TMobile Prepaid vs Att

[fortunz]

So I'm still in a contract with ATT, and I was looking about for some kind of leverage I could use to eliminate or reduce my ETF through negotiation, for example, "I want to go prepaid, but I don't want to pay ATT $175 for the privilege of switching to ATT's prepaid plan, so if you charge me that, I'm going to become a Tmobile customer." On principle it seems wrong to basically get fined for something (leaving ATT) without the the fun of actually doing it. It's like getting a speeding ticket for going the limit. It sucks.

Turns out, TMobile's prepaid plan is better than ATT's. By a lot.

For ATT, to get a per minute plan with no daily access charge, you pay .25 per minute. If you buy it blocks of $100, they don't expire for a reasonable 365 days. $100 translates to about 400 minutes (all fees will come out of the refill block, so it would end up being a little less). It appears to include nationwide long distance.

For TMobile, a per minute plan without a daily access charge can be as low as .10 per minute--they give bonus minutes the more you buy at a time. $50 gives you 400 minutes. $100 gives you 1000 minutes and $100 also doesn't expire for 365 days. It also appears to come with nationwide long distance.

TMobile's coverage in my specific area looks as good as ATTs. Tmo only seems to offer prepaid data for the sidekick. ATT has a pretty good (for light use) universal per-MB plan.

So now I'm trying to do the math and decide how long it would take me to recoup the ETF using TMobile's minutes, that are less than half as expensive as ATTs minutes. Which should be by the time I've bought my 2nd refill card from TMobile--where $200 = 2000 Tmo minutes, but it will take $500 for 2000 ATT minutes. And I'm trying to figure out if I'm missing some cost in the equation as well.