Needed to set up a WAN backup for a fibre connection that's gone down twice in the past two weeks after "transparent" upgrade/maintenance work, requiring a power-cycle of the ONT each time to restore service after about 30 minutes of trying everything else. I figured it'd be easy enough, set up an old phone as a hotspot, drop in a prepay SIM and load it with 1GB of data, refreshing once a year to keep it active or if the data quantity drops too far, for a total cost of $20-25.

 

 

Except that Prepay SIMs don't seem to exist any more in NZ. Or at least there are still things called Prepay SIMs, but they're just on-account SIMs under a false name. From a quick search:

 

 

Vodafone: "Pay Monthly" plan, https://www.vodafone.co.nz/pay-monthly, where you pay monthly and get a fixed quota of minutes, data, etc. "Prepay" plan, https://www.vodafone.co.nz/prepay, where you pay monthly and get a fixed quota of minutes, data, etc.

 

 

2Degrees: "Pay Monthly", https://www.2degrees.nz/mobile-plans/pay-monthly, where you pay monthly and get a fixed quota of minutes, data, etc. "Prepay" plan, https://www.2degrees.nz/mobile-plans/prepay, where you pay monthly and get a fixed quota of minutes, data, etc.

 

 

Skinny: "Prepay Mobile Plans", https://www.skinny.co.nz/pricing/plans, where you pay monthly and get a fixed quota of minutes, data, etc.

 

 

Spark: "Pay Monthly", https://www.spark.co.nz/online/mobile-plans?category=postpaid, where you pay monthly and get a fixed quota of minutes, data, etc. "Prepaid", https://www.spark.co.nz/online/mobile-plans?category=prepaid_retail_extra, where you pay monthly and get a fixed quota of minutes, data, etc.

 

 

Kogan Mobile: "Prepay Plans", https://www.koganmobile.co.nz/, where you pay monthly and get a fixed quota of minutes, data, etc.

 

 

Warehouse Mobile: The only honest one, just "Our plans", https://www.warehousemobile.co.nz/pricing, where you pay monthly and get a fixed quota of minutes, data, etc.

 

 

Some questions:

 

 

* Is this actually valid? I realise you can call a plan the Queen of Sheba if you want, but these are just standard pay-monthly on-account plans being sold as prepay plans.

 

 

* Are there really no more genuine prepay NZ SIMs available that you just load up with (say) 1GB data and that are valid for a year, not charged monthly?

 

 

At the moment it looks like the only way to do this is to get a travel SIM from an overseas provider, which is pretty ridiculous.