My phone number started in the previous millennium. It began with the Era operator as a postpaid customer, then I moved it to Plus (still postpaid) and 14 years ago I became a prepaid customer with Orange. This is going to change again.
Beginning
I do not remember why I went with prepaid instead of postpaid all those 14 years ago. Maybe conditions were better, or something.
I chose the ‘Orange Free na Kartę’ offer, where I went through the options and enabled everything that made sense to me. And disabled otherwise.
- More data with every top-up? Checked.
- More data with every monthly packet? Checked
- Cost limit for the international roaming? Checked
- No expiration of data as long as there is money on the account? Checked
- No calls to 0-700 numbers? Checked
- No text messages to paid numbers? Checked
- etc.
Funny numbers
Months turned into years. Better “calls + data” packages were introduced, and I switched to a monthly one.
At some point, I collected 1 TB of data to use, then a second, a third, and additional 2 TB of data came from regular top-ups.
I went through my archive of text messages and generated this chart showing progress since 2018. The 1 TB jump this year was due to some offer change.
Over 8 TB of data to use means “some kind of” unlimited data transfers, right? I have no idea how much time it would take to make use of it with normal use. I asked a friend, and he told me that, according to the operator data, I had used 226 GB in Poland and 14.2 GB abroad during the last year.
There were some funny moments, like the one where I was going abroad and noticed that, on my new phone, I did not have any offline music for a flight. And I was in a bus from Szczecin to Berlin already. Fetching a few GB of music took a few minutes — managed to grab all I wanted before crossing border (the GSM coverage in Germany, next to Polish border, was poor).
All that was due to the options I chose 14 years ago and the wise selection of “calls+data” monthly packets.
What’s next?
I am moving to a postpaid service, still with Orange. The first year will be free as it gets connected with my Internet-at-home bill, and the next year would cost me less than I am currently paying. It still offers unlimited calls/messages, “only” 300 GB of data per month and 27 GB of EU roaming. The last one may look small compared to 226 GB I have now, but it is still more than I normally use per month.