by sb (admin)
(Virginia)
Q: Can I use iPhone on yearly unlimited plan?
A: You can, but you may not want to do so.
The unlimited plan costs $45 per month (30 days actually). However you can save a couple of bucks by pre-paying for several months at a time. So, the three month unlimited card costs $130 which saves you $5 over the monthly cost. Similarly, the six-month card costs $255 and saves you $15 over the monthly cost. Finally, the one-year card costs $495 which saves you about $45 or one-months service over the monthly cost.
So what's not to like?
Well, the main risk you have is with your data plan. Now, even though you get "unlimited" data on the $45 plan, there are some restrictions in the agreement. Certain things like continuously streaming YouTube videos etc. (over the cellular network) are apparently not allowed on Straight Talk. If this happen, they can cut off your data usage, and you would be stuck since airtime purchases are not refundable.
While there are sporadic reports on places like the Howard forums, this is usually not a huge risk with most of the smartphones. The iPhone however may be another story.
iPhone users tend to use more data than most users, even those with smart phones. The average amount was 1.6 GB, still below the 2GB lower bound. While, I'm not sure of all the reasons for this, if you know your own usage is a lot higher than that, it does make pre-paying for an entire year a bit of risk.