Pre-Paid Cell Phone Plans in the US

January 22, 2016

Being a resort in Florida, we often have many international guests coming to stay with us. Some are first timers and some are repeat guests, so come people know their ropes around Orlando more than others. But regardless if you have been to Orlando before or not, we are always willing to answer the questions our guests have. And a question we get quite often is, “Are pre-paid phones worth it? And, how much do they cost? And what provider should I choose?”

Nowadays so many places have Wi-Fi available that you might not need a phone at all. The theme parks have Wi-Fi and so does most restaurants in Orlando (even the fast-food chains).  But if you would still like to have a phone during your trip, we have gathered some helpful information for you.

The four major phone providers here in Orlando are AT&T, Verizon, Spring and T-Mobile. Most providers now offer unlimited minutes and text and what will make the prices go up and down is the amount of data you will be purchasing. That is still generally cheaper than using roaming data if you are traveling abroad. Here is what each provider has to offer as of January 22, 2016:

 

Pre-Paid Cell Phone Plans in the US

T- Mobile

 

Pre-Paid Plans - no annual contract

AT&T

verizon

Verizon

 

sprint

Sprint

In sum, most plans range between $30 and $60 and include 1 to 6GB of high-speed data, depending on the price of the plan. You’ll have to buy a chip for you unblocked phone and that will cost between $10-$15. The chip will remain valid from 6 months to a year depending of the provider and you will be able to use the data to use you GPS, check emails, social media apps and some providers even allow you to share the data (tethering) with your other devices like tablets and laptops.

We hope this post was helpful to you and we want to remind you to please take the date of this post in consideration as providers may change plans at any time.