Going Prepaid

A number of months ago MMM described how he lowered his cellphone bill by almost 90% by going prepaid and using an MVNO service.  He was able to unlock his iPhone and keep it's functions while paying a fraction of the price.


I, like most people, have had a cell phone for a number of years and just accepted that it's ¥8,000 (about $90) a month for the privilege.  I shopped around as much as I could for a cheaper plan but for a smartphone ¥8,000 is about as good as it gets.  In fact if you want one of the newer models, like the iPhone 5 with LTE service, it's going to cost you even more money.

Since waking up and doing my best to crawl out of the consumer sand trap I knew there had to be a better cheaper way to get cell service even in a country like Japan.  Low and behold there was and is.  Prepaid.

You're getting what!?!

People seem to gawk when you mention prepaid service.  It has an air of being unrefined or less prestigious than post paid service.  I don't know if it's the more expensive rates (which is true, prepaid is in general more expensive on a minute per minute basis), the idea that people on prepaid must not use their phone much and therefor not be social and popular person, or that prepaid phones tend to be bare bones and boring.  

Well I never used my smart phone much for calling so the rates didn't really matter to me.  I stopped caring quite a while ago about my phone as a status symbol and, finally, I started to question just how useful smartphones really are.

Let's talk about what I had.  I bought an iPhone 4 two years ago with Softbank.  I paid ¥4,200 a month just for data.  It was unlimited but I couldn't tether to a computer and while the speed was decent I found I was usually at home or at work where I have wifi.  My calling plan cost ¥980 a month for the "White Plan."  On Softbank you don't receive a bucket of minutes instead you pay a price for certain rate.  On the "White Plan" I received unlimited calling to other Softbank customers from 1am to 9pm every day and after 9pm or if I called outside of the Softbank network it was ¥21 for 30 seconds (basically about $0.50 a minute).  In addition there was a "discount features set" for about ¥500 (voice mail, call waiting, caller ID, etc...) and then the cost of the phone itself was broken up over the life of the contract (Japanese carriers don't subsidize the cost of the phone directly).

Sounds pretty standard but I'm not looking for standard.  I barely called anybody except maybe my GF, and I really wasn't using the data plan.  Other than emailing, and texting, I used my phone to check Facebook quite often or maybe mess around with a random app.  However, other than apps to track stocks there wasn't a useful function for the smartphone.

Not mine but similar

So I decided to drop the whole box of rocks when my contract came up for renewal and get prepaid service.  For ¥8,000 (what my plan was costing me per month) I got a brand new "dumb phone" and a prepaid calling card.  What does my plan look like now?  Well I'll tell you there really is no comparison.  Softbank prepaid looks like this:

-Register a ¥3,000 yen card for 60 days.  If you don't register a new card 60 days from that card your minutes expire.  If you register a new card everything rolls over for another 60 days.  So basically I pay ¥1,500 a month.

-Calling rates are ¥90 a minute (about a dollar per minute, but remember I use about five minutes a month to call out).

-¥300 yen a month (which comes out of the ¥3000 prepaid card) for UNLIMITED email and texting.  I can text or email both Softbank subscribers and people on other networks.

-Incoming calls are completely free.  If I receive a call I can talk for an hour or ten and there is no charge to me.  And if the other person is a Softbank subscriber it's free for them to call me!

-Even if my minutes expire and I don't register a new card I can still receive incoming calls and I keep the same phone number and email for a year.  So if I go home for two months and don't want to pay I just let my time expire and start up again when I come back.

-The dumb phone is actually pretty smart.  It has a nice color screen, plays music, videos, and even has a built in TV tuner!  I can take movies and photos with it and still email them out.  Frankly it does just about everything I was doing on my iPhone.

-Perhaps the best feature is I have choices now.  If it doesn't work out I can always go get another contract.

Also, I still use my iPhone 4.  Even without network service the GPS works like a champ for tracking my bike rides in Runkeeper and sending that data to Gympact which net's me about $10 a month.  The iPhone still works on wifi so it's great for checking my email or stocks while I'm at my desk (which was where I checked that stuff anyway).  When I do find myself out and about without data I noticed that I don't miss Facebook or looking up random news articles on Lifehacker.  Now I read, study Japanese, or listen to music.  In addition there are still ways to interact with Facebook via email to post status updates and pictures.  Plus most if not all my friends still have smart phones on regular plans.  If for some reason I just have to know who was in "The Devil's Advocate" (Keanu Reeves, Al Pacino and Charlize Theron, released in 1997) I can ask a buddy.

Looking at the long run this move will save me almost ¥80,000 ($900) a year or more in cell phone related charges.  The only downside is I have to carry both the cell phone and my iPhone with me but I'm still looking into getting my iPhone 4 unlocked and using it as the prepaid phone.  Unfortunately Softbank does not supply unlock codes to it's customers even after they are off contract.  :(

It's been about one month since I made the switch and I'm very happy.  It's actually nice to have a phone that is just a phone again.  It's not complicated and the money I'm saving and investing could buy me cell phone service for life!  Now, that to me sounds like a plan.