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Well, if you are a massive data user, the iPhone 3G makes a lot of sense. But what if you want the nice iPhone interface but don’t want to pay the incredibly high $30/month data charges, what do you do. Well, some choices are:

1. Get a iPhone first generation on the “grey market”. Yes it will cost you $500, but after a year, that’s way cheaper than the $200 plus $360/month. You don’t get 3G
2. Figure out how to get pay as you go to work…The short note is that there are two data plans for the first generation phone which is a 1MB $5 dataplan and a 5MB $10 MediaNet. These last 30 days and roll over month to month up to 15MB if you renew every month. There is also a messaging plan that takes the SMS message rate $0.15/month ripoffs that are the rack rate. The main issue is that there is no warning when you blow through your data plan and you start paying ridiculous rack rates for data. Also bizarrely, you can add up to 3 data plans, so you can get 30MB/month and they rollover, if you roll over any one of them.
3. AT&T Pick Your Plan. This is entirely different from Pay as You Go, Go Phone. It does allow unlimited data for $20/month like the regular prepay plans. So you are not saving anything. In this case what you do is get an iPhone, hactivate it under 1.0.4 which means you don’t get any 2.x features and you are off to the races

1. It is a little wierd, but to get a pay as you go, you actually buy an entire phone which cost $80 but includes a $100 data card, so you get 5 months of 3G data and a free phone. Of course, how did you get the iPhone 3G in the first place. You have to get the iPhone 3G already activate. For instance in Singapore, they require a 2 year commitment but the phone is at least sold unlocked. Confirmed: 3G iPhone works out of the box with PAYG – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

   a completely virgin iPhone 3G works out of the box with AT&T Pay As You Go SIMs.