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Comment by zaphoyd | Hacker News Reader

How do I not get a voice plan? (tablet aside) Nearly all decent data plans (in the US at least) have a mandatory unlimited voice/SMS bundled.

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Several carriers offer them and the ones that do will win price-sensitive customers.

T-Mobile: http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/mobile-internet.htm...

U.S. Cellular: http://m.uscellular.com/uscellular/plans/data-only-plan.html

http://www.popsugar.com/tech/Data-Only-Plans-26912644

Also, T-mobile offers free international data in many, many countries. This may offer a cheaper option than international voice calls for callers with traditional plans.

T-Mobile has a $30/month 5G 4G data, unlimited text, 100 voice minutes plan available, but you can only activate at Walmart or on T-Mobile.com

EDIT:

http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans

http://i.imgur.com/5aQ7LRy.png

I have Brightspot, which is a pre-paid MVNO on T-Mobile, and it has been my experience that I cannot use my Google Voice number for voicemail like I could with a post-paid account, and I am experiencing that a lot of the short-code messaging services can't reach me, either. I haven't tried sending an SMS to a short-code service, but my suspicion is "no" on that, too.

Also, and this may be T-Mobile wide, I am experiencing that they are routing all voice traffic over the data line, which means poor coverage now results in ch-op-py dr-op-ou-t speech just like a bad SIP line would. I tried to make a call last weekend and the other end sounded just like a modem it was so bad.

Just caveat emptor.

Go to a store with tablets on display compatible with Verizon LTE (or borrow one from a friend). Activate a SIM on the Verizon network, data only, for the tablet. Pop the SIM into your phone and presto, data only plan that Verizon can't do anything about (Thanks to Google's involvement in the bidding process for the LTE spectrum).

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