For the longest time, I was tied to AT&T wireless for my cell phone usage. They provided the best coverage in the area where I live. As time went on I noticed a lot of “additional fees” accumulating in my monthly bill, yet all my monthly call/text/data was within my quota. My wife and I were soon encountering a decent triple-digit monthly bill for our two phones. When our daughter was old enough for a mobile phone, we jumped over to Sprint. They enabled us to keep using our AT&T mobile phone numbers, and we saved about $20 bucks a month with lower fees. Eventually, we moved to a different location within our city, and immediately got “spotty” signal and frequent drops in our mobile phone calls. So I took another look around.
The big phone companies bombard us with commercials during football games dazzling us with “5G Nationwide Coverage” and “the fastest mobile data in the nation” that will “cook us breakfast in the morning.” You might want to pay attention to the little guys, also known as Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs). They are smaller cellular carriers who charge lower monthly fees and piggyback on the big behemoths’ cell towers.
For the past four years, my family is with Cricket Wireless. Their cell service piggybacks on AT&T cell phone towers, which is plenty saturated where we live. This is a breakdown of our monthly bill:
My wife’s phone number, complete with unlimited talk/text with 5GB of mobile data? $55/month.
My daughter’s phone number w/same features? $25/month.
My phone number, blah blah blah? $10/month.
My dear mother’s phone number (she never had a mobile phone, but saw the need for it recently), with the same features? $10/month.
Four phone numbers, 5GB mobile data per number. $100 a month. No additional I-despise-you fees, just a hundred bucks out the door. Every month. No contract.
Couple of items to keep in mind:
1 - We paid for our four unlocked phones outright before activating them with our Cricket account. These phones are not on contract with Cricket. Thus, we have a lower monthly payment than being on contract for 2-3 years with a brand new phone. It is a big thump of a payment for a phone now versus spread over 24 or 36 months…but if you’re drawn into a new phone for $30/month (a buck a day) you’ll be paying $720 for that device over two years (or $1,080 over three years) plus any additional hidden fees.
2 - I can’t access Cricket’s website with my always-on VPN software. Booooooooo. So I use one of my burner devices without VPN software to access their website when I need to check on account settings.
3 - Depending on where you live, an MVNO might not be piggybacking on saturated signal. You’ll want to verify their service is glorious for your residential area.
If you’re paying more than $100/month for your family’s mobile phone plan, it might be worth a look at more-affordable carriers who use a big behemoth’s nationwide infrastructure.