Since October 2012 I've been using Airvoice Wireless for my wife's cell phone and we can't be happier. She used to be on a regular phone plan with AT&T and in 2010 we moved her onto T-Mobile Pay as You Go prepaid plan. At that time, T-Mobile had an interesting option if you would buy 1000 minutes for $100:

• 10 cents a minute to talk
• 10 cents per text (incoming/outgoing)
• Only need to fill up the minutes once per year
• In 2009-2010 there was that crazy Bing search engine promotion where you could get 35% off
  
• ...and you could browse the web for free on a small subset of websites in a walled garden

Fast forward to 2012 and things have changed quite a lot. Bing no longer has the 35% promotion, T-Mobile has started to block off most of those free sites, and for some reason my wife's minutes just started to disappear. One major drawback of T-Mobile's prepaid plan is that there are no reports that you can see to look at the calls/texts made. All that you can see is the minutes remaining. The straw that broke the camels back was that somehow her number got subscribed to some service that would charge to send her some fitness texts and would drain her account. I called T-Mobile and they straightened it out, but I would have hoped that they would have been a little more pro-active in weeding out scammers.

So after checking out HowardForums we decided to go for Airvoice Wireless. The reasons:

• They are an AT&T MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator).  In layman's terms, they buy minutes/text/data in bulk from AT&T and package and market their own plans.  Since she was going to get my AT&T compatible iPhone 4, we wanted to be on the AT&T network (she's not a heavy data user, but we wanted her to be able to get onto 3g instead of having to fall back onto T-Mobile's 2g network).  Although T-Mobile and AT&T are both GSM operators, the iPhone 4 cannot use T-Mobile's 3g network.
• They have a $10 / month plan which gets you:
• $0.04 / minute
• $0.02 / text
• $0.33 / MB data
• As long as you refill your minutes before your Airtime Expiry date, the dollar value in your account will rollover! That means that if you have $5 on your account and you put in $10 to continue for another 30 days, then your new account balance will be $15.
• When you refill with Airvoice, your new expiry date will be exactly 30 days from the date when you refill. Unless your balance is running down to $0, it is therefore a disadvantage to refill early. But you also don't want to forget and have your dollar balance wiped out. It reminds of the Price is Right: refill as close as you can without going over.
• I've confirmed with Airvoice Customer Service that the Airtime Expiry date is based off of the Central Time Zone.  That means that if you're on the West Coast, you must refill your minutes prior to 10pm or your dollar balance will be reset to zero. Of course you can use the Central Time Zone to your advantage if you're on the West Coast. Refill your Airvoice accounts at 10pm the night before the expiry date and you can rest easy for the next 30 days.

Getting Started

Airvoice is nice because they support BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). In our case it was an unlocked iPhone 4 (although AT&T locked iPhones will work on Airvoice as well).  To get a SIM card, just go to eBay and look for Airvoice.  Not only are the SIMs on eBay super cheap (about $1-$4 including shipping), but vendors sell official Airvoice SIMs that have trimmed down.  The iPhone 3 (and earlier) takes a normal SIM, the iPhone 4 takes a Micro SIM, and the iPhone 5 takes a Nano SIM. Get the right one and there is no need to get a SIM cutter or anything like that.

Activation on Airvoice is a snap. Their customer service is great and can be reached at 1-888-944-2355. The only thing that is a little weird is that if you want the $10 plan, make sure that you specify that you want their monthly plan and not a prepaid plan.

Setting Up Data for the iPhone on Airvoice

To activate data on the iPhone, their customer service will ask you to get onto a WIFI network with you iPhone and then go to http://unlockit.co.nz with your iPhone.  The unlockit site is a bit weird, but awesomely functional. You'll select Airvoice as the carrier and then opt to Create APN (Access Point Name).  You'll then be taken to a spot in the Apple App Store where you will install an application that will correctly change the settings.  As I said, weird but awesomely functional.You will have to power on and off your iPhone after installing and running the application.

Automatic Refills....not!

So my wife uses about $6 a month on Airvoice and to take advantage of the $10 Plan rollovers, you have to pay $10 before or on your Airtime Expiry Date. If you fail to add the $10, your dollar balance will be reset to $0 (ouch!). At one point, you were able to stack dates
by adding a succession of $10 recharges, but this is no longer the case. So while Automatic Refills no longer work for the $10 Plan, here is a technique that you can use to minimize the chance that you will lose your minutes.  The following technique is especially useful if you need to refill family accounts via the web. 

• Go to http://csi.airvoicewireless.com/ericssonTpspApiPublic.aspx and put in your cellphone number to see the expiry date.
• On your phone make a calendar appointment with a couple alerts to notify you of the date
• Put http://csi.airvoicewireless.com/ericssonTpspApiPublic.aspx in the URL space
• In the notes, put some refill PINs (see below) that you purchase ahead of time

When your renewal date comes:

• Copy the PIN into the clipboard (press down on the PIN and wait for the "Copy" balloon to appear
• Click on the URL in the calendar event to get to the refill web page page
  
• When you're on the refill page, enter your phone number and then paste the PIN
• You'll see the Airtime Expiry Date and the Balance updated
• You might see, "Refill was added but ILD was not added. Subscriber not found." Don't worry about that - it just means that International Long Distance was not added.
• You'll notice that the expiry date is 30 days in the future and not simply the same date next month. So expect to see the actual day to vary from month to month.
• Now go back to your calendar event and change the expiry date and delete that PIN that you just used

This technique works really well if you are taking care of other people's phones (spouses, parents, etc...) and don't have access to their device.  If you have the actual Airvoice handset you can also dial: *888* + (pin number) + # + SEND