Most people with iphones pay ~$80 for voice, data, and text messaging. I'm sure there is some way to jailbreak the phone and go with one of these discount providers like virgin mobile....I haven't figured out how to do that yet.
If you think about, the price typically charged for voice and text messaging is absurdly expensive on a per MB basis. It is actually possible to just get a 4G mobile wifi hotspot...carry that around and make phone calls and text messages via Internet services like Skype. Clearwire has a service. Netzero announced a service yesterday that is free for 12 months and 500MB a month only costs $10.
Freedompop is going to also sell "free" 4G via Clearwire and it comes with a nifty iPhone case that is also a 4G hotspot that creates a wifi zone that you can connect any device to.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/20/fre...d=tc_home_art&
So you can subscribe to Skype for like $7 and Freedompop or netzero for like $10 or less. That's a lot of money savings per year. The downside is the poor coverage outside of major cities....but then u could probably just use a crappy pay as u go feature phone if u are traveling to the boondocks.
$17 vs $80 per month....that's over $700 of savings each year.