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Comment by rb808 | Hacker News Reader

I had a FreedomPop mifi box for 18 months which was great, cost me about $60 from memory for the hardware and a few dollars/mo in fees when I upgraded something. It stopped when Sprint turned off Wimax.

I think there is a big market for people that want to pay $5-$15/mo for a small data only plan for people that will use Wifi on their phone 90% of the time but want to use mobile data just occasionally. Most of the major plans start way over that.

I see they're selling data-only SIMs for phones. Is that new? I thought Apple & Google insisted phones must have plan with a phone line. (If its good I think I'll go back to data only (with Google Voice))

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Google Voice just used to use data to set up a PSTN call. Has something changed?

I think you mean Google Hangouts if you are taking a about the app(which is confusing and frankly my work on both on Android) and incoming calls only works on Android.

> I think you mean Google Hangouts

No, Google Voice predates Google Hangouts.

I misread the comment.

> Google Voice just used to use data to set up a PSTN call. Has something changed?

Google Voice did not originally support data only calling(VOIP) like I said read the comment above me. He is supporting what I was saying.

> Yes. About 4 years ago they integrated full VoIP calling into something they call the Hangouts Dialer. Outbound works well, although I often have to initiate a call twice due to setup connectivity weirdness on LTE. Inbound basically never works, so I leave the PSTN forwarding on for that reason.

I have been on Google Voice for a fairly long time. Google Voice used to only supports PSTN calling although it uses data to trigger the call.

Exactly - I can have a data-only plan to receive calls on a number.

Yes. About 4 years ago they integrated full VoIP calling into something they call the Hangouts Dialer. Outbound works well, although I often have to initiate a call twice due to setup connectivity weirdness on LTE. Inbound basically never works, so I leave the PSTN forwarding on for that reason.

> I see they're selling data-only SIMs. Is that new? I thought Apple & Google insisted phones must have plan with a phone line.

I'm not sure why you think Google or Apple can dictate terms to operators who do not even sell their phones.

Data-only SIM's are quite common, they are used in tablets, 4G USB-sticks for laptops, portable 4G-wifi routers, etc.

Can one use a data-only SIM in an iPhone? I seem to recall trying this once, and it failed.

Yes, I've a data-only SIM from T-Mobile US in my iPhone. Works great. $35 / 6GB and comes with datastash and BingOn.

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