go
Unlike AT&T GoPhone Pick Your Plan which has a monthly fee, their Pay As You Go plan allows you to refill your airtime at your own leisure by purchasing prepaid cards, or one of several airtime packages available through their refill site. AT&T offers their Pay As You Go GoPhones in two plans: Pay As You Go Unlimited Talk, and Pay As You Go 25¢ per minute.
- Pay As You Go Unlimited Calling
- $3 fee only on days that you use your phone (only voice calls) allows for unlimited calling to any number nationwide.
- Pay As You Go Unlimited Talk
- $1 fee only on days that you use your phone (only voice calls), then 10¢ per minute
- Unlimited Mobile to Mobile if talking to another AT&T mobile phone user
- Pay As You Go 25¢ Per Minute
- 25¢ per minute flat rate
[edit] Phones
- Any AT&T, Cingular or Unlocked GSM handset supporting the 850 MHz band.
As GoPhone accounts are not authorized to roam on the 1900 MHz T-Mobile GSM network, handsets lacking the 850 MHz band will perform poorly if they get a signal at all. This limitation applies to many tri-band European handsets that only support the 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz GSM bands.
[edit] See also
Other prepaid wireless service providers
