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.
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Might be true of Verizon. I have seen no difference of AT&T. IDK how you even get on Verizon, are they still doing CDMA?
They share more bands in 5G. Still don’t sell top tier service (at least at the same price).
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.
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I was in the UK and got a SIM card for travel and when the person working at the store heard I visited from Canada, they said they heard we have the most expensive internet and mobile plans. I couldn’t believe how cheap it was there. In fact, the Sim card there didn’t charge roaming for almost every country, including the USA… Except it excluded Canada, North Korea and a few others lol.
Problem is, the smaller companies that the big 3 lease their infrastructure to here are often more expensive. There’s been multiple cases of Rogers et al. bullying the smaller companies and making their service unstable or decreasing speeds randomly. I’m sure I’s the same in the states as our regulatory board the CRTC essentially being a lobbying board lol.
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Isn’t that called a Cartel?
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.
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?
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.
You might want to try Visible if you care about hotspot data.
They have truly unlimited hotspot data, I use it for home internet and mobile. Same price at $25/month.
I wish free.fr was in the US. It’s the one thing I miss. That and a good warm baguette.
You get 35fb of roaming and if I haven’t mistaken you can still call mobiles and landlines for free under their 20eur plan. If that is cheaper than what you have in the US, probably go for that? Use a US sim not for data but just so that someone can call you.
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).
T-Mobile is awaiting regulatory approval to acquire Mint and has otherwise reached an agreement to do so.
Who’s gonna tell him?
I use Visible which is pretty awesome. $25/mo for unlimited data, and it uses the Verizon network.
Fucking love Visible.
I got $10 CAD a month. 1Gb data, unlimited call and text.
I just need data for emergencies between places. Everywhere has wifi now.
With net neutrality entering the conversation again, would these MVNO carriers be affected in any way?
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.
fwiw I had good customer support experience when I accidentally signed up for the wrong plan
Thats good to know, perhaps they have seen it and are fixing it.
I use Visible for mobile and home internet. $25/month with unlimited data.
They even sent me a free 5G phone when mine was mysteriously no longer going to work with their network ‘upgrades.’ 'Course, they tried to get me to buy one first. :)
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.
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.
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…
