AT&T now provides prepaid wireless data

[gunterm]

I read on the hofo site a rumor that you can now add data-only to a prepaid SIM card for insertion into a phone for tethering or use an aircard, only $20 a month, unlimited usage obviously. I like the speeds that AT&T has on the new 3G here so I'm gonna give it a shot and see what the upload speed is going to be for remotes.

 

[OttoM]

I read on the hofo site a rumor that you can now add data-only to a prepaid SIM card for insertion into a phone for tethering or use an aircard, only $20 a month, unlimited usage obviously. I like the speeds that AT&T has on the new 3G here so I'm gonna give it a shot and see what the upload speed is going to be for remotes.

There's more discussion of the service at http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/830125.

I'm running the service now and it works pretty well on GPRS - I have an unlocked Sierra aircard on order so we'll be testing 3g in about a week. If you're planning to run this for a remote, keep in mind that tethering violates AT&T's TOS.

Just to clarify: The $20 is for thirty days - not per month. Yes, there IS a difference. Another thing - it doesn't renew automatically (obviously) but you can purchase up to three months at a time. Finally, you can only purchase the service by calling 611, which means you have to pop the SIM out of the aircard then use an unlocked or AT&T-locked GSM phone to order or renew the service.

 

[tomservo]

I've been using the unlimited medianet with a Pick Your Plan (the pre-paid that automatically renews) for over a year now and it works pretty well.

My only complaint is that I'm using an unlocked phone and for some reason ATT bars RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) which means I cannot use the majority of streaming video and audio available on websites.

I've also tethered a few times when my (awful AT&T) DSL went kaput and any kind of mp3 or wma streaming is barred as well.

Unless I've just got some settings out of whack, I would assume that even 3G aircard users would be barred from any streaming service. When I lived in a T-Mobile area streaming worked fine... Or as fine as it could on GPRS. It figures that now that I'm in EDGE coverage with ATT I can't stream. :-\

 

[gunterm]

Zach,

try an aircard, I've noticed no limits so far on mine and I stream on port 7000.

 

[tomservo]

Zach,

try an aircard, I've noticed no limits so far on mine and I stream on port 7000.

I don't have a laptop to put an aircard in... Do you happen to know the proxy IP address that is used for streaming, if it's different than the one used for normal connections? My phone has a separate entry for streaming settings vs GPRS/EDGE settings and putting port 7000 in there gets me connected, but no streaming.

Upon investigating, it appears that AT&T claims they don't block any streaming with their internet services and it's just SonyEricsson phones that can't stream. I'm not about to give up my $500 phone for a few choppy videos. But then I see a lot of other phone types that can't stream on AT&T but work fine on T-Mobile, like mine did.

Apparently streaming of any kind is actually forbidden by AT&T terms of service! Rut roh.

 

[gunterm]

I don't know what you mean by proxy IP, I use wap.cingular as the APN, thats the only setting really.

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

The new drizzling At&t. All for them and notta for their customers. LOL

 

[tomservo]

I don't know what you mean by proxy IP, I use wap.cingular as the APN, thats the only setting really.

All of their GPRS data is normally routed through a proxy (wireless.cingular.com, I think) via port 80 or 8080. Since I've got an unlocked unbranded phone I can turn that off and images aren't compressed anymore. But my phone also has seperate settings for a streaming-only proxy. I guess it's not a common feature.

 

[gunterm]

Oh I see what you mean, there is a feature in the AT&T software called the accelerator that does use a proxy to speed up downloading of images and stuff, but I immediately uninstall and disable it.