We No Longer Need a Big Carrier’s Wireless Plan. Discount Ones Are the Way.
We No Longer Need a Big Carrier’s Wireless Plan. Discount Ones Are the Way.
We are overpaying for phone plans from Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. Budget wireless services, similarly fast and robust, can save thousands.
P.S. Some of the 'big' carriers, now and then, offer much less expensive 'plans'. Some event beat the prices in this article, if your 'Data' needs are limited.
Is it an american joke, I'm too European for understand ?
At some point they told the Telcos you have to offer competition. So a dozen different budget phone services popped up over like the last 15 maybe more years. They all have decent rates and use one of the big 3s infrastructure, so they get the same service levels.
The big Telcos still exist because people don't fully understand how the competition works and because people always want the newest iPhone and are bad at math and calculating risk. So they are in a perpetual contract so they can get a free "insured" iphone of the latest variety, while only paying 3x for their cell bill.
"Same service levels" Wrong. Verizon and the other infrastructure owners don't sell access to their top tier antennae. You're using the older shit and your traffic is deprioritized. You do not get the same service.
That doesn't mean it cannot be worth the price, but know they're LYING to you when they say you get the exact same service.
Canada: That's gunna be hard no.
It is absolutely insane to me the level of monopoly three companies hold. To the point where entering the market is nigh but impossible.
But of course “three different entities battling it out doesn’t make a monopoly” but it does if they happen to work together juuuust enough to keep things in the shitty situation that currently exists for consumers.
Not all budget plans are necessarily good... I'll admit to being a cheap fucker. I can afford a top tier cell plan, I just won't pay for it. :)
For YEARS I had a Virgin mobile plan, but I had to drop it when, in their infinite wisdom, they dropped Android support and went iOS only.
They eventually changed their mind and tried to revert back, but the damage was done and they exited the US market ENTIRELY.
So I sucked it up and went with a Tmobile plan, which was fine, right up until they pushed an update that bricked my phone and they wouldn't take responsibility for it.
Sooo... back to MVNO world. Picked Metro PCS, which was under Sprint at the time and had no problems, and 1/2 the price. Everything worked well... and Tmobile bought Sprint and Metro and my reaction was "Oh, HELL NO." Not being under Tmobile again.
Thought the Mint commercials were cute, tried them out and found that while the calls and data were fine, there were so many problems with SMS that it was essentially unusable AND they got bought by TMobile...
So... Visible it is... MVNO under Verizon. 5G speeds in my area aren't the best, but it's functional and not Tmobile.
Team Visible here too. I wanted unlimited so I can stream at work and do some things the firewall would forbid. It's also just my wife and me, so we don't need four lines. They've been excellent for the three months we've had them. It's my first experience with e-sim, and that has been smooth. I'm a little apprehensive about switching it over when we upgrade phones, but we'll figure it out.
I'm in a flipped situation. My MVNO (confiner l consumer cellular) used t mobile and now they switched to ATT. My internet is faster (70 mbps speed test) but my service is less consistent. I'll get full service in a subway tunnel but none at my house.
That's not unusual for AT&T. I remember back in the day their own CEO had to go out to his driveway to get service.
My own experience.. Paying 200$/month for 4 "unlimited" plans on mobile. Switched to boost mobile aka tmobile and now pay $108/month for 4 "unlimited" plans. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
This where I am as well…
I know that switching would be cheaper…. It really is just inertia keeping me from moving
Um… AT&T … what are you really giving me?
MVNOs are fantastic value once they get up and running in healthy competition. Australia has heaps of them and IIRC some of the cheapest mobile data charges in the world.
ETA: according to data from cable.co.uk, Australia ranks 15th cheapest, 68¢ per GB on average.
Australia, which are regarded as one of the most expensive country to live in, have the cheapest data plan in the world.
Not sure which way the wind blows.
You win some, you lose more 🥲
On US Mobile with 5G UW and unlimited* data for like $25 (including taxes and fees) a month.
*I get like 30GB of "Premium Data" and unlimited regular data plus 5GB of hotspot.
I switched to Mint because T-Mobile was getting a little too monopolistic and it was a lot cheaper. Still cheaper but I guess I couldn't escape the cartels in even the most modest sense. I also get pretty insane download speeds at my house (~750Mbps).
Who's gonna tell him?
I feel like he will be sad if he knows. How about a round of silence?
T-Mobile is awaiting regulatory approval to acquire Mint and has otherwise reached an agreement to do so.
I wish free.fr was in the US. It’s the one thing I miss. That and a good warm baguette.
Problem is, of course, that most of these discount carriers are owned by the big ones. Cricket is AT&T, and Mint is what, Verizon now?
Mint's under T-Mobile now, IIRC
I use Visible which is pretty awesome. $25/mo for unlimited data, and it uses the Verizon network.
I got $10 CAD a month. 1Gb data, unlimited call and text.
I just need data for emergencies between places. Everywhere has wifi now.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Americans have long been conditioned to believe that when they buy a cellphone, the next step is to pick a wireless plan from one of the big carriers: Verizon, AT&T or T-Mobile.
The no-frill plans often have trade-offs, including slower download speeds, since Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile subscribers have priority access to faster network performance.
Yet in the past few years, so much has changed that I can now confidently recommend discount phone plans for most people, including white-collar professionals and Instagram-obsessed youths.
It lets you immediately activate an extra phone line without needing to insert a physical SIM card, which makes experimenting with an off-brand wireless service easier and less intimidating.
Consumers can sign up for discount phone plans by buying a physical SIM card from a website or retail store, though I recommend eSIM as the way.
Based on the results measured with the Speedtest app, Cricket and Visible had comparable performances, with download speeds of 154 megabits per second, on average.
The original article contains 1,293 words, the summary contains 164 words. Saved 87%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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I switched to US Mobile last year. I had a rough month or two with data not working properly, but it's smooth sailing now for $20/month for 5GB of data.
Ive got US mobile also.
Pros: unlimited talk and text and 1gb of data for 10 bucks a month, verizon towers, wifi calling, normal calls and text have gave me no issue.
Cons: Customer service is often poor to okay but they do have a chat based support which helps, data absolutely craps out in some areas.
Hope it helps readers choose.
(looks at his Australian MVNO plan of unlimited calls and text and 100GB for ~USD30 and his ~2.3TB of monthly rolled-over data available)
Oh , it was 80GB a month, now it's 100. Cool.
Anyway, uh, that's great, mate, good to hear you're getting value for money over there compared to what's normally offered.
Competition is a good thing, keep encouraging it.
With net neutrality entering the conversation again, would these MVNO carriers be affected in any way?
In similar news the home internet is similar. Fiber is so much better than cable and a lot cheaper
I've been eyeing MVNO plans for awhile now. I bought a 3 month trial of Mint on a spare phone and it seems to work OK. But I've heard enough horror stories that I'm still very hesitant of porting my main number over. Downtime is unacceptable especially for key services like SMS.
I'm on US Mobile paying $18 for 6gb per month. Was in Madrid, Spain for almost 2 years during the pandemic and paid €15 on Vodafone for even more. And it rolled over so I eventually had around 100Gb.
Hey, me too! I was there the same time as you and had pretty much the same plan. I never once thought about my data usage.
I've used Mint for a little over a year, no major issues past setup. I've noticed being "deprioritized" a few times but it hasn't been terrible. Only thing is that T-Mobile was definitely better / easier for international roaming.
You do realize that T-Mobile bought Mint earlier this year.
Yes, but nothing has changed in my experience as of yet. I am not a true T-Mobile customer like I was before I switched to Mint.
If anyone didn't know, APC applies to internet, and it will save $30 a month. I think it's the last year though, unless they extend it or make a new one.
I've had ATT prepaid for me and the other 3 in my family and with all of us it's about $100/month. We don't need unlimited since everyone is almost always connected to wifi. Also they roll over unused data up to 30gb. The wife and I have 25gb plans and the kids have 5gb plans and we can use those for tethering too. Been on it for over 4 years now...