[ale] Living without a data plan how feasible is it

[Beddingfield, Allen]

Switch over to T-Mobile.  I get data/voice/text for somewhere in the $80 range, and that is WITH a phone financed in across two years worth of phone  bills.  They are always running promotions to pay off your contracts with another provider (they don't do contracts -you just have to pay off any remaining balance on your device if you leave before it is paid off).
Allen B.
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Allen Beddingfield
Systems Engineer
The University of Alabama
________________________________
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [ale-bounces at ale.org] on behalf of Narahari 'n' Savitha [savithari at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2014 9:02 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
Subject: [ale] Living without a data plan how feasible is it

Friends:

My spouse had an iphone5 bought in Aug last year.  This Oct 7th at about 10:30 voice calls did not go thru.  Went to ATT and sought help.  They recommended that we upgrade to ios8.  We did and it got stuck at 80% and bailed.  Itunes then recommended that it revert back to ios7.  We clicked ok and it started reverting and got stuck at 80% again.

Essentially it is at this boot cycle and we cant upgrade the phone and we are the Restore screen on the phone.  After much battle with Apple and ATT I was told I am SOL. I was expecting Apple to offer me a "Pay $100 or so and we will repair", but no.  They said pay $270 and we replace it.  Don't they have no shame that their product gave up like this ?


Today Google put Nexus 6 at a whopping $649, essentially driving the phone out of the park for me.

Is there a clean way to have a call-only plan and if so who can I still be connected to data using a tab or net book ?
How to live without data ?  Any ideas ?

-S