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Back on the family plan - and using Verizon's iPhone 5 Personal Hotspot

You know what's expensive? Pretty much any iPhone plan. But you know what's really expensive? Two iPhone plans - one with AT&T and the other with Verizon. A family divided (on cellphone providers) is an inefficient family. 

So, yesterday we bit the bullet and got Mrs. AAAD a white iPhone 5. The old white iPhone 4 is headed to eBay. We'll pay AT&T $135 in early termination fees, and we'll pay Verizon a $35 activation fee. 

Totally worth it. 
Under our current setup, we were paying AT&T *and* Verizon about $110/month, which is somewhat ridiculous. Now, we'll pay Verizon about $160, more or less what we were paying AT&T previously. 

The termination fees stink, but we'll recoup some of that through the iPhone 4 ebay sale, and we'll recoup the rest by virtue of not paying $220/month for divided cellphone services. 

Another virtue of switching providers (even though I lose AT&T's "unlimited" grandfathered data plan)  is free tethering. I was working at a client site in NYC last week, and had no access to my work email. 

My Verizon iPhone took care of that - it acts as a LTE hotspot. For free. Simply flip the "Personal Hotspot" switch on your settings, and it's a discoverable wifi network. 

Keep in mind that a laptop can chew through a lot more data than your typical cell phone - 2 lawyers used a solid 700 MB of a 2 GB plan over 3 days onsite - but if you're in a pinch, or have a generous data limit, it's a great option. 


Comments

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