Welcome to Saving Money with Andrew!
Smartphone plans are expensive, with the average American paying about $45 per month per line. A family of four can easily spend more than $1000/year on cellphone service.
You should not pay this much.
Today, three major wireless carriers (Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile) serve the US market. While T-Mobile is often (but not always) the cheapest major carrier, it still charges $45/month per line for its bare-bones single-user unlimited plan, before taxes and fees. Family plans almost always run well over $100/month. The big three carriers aggressively push “one size fits all” unlimited plans, with fairly high price points.
So, with only three major options, what can you do to cut your bill? Enter the mobile virtual network operator, or MVNO.[1] MVNOs purchase cellular service in bulk from one or more of the big three and resell it to customers, so as an MVNO customer you are still using one of the major networks. In most cases, the major carriers have significant excess capacity and are happy to sell it to the MVNO for less than it would charge a customer directly. Only about 5% of US cellular customers use an MVNO.
MVNO offerings vary widely, with plans ranging from usage-based plans (pay per-GB of data) to traditional unlimited plans. If you are slightly careful about your data usage (e.g., try not to download movies/podcasts/songs unless you are on Wi-Fi), your bill can be lower, often much lower, than the major carriers. And if you are a heavy data user, an unlimited MVNO plan will still likely be meaningfully cheaper than your plan on one of the big three.
I’ll share my family’s situation. We have three devices on Ting (not an advertisement), which we switched to years ago. Switching from our previous provider, including transferring phone numbers from our old carrier, was a smooth process. Ting walked us through what we needed to do, and although they said it could take a day or two for the numbers to transfer over, it only took about an hour.
Ting offers unlimited plans and a much cheaper “Flex” plan for those who use less data. Here’s our last bill, which added up to only $61 for three devices, including taxes and fees:
I’m careful, but not that careful, about data. I always enable Wi-Fi at home, and I set Spotify and my podcast app (Pocket Casts) to only download over Wi-Fi. I also check my mobile data usage periodically.[2] If I see an app using a ton of data, I try to figure out ways to reduce its usage.
Even if you are a heavy data user, you’ll likely save by using one of the MVNO’s unlimited plans. For example, Ting’s most expensive unlimited plan (Ollo Unlimited) costs about as much as the major carriers’ cheapest unlimited plans.
We’ve had positive experiences with Google Fi and Ting, though there are many other MVNOs out there. They may not be a great fit for you, but are well worth considering.
And now, Andrew’s pick(s) of the week:
Child-Care Workers Are Quitting the Industry for Good in the U.S.
Energy’s Future Is Both Cleaner and Dirtier
The Music Business Turns Into Groundhog Day. From the article:
I hope this has been helpful. If you liked it, please share it on social media! Also, please send me your feedback, requests, and success stories.
[1] Some of the most well-known MVNOs are TracFone, Google Fi, Boost Mobile, Cricket Wireless, MetroPCS, and Ting. Some MVNOs are owned by the major carriers, but most aren’t.
[2] You can do this by searching for “Data Usage” in your settings menu in Android, or going to Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data on iPhone.
Tmobile has introduced cheap mvno style plans directly called the 'Connect'. I WFH and $10 plan is plenty for me. https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans/connect
I use Consumer Cellular. Two lines sharing 500 minutes with data for one phone is $49 per month. The service uses AT&T towers so coverage is excellent. Customer service is award winning. We've been customers for at least 10 years.