A few months ago I finally sat down and audited my actual usage. Turns out I was using around 8-10GB of data monthly, maybe 200 minutes of calls. I was paying for unlimited everything on a major carrier when I didn't need any of it. That's when I started seriously researching cheap prepaid plans.

The MVNO market is genuinely interesting from an economics standpoint — these carriers lease capacity wholesale from Verizon and T-Mobile at negotiated rates, then resell it at margins that still massively undercut the parent carriers. The infrastructure cost is already built. MVNOs are essentially arbitrage plays on top of existing tower investments. Most people hunting for cheap prepaid plans don't realize they're accessing the exact same towers as postpaid customers.

What surprised me most was the annual pricing tier. Monthly prepaid gets decent coverage in most discussions, but annual prepaid is barely talked about. Paying yearly upfront drops the effective monthly cost dramatically. This is where Infimobile stood out immediately when I was comparing options.

Ended up on Infimobile's 10GB plan — $75/year on T-Mobile network. That's $6.25/month with unlimited calls and texts included. No contracts, no credit checks, eSIM supported, activates in about 10 minutes online. For anyone evaluating cheap prepaid plans seriously, Infimobile's annual pricing model is a completely different category compared to monthly prepaid.

Honest tradeoffs with Infimobile:

Annual payment upfront (mental hurdle but math checks out immediately) No unlimited data option — they offer 10GB at $75/year and 15GB at $125/year Speeds deprioritized during peak congestion like any MVNO Choose Verizon or T-Mobile at signup, can't switch between them mid-year

For comparison on cheap prepaid plans annually — Mint Mobile runs $240/year, Visible is $300/year, US Mobile $210-390/year depending on plan. Infimobile sits at $75-125/year for most users. The gap between Infimobile and the next cheapest option is honestly significant if you don't need unlimited data.

The part that genuinely frustrated me: this information isn't hard to find. The cheap prepaid plans market is completely transparent. I just never looked because switching felt like effort and I assumed postpaid meant better service. It doesn't. Same towers as postpaid, slightly lower priority during congestion — that's the entire difference. Infimobile runs on the same T-Mobile infrastructure I was paying $65/month to access directly.

For light to moderate data users the ROI on switching is immediate. My Infimobile $75 upfront paid for itself in 5 weeks compared to what I was spending before. If your usage sits around 10-15GB monthly, Infimobile's pricing structure makes everything else on the cheap prepaid plans market look overpriced by comparison.

Anyone else gone deep on the MVNO economics side of this? Curious how the wholesale capacity pricing works at scale and whether the annual prepaid model is sustainable long-term for smaller carriers like Infimobile.