Here’s how badly we’re getting ripped off by our mobile phone providers

It is hard to overstate how much I love the British mobile provider Three and how I wish it would come to the United States.

My fellow Americans, let me (again) re-iterate how badly we’re all getting overcharged: Three offers a 30-day prepaid plan with unlimited data, unlimited texts, and 200 minutes of domestic calling, all for £20 ($31). That’s about one-third less than what I pay right now Stateside.

Last month, I traveled to the United Kingdom for a reporting trip on the new Welsh drone startup behind the Zano handheld drone. Before I left California, I had my new Ars UK colleague Sebastian Anthony go to a Three shop, buy a SIM, and send it to me in the mail (or post, whatever). He didn’t have to register it or show an ID. When I landed at Heathrow, I could just pop it in, and boom, I was off and running.

As I learned on this trip, I was also able to roam to Ireland at no extra cost. Seriously, zero. Three has a list of countries, which it calls “Feel At Home”—including the US, Israel, Indonesia, Hong Kong—where your plan (even my prepaid one) that you had in the United Kingdom stays with you. Heck, I could even roam and use this sweet data plan back to the US, if I didn’t mind the hassle of only having a +44 phone number in my pocket, for less than what I currently pay.

I have yet to find any American company, whether one of the Big 4 (T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint), or a prepaid mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), that comes anywhere close to Three's offering at this price.

The MVNO that I use, Straight Talk (running on the AT&T network), costs $45 per month for unlimited minutes and texts, recently increased from 3GB to 5GB of data. For the last three years, it’s been working beautifully on my used, unlocked iPhone. That’s the best I’ve been able to find so far here in the US, but that’s still about 50 percent more than what Three is charging in the United Kingdom. (And Straight Talk has no roaming at all.)

As I’ve been reporting for Ars for years now, the American mobile market is slowly starting to move in the direction of prepaid plans, which has dominated the rest of the globe for years. I’m pretty much always willing to try out new prepaid mobile companies that are attempting to break the mold.

Back in 2012, industry data showed American mobile phone operators sustained the first-ever net decline in contract (“postpaid”) subscriptions, a loss of 52,000 subscribers. And the number of non-contract ("prepaid") mobile customers has reached record levels—and about 25 percent of all mobile phone users in America.

In recent years, American telcos have started to move more in this direction, most notably T-Mobile, which has killed contracts entirely and has branded itself as the “uncarrier,” in the wake of its acquisition of prepaid-only carrier MetroPCS. Sprint made a similar move in 2013.

But all of the big players still charge way too much. To match what I already have with Straight Talk, I’d be looking at paying $60 per month with T-Mobile. AT&T, meanwhile, charges $60 for less data! Verizon doesn’t even offer a prepaid plan anywhere close to 5GB. Its best offer is $60 per month, but only at 2.5GB. Sprint comes closest, at $45 for 3GB of data.

Some of the other MVNOs have offers that are identical or even come very close to Straight Talk. For instance, I might consider switching to Cricket, a subsidiary of AT&T. including a discount for adding a second line (my wife), we would pay the same as we pay now ($90).

Three, where are you?

UPDATE Thursday 12:24am: A number of readers pointed out that T-Mobile does have a prepaid plan that is very similar to Three's. Buried at the bottom of their prepaid page, T-Mobile offers "Unlimited web and text with 100 minutes talk" for $30 per month. We will be investigating further.