My personal cell gave up the ghost recently. Work provides an unlimited data verizon phone with international coverage so i don't use the personal phone much. I use the work phone for Waze etc and am not a heavy data user. I want to keep my old phone number and go to a cheaper phone plan. Anyone use republic, ting, google.... what other pay as you go plans are out there. I'm thinking we would mostly leave it as a PAYG home phone so that the kids can dial 911 etc as needed.
Thoughts?
If you have Comcast internet you can get their mobile service without data. I have that for Lil Stampie and it cost me $3 a month for his phone. If you need just a little data 1gb cost $12 iirc.
Ive used Tracfone for years. If i stopped using my phone right now i have service til 2048. Its decent service but its more expensive than it used to be but at one time it was $8 a month for me
If it's just one line and you use very little data ProjectFi is cheap as hell (bonus for super cheaper international rates).
My wife and I use it, maybe 1 - 2 gigs a month combined. I haven't seen a bill over 65 dollars yet. Once you hit 10(?) gigs the data goes into unlimited mode so there's a cap on how much you can possibly run up the bill and it's not throttled.
I've also heard a lot of good things about Ting.
I will also recommends project fi.
Those bills include $30/month for phone payment and insurance. I average about a gig a month data wise, and it switches to unlimited at 6GB now if you need it, $10/GB before that.
The major drop in February is a fluke, they changed from prepaying then refunding for data to pay as you go.
I've been on republic wireless 2 or so years and love it.
Usually when my wife doesn't have coverage I do. And other than the boundary waters and bunkers and basements I don't think I've not had service.
It's $25/month I think? But I own my phone.
I have been using consumer cellular and they have been pretty good. If you get no data etc I think you can be 10/ mo. I have 4 phones unlimited phone and text and 10 gigs of data for around 100
Just switched to total wireless (verizon mvno). $57/mo for 2 lines w/15gb data.
T-mobile has a very cheap, non-data plan that is about $4 a month. Not sure if you can port you number over or not. It's a bit hard to find on their site (needless to say, they don't make much off of it). It gives you 30 min / 30 texts a month, then 10 cents a min/text after that.
Red pocket cellular on eBay has good deals , and wait for the 15-20 percent discount day
I use straight talk with a Huawei phone. No real problems for several years at this point
Been on Straight Talk (picked AT&T as our network for their coverage) for about 5 years with no problems. We have the unlimited plan which is unlimited talk & text with 8 GB high speed data & throttled after that. If you wait a month you'll get an email to auto bill your credit card & save a couple bucks. With the auto bill discount I think we're at $48.75/month per line. I think they have a cheaper plan now but I'm not familiar with the details.
Tmobile used to have a $30/month plan with 30 minutes talk, unlimited text, & 2 or 3 GB of high speed data. I tried it for a month ant the coverage was bad in rural areas.
ATT has a 1GB cell plane for about $50/month. Whats nice is if you go over, no big deal they just slow you down. We're paying $72/month for two iphones on that plan. Works well enough for us. Even the throttled down speed is faster than our wifi at home on DSL
5 years with Republic and still very happy. 3 phones cost $55 a month, 2 have get half a gig of data each.
Another happy Republic Wireless user here, although slightly less so now that they've dropped their 'smarter' refund plans. I've been with them for probably coming up on 5 years or so now, and with in the last years my wife switched over as well now that they've matured the technology a bit and work with a wider selection of phones. I don't know if I've ever used more than 0.5 gig of cell data per month, so I've always been on the cheapest data plan, even though I am probably an average of ~10 gig per month wi-fi data user.
Any military service? If so you can get T mobile for $20 a line with unlimited data.
SWMBO, her mom, and I have been on republic for probably atleast 5 years now. We're on grandfathered plans that get us 5 gb of data and unlimited talk and text for around 30/month. Swmbos mom is retired and generally only needs data around the house where she has WiFi so she's on one of the newer refund plans, I think it runs about 11/month for her line.
Let me or someone else here on republic know if you plan to sign up, they have a referral program that'll save you 20 on your first bill.
In reply to Aaron_King :
Do you know what they call this program ?
Thanks
In reply to californiamilleghia :
They keep running commercials on the radio here, like every other break so anyone you talk to there should know about it. I don't remember them calling it a specific name though.
Ok I don't really want to jack this thread, but it got me looking around at cellular options for the first time in 3 years. I now have a work cell that I could use and completely eliminate my personal cell, but I know my friends too well and like my job so that is not an option. I can however use it for GPS/directions, Waze, and other stuff to reduce my data needs on my personal cell.
So how is AT&T's prepaid service? Especially regarding price increases and/or service changes? I currently have Straight Talk on my & SWMBO's phones using AT&T's network and have been very happy. Experienced one price increase in 5 years that cost $5/month, but the high speed data has gone from 2.5GB to 8GB so not an unreasonable trade off. AT&T has the same prepaid plan and it would be $27/month cheaper to switch both phones over or $37/month less if I can live with 1GB of high speed data. I could save at least half of my annual gas costs for driving to work at $27/month...but if it's gonna be a Comcast/Time Warner experience and go up every other month it may not be worth switching.
Haven't looked at usage stats in a long time, but as a guess I use less than 60 min/month of talk, 1000 texts/month, and 1-2GB/month. SWMBO is probably at 1000 min/month of talk, 5000 texts/month, and 3-4GB/month. Need good coverage in rural areas because of where we live and travel. So if there are other options that you recommend considering put them up.
I've been with Ting for several years now. My wife can't keep from using significant amounts of data, but our bill for both lines runs between $65 and $75 most months. They support GSM and CDMA, so you can choose whichever is better in your area. Absolutely recommend it to anyone looking for a low dollar cell service.
Consumer Cellular. $10 m, $o.25 minute. I think the buy in now is $25
I have been on Google's Project Fi now since January-ish and I love it.
$20/mo unlimited talk/text and $10/gb data. I haven't paid over $40 yet. Some months $25, but I'm almost always around wifi.
Works in something like 178 countries at the same rate but adds a few cents per minute calling. Data is always $10/gb regardless of country.
The thing I like about Project Fi is that they contract with Sprint, T-mobile, and US cellular, so you're getting the coverage of all three combined. You do sometimes give up a little bit of coverage in outlying metro burbs, but it makes up for it with US cellular's rural coverage that even Verizon can't touch.
The big caveat... you have to have one of about 9 phones for it to work. I happened to choose the Pixel 2 and it works with that. More phones are being added almost weekly.
Ive been on Ting for a bit now. Family has been on it for years. As long as you dont use a ton of data, ting is great. My normal bill is 30$.
In reply to californiamilleghia :
IT is the T Mobile ONE plan at 50% off.
https://www.t-mobile.com/offers/military-phone-plans
You'll need to log in to post.
