Get yer' Prepaid Audi Connect!
 

Hi All -
I had posted about my ambitions to build a prepaid plan for Audi Connect. I still intend to investigate, but I can't fid the time to get it off the ground. So, I decided to post the next best thing, which i discovered during my research.

Truphone is an international MVNO operating on the T-Mobile network. They allow travelers coming in to the country to "Roam" on T-Mobile.

It's $29.99 for the SIM and you get $15 of credit pre-loaded with it. It's $.17 / Megabyte. I've used just a few megabytes in the time that I've had it running in my car. It allows me to get all of the features of audi connect. Note that I use google maps rarely, and never use the wifi hotspot.

It's basically plug and play, you get 3G access, and it costs a few dollars a month at most. If you ever need google maps, you can enable it, as I have done on occassion. I've spent about $4 in the 2 months I've had it running.

Best of all, it's prepaid! You pay for waht you use, and nothing more. There's no monthly fee at all.

All you need to do is buy a tru sim at the following address - http://localanywhere.truphone.com/buy/

There are directions that come with the sim - in your data connection settings, you will need to change your APN.

But for the functionality - I am happy to pay a few bucks a month. The Audi plan is overpriced and this is a great compromise.

just remember that the real data hogs are google maps, and wifi hotspot. So I have those disabled unless I need them.

Hope this helps some people!

That's an interesting alternative. I could care less about wi-fi, but google maps is a nice feature. Thanks for letting us know.

Yes, I agree - I wish there were a way to preload google maps data. Note that google maps is totally usable with Tru. And with caching, it may be that this plan is still cheaper. But I'm afraid to try it.

You can track your data volumes in the MMI. So it may be worth testing how much data gets consumed with google maps.

Given you get 3 months free service of the normal Audi connect, I would go ahead and use Google maps heavily during that time and see what your data use is, and see if the math works out for you.

Or do one month with maximum use, and then another month with maybe something more typical and see the difference.

I assume you can always turn off the Tru service anyway at any point...

I emailed Tru and they confirmed that you just buy more data as needed via credit card but keep the SIM you get initially. "Once that you have your TRU sim card we need to activate it either online or by calling TRU (808). We will be asking for your debit or credit card details and will save it on file so that once that credits had been used up, you can add credits on it. Thank you for contacting Tru."


I think I will try it when the Audi / T-Mobile data stops the free trial. I got the cut-off email from T-Mobile but I am still getting data (or perhaps it is all cached MAP memory). Will have to try a new Google search to see what happens.

This is exactly what I would need!!

Glad to help. I am still trying to cut the rate substantially via a "group" plan with another MVNO. But that may not happen for a while.

I'll keep you posted with progress.

So this will work in the US?

Yes. I have had it running for a couple of months. Works great.

I just ordered my SIM from TRU-PHONE and will report back on how this works for me on the A7. Most of the MAPs are already cached in the GPS memory so I expect to use just the Online Google Search function once in a while. A couple of dollars a month seems a fair price for the seldom uses.