Howdy Y'all,

Before you all have my head for bringing up a commonly discussed topic, let me foreword this post by saying that I have been reading many (if not all) of the threads on maemo.org, howardforums, and various other forums regarding data plans for the N900.

However, I am left with a few questions because it seems that T-mobile did a major overhaul of their plan offerings about two weeks before I actually purchased my N900 and I wanted to make sure I had the current information regarding mobile web on the N900 before buying any services.

Now, that said, I bought my N900 a couple weeks back. I've been dinking around with it on WiFi at home and I love it. However, I need to activate it on a U.S. carrier's network so I can get better internet access while away from home, as well as text messaging and some number of voice minutes. I have been looking at T-mobile primarily because I hate AT&T and SimpleMobile apparently hits you with a phantom data cap on their "unlimited data" offerings. If anyone knows of any different U.S. GSM providers, please feel free to speak up. Otherwise, I'm on to the meat of this post:

According to HowardForums, T-mobile should offer an unlimited data for phones plan for $9.99 per month. However, this was apparently deprecated earlier this November. According to this thread, you could get this data plan activated with T-mobile by purchasing some other form of a data plan, and then talking to the Customer Loyalty Department at T-mobile. Both of these posts, however, were made prior to the plan changes by T-mobile. So I wanted to clarify, can U.S. users still get unlimited data for ~$10 / month with T-mobile as of November 2010? Furthermore, I've heard mention that a similar plan by T-mobile existed that could give unlimited text + unlimited data for ~$20 per month. Does this option still exist?

If these options exist, what sort of plan should be purchased up front (from Radioshack, or wherever) in order to have the line switched over to the cheap data plan by the CLD at T-mobile? Can the switch be made from one of the even more plus plans, or should some random prepaid plan be purchased first instead?

Does this data plan stack with pay-as-you go minutes, or some other voice additive plan? In other words, would I be stuck paying $0.10 per minute for voice with one of these plans, or could I top-up with something like the $30 for 160 minutes offering by T-mobile?

If these plans are deprecated, or simply unavailable to new customers, are there other offerings by any company that give the ability to use excessive Data and Text capabilities while purchasing voice minutes on the go?

I thoroughly love my N900 and can't wait to start utilizing it as my primary phone (I am eagerly awaiting the day I get to tell Verizon to piss off). However, I need a bit more current data on how to work out a slick deal using an unlocked phone in the U.S. I want to support T-mobile because they seem like the only company that plays nice with unlocked and open phones (a philosophy that I support thoroughly). However, if they no longer offer competitive plans for open and unlocked phones, I will be thoroughly disappointed.

Sorry for the length, and if this needs to be merged into another thread somewhere else, that's fine. I just wanted to get a thread started regarding U.S. data plans for the N900 as of November 2010.

Thanks in Advance Guys,
Brady