If you have a iPhone and it's sim free (fortunately!), what is the best plan for you?
1. Review - How to choose a mobile carrier and plan?
Only what you need to do is checking the following table!
You wanna have...
Facetime | Make a Call | Personal Hotspot | Your Plan |
No (Not available) | Yes | Up to 7.2Mbps | (1) NTT Docomo |
Up to 300kbps | (2) Japan Communications | ||
No | Up to 7.2Mbps | (3) NTT Docomo with Data Only Plan | |
YES | YES | Not available | (4) Softbank |
(1) NTT Docomo
If you have an iPhone with this plan, a maximum charge of ¥10,395 (approx. 100USD) will be applied. You can make a Personal Hotspot connection with fantastic 7.2Mbps speed (in theory) and can't activate Facetime. And you manually have to configure the APN settings with "mopera.net".
(2) Japan Communications
If you are okay with a bit compromised Personal Hotspot functionality, Japan Communications (Nihon tuushin or 日本通信) will be your choice. As a NTT Docomo MVNO, they give you a better network coverage than Softbank that is the official iPhone carrier in Japan, and a better price than Docomo, which is approximately ¥6,000 or 60USD.
http://www.j-com.co.jp/en/index.html (Unfortunately, they don't have English pages for their iPhone options as of April 2011)
(3) NTT Docomo with Data Only Plan
If you give up making a call with your iPhone, a maximum charge of ¥5,985 (approx. 60USD) will be appled, which is the difference between (1) and this.
(4) Softbank
They have the most affordable plan and poorest network coverage. If you have to use Facetime, this is the only japanese mobile carrier you can go with.
2. Verdict - the best plan?
(1) is the best. And if you are absolutely unnecessary with making a call from your iPhone, (3) is for you.
In my case, I started my sim free iPhone 4 with Japan Communications and now have changed to NTT Docomo since this month. This is because that Japan Communications was the only carrier offering a micro sim for iPhone 4 until March 2011.
If you have any questions, please feel free to ask or tweet me a question.
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| NTT docomo micro sim card |
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| Personal hotspot is working! |
