Pay as you go AT&T iPhone 4 works GREAT!

[untillthen]

How long have you had AT&T's prepaid SIM card?

Last July, I got a iPhone 4 from eBay and decided to try AT&T Prepaid on it. I got a AT&T Go phone from Walmart for $30. It came with the a cheap Nokia phone. Upon setting up the SIM card, i believe it linked the SIM card with the Nokia phone because it asked for the phone's MEI number. Then upon cutting and inserting the SIM into the iPhone4 i got some kinda of error message saying the SIM was not compatible with the phone. I then couldn't use the SIM back into the Nokia because it was now cut, LoL.

In any case... do you know of a similar prepaid service like AT&T and T-Mobile?

Also, is the $19.99 a month for the data required every month? In other words, one time i pay for the data then next few months i decide not to and then decide to go for the data??

Thanks!

From what I know those "prepaid phone + sim"s that you buy at walmart are preset so that they only work with each other. You should go to the at&t store and buy just the sim directly from them.

But even before you go there there's a few things you should know.
1. Is your iphone unlocked
2. Is your iphone jailbroken
3. Is your iphone activated

If your phone is atleast activated and unlocked you're ready to go.
Just letting you know though if you're thinking of using the data package with gophone you'll need to change your phone setting a little bit first. Nothing to hard. Follow the link below and you should be fine. Took me 10min and trust me I'm not very good at this kind of stuff.

htp://blancer.com/tutorials/i-phone/blackra1n/95296/how-to-manually-set-your-iphone-ipad-carrier-apn-using-the-iphone-configuration-utility/
(but one more t in htp, i couldn't make a link because I'm a first time poster and they won't let me do that until I have at least 3 posts)

on the third or fourth step it's going to ask you to search the APN and write it down. I've done that for you put those three and leave the rest blank.

APN: wap.cingular
Username: WAP(at)CINGULARGPRS.COM
(replace "(at)" with an @ I couldn't use the actual one because I'm a first time poster and they won't let me do that until I have at least 3 posts)
Password: CINGULAR1

hope it works for you

 

[sharonfrommpls]

I recently bought a factory unlocked iPhone 4 and was able to get it running as an AT&T GoPhone, including both voice and data. Voice was very simple, data took a little fiddling.

I was already an AT&T GoPhone customer with an account balance of $60 or so. I removed the AT&T SIM from my Motorola phone, cut it down to microSIM size with a cutter that I bought on Amazon, and installed it in my brand new unlocked iPhone. When I connected to iTunes it came right up, recognizing my AT&T phone number. It worked immediately for voice service, no problems.

The data plan was a little more trouble. The GoPhone plan allows you to add "chunks" of data at will, with the money coming out of your existing prepaid balance: 10MB for $5, 100 for $15, 500 for $25. It's only good for 30 days, so you don't want to sign up for too much. Optionally you can have it renew automatically every month.

I transferred $5 to data, but still could not connect to the data network. Called AT&T and was told that the prepaid plans "do not support the iPhone." On further questioning the cust service guy admitted that "some customers have gotten it to work" but clearly he wasn't allowed to tell me how to do it. He said it was a matter of "reconfiguring" the phone, not jail breaking, but he couldn't tell me more than that.

With a little googling I learned that all that needs to be done is to configure the "APN" (Access Point Network). This is much like the SSN in a standard wireless network - it's really just the network name, and sometimes a login/password. I learned that earlier versions of the OS allowed customers to configure this directly in the iPhone Settings, but it has been recently removed! Presumably this is because Apple would prefer to force all their AT&T customers to buy expensive monthly packages with AT&T (Apple gets a share of that revenue). But this convinced me that it would not be a dangerous thing for the iPhone, since it is essentially a configurable setting, not a jailbreak.

I connected my iPhone Safari browser to unlockit.co.nz, which set the whole thing up for me in about 2 steps. I didn't even have to type in the APN name. There was a dropdown list. I selected US-AT&T and the values it gave me worked fine. My APN is wap.cingular. I don't think it configured a userid/password. If it did I can't see it in the Profile it inserted into the Settings screen. I had to powercycle the phone before it came up on the 3G network (turn it all the way off by holding down both buttons simultaneously).

I must say that 10MB turns out to be a uselessly small amount of data. In my first experiments with my new 3G data network I used up 5MB in about 30 seconds (maybe I shouldn't have started with Google Earth!). Even activating the simplest weather app uses about .33MB. Visiting a simple web page to check a phone number used about 3MB. I very quickly exhausted my first $5, went back and signed up for 100MB.

 

[iPhone4Fan]

Check this out...I went to my local AT&T store and gave them a BS story about needing a sim card. So right there in front of my the guy Activated a new card for me and I paid the $50 for the plan. So I get it home, cut it down and put it into my iPhone 4. At first there was 1 bar, then it said SEARCHING, but now it says No Service!!!

This phone was/is on a contract and I still owe AT&T $$$!!! Might that be the problem???