Help me add a second line to my new iPhone

January 25, 2022 8:31 AM

For professional troubleshooting purposes, my spouse would like to add a second line to their American AT&T iPhone 13. The SIM tray is empty, but it looks like we can put both lines on the eSIM. Who's the cheapest pre-paid provider with the shortest term?

I used to know a lot more about prepaid cellular service, but even then I just bought a phone and paid the carrier $10 every couple of months to keep the line active - I never bought the service and device separately, and it looks like the market has sort of changed in the last decade anyway. Is it still possible to throw $20-ish at an MVNO for like 500 minutes / 500 messages / 1 gig (or whatever - usage caps really do not matter here, this is just for Learning Purposes™ / Nerd Entertainment), or are even the shortest plans on offer like Mint Mobile's $45 for 3 months intro price?

The phones are unlocked (Settings->General->About->Carrier Lock says "No SIM Restrictions"), so I don't think we need to tell AT&T that they need to unlock our full-price phones.

posted by Kyol to Technology (7 answers total)

Response by poster: I mean the even more "more inside" is this is partially a learning experience - what changes in the UI with a second line, what technical considerations are there, etc, and partially a dry run if we ever go on vacation outside of the CONUS again and need to pick up a foreign SIM so we don't pay AT&T's international rates.
posted by Kyol at 8:36 AM on January 25, 2022

T-mobile Connect pre-paid plan is $15/month with no minimum number of months. Unlimited Talk & Text w/ 2.5GB Data (capped)
posted by belladonna at 10:15 AM on January 25, 2022

I don't have any direct recommendations, but this Apple support article links to this list (scroll down for US) of wireless carriers that support eSIM, and the links seem to go to relevant pages on those sites.
posted by xedrik at 10:43 AM on January 25, 2022

Try here https://old.reddit.com/r/noContract/

There are a bunch of options for $5/month

https://www.speedtalkmobile.com/pay-go-plan

eBay has a $30/year RedPocket plan
posted by WizKid at 11:10 AM on January 25, 2022

Came to suggest Red Pocket. I use it as my main line without issue.
posted by crunchy potato at 5:40 AM on January 26, 2022

Visible is on that list, and it's who I use. Their plan is $40 unlimited everything. But they have this thing called party plans (I think). Look on Reddit and you can join one. That'll bring you down to $25/mo. I've had few issues and customer service has been good for me.
posted by kathrynm at 9:57 AM on January 26, 2022

I have my business line on eSIM with the T-Mobile Connect $15/mo prepaid plan. It was simple to set up and works well. The only problem I had at first is that when sending text messages, they'd sometimes send from my biz line instead of my personal, and it took me a while to figure out how to prevent that from happening—i.e., When you create a new text, click on the contact's profile pic and find Conversation Line just below the Call, Video, Mail, and Info buttons. Make sure the Conversation Line is set to the one you want to text from.
posted by smich at 12:53 PM on January 26, 2022