Ask HN: Now we're staying inside with Wi-Fi, have you changed your cell plan?

[behnamoh]

Some MVNOs are offering plans as low as $6/mo. The only reason I'm keeping my cell is to make calls. Now I think by switching to a cheaper plan, I can save at least $30/mo. Have you done this? If it's not too much to ask, can you say which plans work better for calls?

[docdeek]

Posts like this remind me of the differences between cell phone data markets relative to your country. I pay €15.99 a month for my cell plan (discounted from €19.99 because the same providor does my home internet/cable TV/home phone bundle) [0]. That gets me 100GB of data, unlimited texting, free calls and texts to much of the world, and the same deal should I roam in many countries, including those closest to home where I am most likely to travel pre- and post-COVID19.

I’m sure it has something to do with the competition, the density of the population and the impact of that on infrastructure, and the government financial support for communication infrastructure rollout. Probably more complex than that, but at €15 a month it’s nowhere near the top of a list of expenses to cut right now.

[0]:http://mobile.free.fr

[rishabhd]

Well, I had to leave for my hometown (post COVID19 lockdown in India) which is a Tier 2 city where I don't any copper/ fiber connectivity in my area apart from government backed BSNL which is a pain to get. To compensate, I have 2 provider plans which I shuffle for doing my work.

1) Vodafone : I pay around INR 588 (~USD 8) for an unlimited calling plan with 200 GB data per month, unused data is credited to next month. Speed varies around 4 Mbps - 32 Mbps, throttles some websites such as BBC/ NYTimes and torrents (no idea why). Streaming services work flawlessly.

2) JIO : I paid around INR 599 (~USD 8) for 84 days with unlimited calling + 168 GB high speed data (downgrades to 64Kbps post exhaustion). Speed varies around 3 Mbps - 24 Mbps. Also throttles some websites as per Department of Telecom (DOT) guidance.

I manage my servers, download abandonware games (which were cool in circa 2000s), code and use streaming services - so far so good. Other providers provide similar offerings as well. The only challenge so far has been to keep my cellphones constantly charged.

Edit : added country details.

[taigi100]

I pay around 5$ for unlimited 4G, calls & texts within the country and a few hundred (can't recall how many) international minutes. I also only pay around 15$ for 1 Gigabit internet, cable TV and a house phone. I have to agree - the difference in prices around the world seems crazy when related to this aspect.

[peterburkimsher]

Free also give Pages Perso: a subdomain for a personal website where you can FTP files e.g. http://peterburk.free.fr.

[tbronchain]

If you pay 15.99, you actually get _unlimited_ 4G data instead of 100GB. It's been life saving during the lockdown, being somewhere with very slow wifi...

[Normal_gaussian]

I'm in the UK, and have long been a "no contract" user. I've saved literally thousands from buying the phone outright and using pay as you go variants [2].

I currently use giffgaff, who offer "goodybags" [1] which are essentially sim-only deals that last a month for comparable or cheaper prices than contract phones.

When the lockdown was announced I dropped from £12/mo to £0/mo. I have roughly £8 credit on my phone and haven't used it.

[1] https://www.giffgaff.com/sim-only-plans

[2] most phones are cheaper to own this way, even factoring in all sorts of risk. The exceptions are phones specifically targetted to make the most of the loan setup; from experience the top of the line iPhones have always been cheaper on contract.

[Maha-pudma]

UK too. And same as you buy my phone's outright. My partner and child are with me in a group plan with Smarty we pay (read I pay) £9 per month each for 30gb data and unlimited texts and calls.

Can't beat this. I'm a keyworker so am still using my data same as my partner.

[pcx]

In India, after Jio's success, all operators have now killed the old pricing structure or made it unviable. That structure provided us the ability to lower our plans to bare minimum (low talktime, long validity). Now everyone is on the subscription bandwagon which is atleast 6 times costly when comparing the cheapest plans. But that's still ok I guess, for 200rs (~3USD) per month we get 1.5GB 4G data per day, Unlimited calls and SMS. Sucks that they are selling our data though.

[takee]

Those are some insanely cheap prices for 1.5GB a day! I pay $40 for 1GB a month here in the United States. How is this even possible? Are the service providers here really taking in such a fat margin?

[pmorici]

I like Ting [0] a lot it's only $6 per line and they only charge you for what you use. Even in months where I have heavy usage the total bill for two lines typically ends up in the $60 range. US based phone support. Easy to use and understand website. Can't say enough good things about it.

The also offer fiber Internet if you are lucky enough to live in one of the handful of cities where they offer it.

[0] https://ting.com/

[harshreality]

Ting doesn't really look like a good deal except for extremely low usage, like for a secondary phone or if you do everything connected to wifi and not using mobile talk or text.

1 line = $6, 1-100 minutes = $3, 1-100 texts = $3, 101-500MB = $10.

Total, with that low usage, is $22/mo with Ting.

Compare against some cheap MVNO like Mint Mobile where you can get unlimited talk and text, 3GB 4G for $20/mo prepaid for 6 months, or $15/mo prepaid for 1 year. Which is very similar to T-Mobile Connect (their new prepaid thing). I don't know if "T-Mobile Connect" is technically a separate entity that's a MVNO running on T-Mobile's network, or whether it's a genuine 1st class service on T-Mobile's network. Even if T-Mobile Connect is a MVNO, I would probably choose it if I were reevaluating plans today, except... the last time I used T-Mobile's website it was horrible, and Mint's is very simple and clean.

Google Fi would be more, but if you go over 100 minutes or 100 texts, the Ting price goes up, while the Fi price is unchanged. More than some cheap MVNO, but Google Fi has some special features that might make that worthwhile for some people.

[PopeDotNinja]

Ting data is not cheap, but I suppose it's reasonable for light users. My irrational self would rather pay a lot more to avoid getting slammed w/ high, unexpected costs (e.g. binging watching a show and forgetting my wifi was off).

[supernova87a]

As part of the agreement with SEC(?) to be allowed to merge with Sprint, T-mobile agreed to offer low-priced plans, I suppose to help low-income or access-disadvantaged Americans get cheaper cellphone access.

$15/month (incl 2GB): https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans/connect Not as cheap as some barebones MNVOs but seems attractive and by a reliable-enough carrier.

Personally, I have my parents on the Google Fi $20/month plan ($15 for 2nd line) which charges $10 per GB of data, so at this time they're not using almost any data. It's cheap enough to be not worth it to switch right now.

[oldsklgdfth]

Switched to the Tmobile connect plan last week, in part with trying to keep bills low.

Despite being a longtime Tmobile customer they issued me a new number. Mild inconvenience.

[bad_user]

I'm from Romania and I pay €14 for 75 GB monthly data, 300 international minutes, unlimited national minutes/sms.

It's cheap enough that I don't mind paying for it while indoors.

I would've switched to Prepay actually, as here you get even better deals with Prepay, but I've got a older and easy to remember phone number that I don't want to lose. And technically I could recover a Prepay number in case I lost the SIM, but with no contract in place I would depend on the benevolence of the operator.

[thirstythong]

I wrote a post about downgrading to T Mobile connect. https://link.medium.com/kU4juJLIB6

[matt_s]

I've been using US MVNO's for years and buy lightly used smart phones. When you look at a 10 year time span, it is much cheaper than essentially leasing your phone and upgrading every 2 years.

Customer service is different with all the MVNO's we've used. They don't have sophisticated billing systems or the hated phone trees. Ting had the best customer service but also didn't have great coverage and when you go over data for your plan it was a little expensive.

Our current provider (Visible on Verizon network) doesn't even have a phone number to call, just text or social media for support. If you get 4 people together you can have "unlimited" data for $25/mo in US. On previous MVNO our usage never approached the level where "unlimited" became slower.

[fermienrico]

Use Ting. Pay for what you use. https://ting.com/

[supernova87a]

What I dislike about Ting is that as soon as you rack up even 1 text message (which you are bound to, by annoying text message services who spam you), they charge you the next tier. The worry about hitting the next tier (voice, data, text) was very annoying and I abandoned them.

[throwaway58765]

Are Ting numbers able to receive texts from short codes?

Do they identify the numbers as voip?

[bdcravens]

If Xfinity Mobile is an option for you, and you're already an Xfinity customer (if not, there's a $10 fee I think), you can get service for $15, if you have a supported phone (iPhone, Galaxy, or Pixel; they also sell phones by standard lease plans, but I assume that would defeat the purpose). They only bill for data. They're on the Verizon network; I switched from Verizon to them for a while. The service was good, but I needed the unlimited data that Verizon provides, and apparently Verizon speed caps their MVNOs, as the speed on the same phone was substantially less. (I still have a backup phone on Xfinity: it (Galaxy Note 10) speed tested at around 4Mbps; my Verizon iPhone XS Max was 15-30Mbps.)

[jmknoll]

Not really covid-related, but switched to Mint Mobile last fall and have been pretty happy with it. $20/month for 8GB I think (I’ve never run against the limit so I’m not sure off the top of my head). I’m in NYC and rarely leave the city, so I can’t speak to consistency of coverage in other areas, but I’ve never had any problems. The only real complaint I have is that their international coverage is unusably bad. It’s pre-paid, and pay by the MB So manages to be prohibitively expensive and also unreliable. I normally just pick up a cheap temp SIM card when I arrive in a country, but I understand that some people this is too big an inconvenience, or not a possibility.

[cbanek]

I cut down on my cell phone plan a long time ago. I used to pay about $70 a month, then I went to the AT&T prepaid service. It's $35/month ($30 if you do recurring billing) and you get unlimited calls and texts, and 2 GB of data per month, which is more than enough for me. Tethering also works great. I've also heard a lot of people like ting, but then you're paying by the minute, although the base price is much cheaper.

(I also got a really great deal on an iPhone SE for signing up for $149. 6 months you have to keep the plan and then you can unlock the phone. If you're looking to upgrade your phone, try to swing that too!)

[Southland]

You should look at their plans next time you top up because I have the 2gb data plan unlimited calls and texts and it's $15 a month for me with a promo. No auto pay needed.

I used to use the unlimited data $65 a month plan then I downgraded since being quarentined

[oldsklgdfth]

Do you have a link for this iphone se deal you're describing?

[itsdrewmiller]

I'm using Visible with three strangers (https://www.reddit.com/r/VisiblePartyPay/) to get unlimited everything (including one device tethering) on the Verizon network for $25/mo. I downgraded from regular Verizon which was like $90/mo and other than some setup hiccups haven't noticed a difference.

[rjbwork]

I use google fi so it's just automatically cheaper. Previously I could pay up to 80/mo for unlimited data, 20 base, 10 bucks per gig, free thereafter up to 15 gigs, throttled after 15 gigs.

I've been paying between 20 and 30/mo for it.

[sicromoft]

Mint Mobile (a T-Mobile MVNO) has unlimited talk & text with 3GB data (and unlimited throttled data after that) for $15/mo. (I'm not affilliated, just a happy user -- if you want a $15 credit, DM me for a referral code.)

[behnamoh]

Hey man, how could I dm you?!

[PopeDotNinja]

I'm using Google Fi for the international coverage & traveling indefinitely, albeit not so much since March. I could get cheaper local plans, but buying local sims is not always easy or convenient.

[eappleby]

I use Tello and love it! I’ve been working from home for a while and switched a few years ago. I also use Google Voice for my home phone number and connect it to an ObiTalk box, which connects to my modem, so almost all my calls are over WiFi too. I could probably get away with their cheapest plan, which I believe is $6 (for the same network as T-Mobile or Sprint), but even without going the cheapest, my bill is always under $10.

[dkersten]

Yes, I switched from a bill to a prepay option. I only really used my phone for internet anyway, so will only need to top it up if I’m not home (which currently is only to go to the shops or for exercise, where I don’t need internet/phone). My current prepay option gives me unlimited download for 30 days for less than the monthly cost of my previous bill, so it’s quite reasonable if I do find I need it.

[econcon]

I am not paying for my cellphone, I see everyone is on WhatsApp already and I call them on WhatsApp.

That said I live in India. I already pay for fiber gigabit connection at home, so spending extra on mobile is not worth it for me.

That said, most of job is done on email/WhatsApp and I rarely need to call anyone.

And if need comes, I'll just recharge my mobile through internet and get it going within 5 minutes.

[vkoskiv]

I still prefer having a solid secondary option in case my home network has an outage. (One occurred a few weeks ago) I'm currently paying 18.90€/mo for 50/50mbit/s 4G + texts and calls that I never use. My home connection is a complementary 100/100mbit/s, but as I mentioned, it does go down sometimes.