6 ms·

How does FreedomPop make money?

58 points by mcone 9y ago

mabbo 9y ago
> There are limits on monthly usage (500 megabytes in the U.S.) and caps on calling and texting (three hours and 500 messages). I think I'm paying something like CAD$40/month for this level of service in Canada.
adventured 9y ago
Pretty straight-forward submarine here. The article is overloaded with gonna and might and could be and by end of x date. And then of course the not subtle money revs. Whatever PR firm put together this submarine, made them sound desperate: "The Los Angeles company says its emergence over the last six years has led" ... "a near-acqusition for as much as $450 million" "The company is reviewing a previously undisclosed acquisition offer, but discussions are continuing about potentially going public next year." "A near-bankrupt FreedomPop was hours away from selling to Sprint in 2015 when a new $30-million investment came in from venture capitalists. Stokols isn’t in a cash crunch this time around." "Investors are equivocal about when to sell, saying that they’ll weigh any offers, like the one on the table now, but that they generally want to see the company remain independent for some time." "If they hold out, investors could turn into potential acquirers." (har har, nice fake spin by the PR firm on trying to project power) So what you're really saying is: you want to sell (soon!), you're going to hit a money crunch because the business has no margin and it's very expensive to compete (but we could IPO any minute now, so you better buy us first), your investors are worried (we like putting more money into a red ink machine that nearly went under before), you're fake-touting strength when you're actually not in that position at all (we might buy the entire telecom industry!), and everything you might accomplish is forecast to x date into the future (when you hope to have already sold, so the cash burning 'business' is a problem for someone else). Want to know what this really is? History rhymes. It's PeoplePC from the dotcom bubble.
- mason55 9y ago
  For those wondering what a submarine is: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
  - numbsafari 9y ago
    I, too, have seen the fnords.
walterbell 9y ago
Is the Sprint/FreedomPop network compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile phones?
- jdhawk 9y ago
  I have an unlocked T-Mobile iPhone 5s that I put a Freedom Pop sim in as a "guest phone" for my visiting Non-US Friends and Family. It seems to work just fine. It is strange that its not a real phone number, only a VOIP style app - but it still works with iMessage and WhatsApp, and they can make and receive calls in a pinch.
  - tedmiston 9y ago
    You mean FreedomPop can't make / receive normal phone calls, like through the iPhone phone app? Can you send / receive text messages to short codes?
    - jdhawk 9y ago
      If you use the FreedomPop app, yes...using the native dialer and messages app for SMS, no.
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  No, Sprint is CDMA, T-Mo/AT&T are GSM.
  - Gaelan 9y ago
    Reasonably new iPhones support both.
- forbiddenlake 9y ago
  It's complicated. In general, no, due to different base technologies (GSM vs CDMA), and the US carriers' unlock policies (the carriers can sometimes lock your phone to their network). In specific, maybe, because some phones (mostly new iPhones and Nexus/Pixel devices) can be used on all US networks, and the CDMA carriers have started to use SIM cards like the GSM carriers.
etaty 9y ago
FreedomPop is operating on a scamming shady level by not being honest about what they are selling. They don't give you a real phone number, just some app you need to use to call. Avoid them. Edit: Is it how hacker news community is? downvoting because I tell the truth how their service is? I had the experience of getting charged for months without warning. They use your credit card, instead of direct debit in the UK so even more annoying for cancelling. And no requiring customer to read every details of your contract is not fair. Fair is an important part of any contract, finding you are getting a VoIP number is not normal.
- Karunamon 9y ago
  ? I have their SIM card installed in a smartphone. It works like any other phone.
  - zanny 9y ago
    It gives you data but not native calling or SMS. You get about as good voice quality over freedompops VoIP as you do on google voice.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  It's real data and a VoIP number, looks okay to me. I thought they make money off the no confirmation "upgrades" with monthly fees. While sketchy, it is actually free after the "activation fee" etc. There was also ring+ which shut down, pay a few hundred up front for 5GB data "for life" + a real non VoIP phone number. All in all unless you can't afford cell service at all, it really isn't worth the hassle (no real phone number, just VoIP so it gets rejected for verification).
  - wyldfire 9y ago
    If you take the price I paid for RP data and divide it over the number of months for which I had service, it still comes out with a competitive rate. So I'm not too disappointed there.
rb808 9y ago
I had a FreedomPop mifi box for 18 months which was great, cost me about $60 from memory for the hardware and a few dollars/mo in fees when I upgraded something. It stopped when Sprint turned off Wimax. I think there is a big market for people that want to pay $5-$15/mo for a small data only plan for people that will use Wifi on their phone 90% of the time but want to use mobile data just occasionally. Most of the major plans start way over that. I see they're selling data-only SIMs for phones. Is that new? I thought Apple & Google insisted phones must have plan with a phone line. (If its good I think I'll go back to data only (with Google Voice))
- danellis 9y ago
  Google Voice just used to use data to set up a PSTN call. Has something changed?
  - limeblack 9y ago
    I think you mean Google Hangouts if you are taking a about the app(which is confusing and frankly my work on both on Android) and incoming calls only works on Android.
    - danellis 9y ago
      > I think you mean Google Hangouts No, Google Voice predates Google Hangouts.
      - limeblack 9y ago
        I misread the comment. > Google Voice just used to use data to set up a PSTN call. Has something changed? Google Voice did not originally support data only calling(VOIP) like I said read the comment above me. He is supporting what I was saying. > Yes. About 4 years ago they integrated full VoIP calling into something they call the Hangouts Dialer. Outbound works well, although I often have to initiate a call twice due to setup connectivity weirdness on LTE. Inbound basically never works, so I leave the PSTN forwarding on for that reason. I have been on Google Voice for a fairly long time. Google Voice used to only supports PSTN calling although it uses data to trigger the call.
sweep4r 9y ago
FreedomPop in Spain was a free service until recently. It was completely unusable. They were selling Three (UK) cards that worked here in roaming. The internet service simply didn't work. They were assigning telephone numbers they borrowed from another company. That company didn't have a licence to lend their assigned numbers, that was illegal, so they had to stop providing their services and I suppose they'll get fined, big time. Now they stopped giving that free service, and you have to pay. I don't think many people will pay anything. It's a scam.
- GranPC 9y ago
  Huh? I have two FreedomPop SIM cards, which I made a one-time payment of 3 € for (with no monthly fee), and it's been mostly reliable so far. Are you saying they're gonna add a monthly fee, or is the one-time payment new?
  - sweep4r 9y ago
    https://bandaancha.eu/foros/freedompop-dejara-sin-servicio-clientes-1727421 https://bandaancha.eu/foros/freedompop-dejara-sin-servicio-c... I received an email regarding this this morning.
    - GranPC 9y ago
      Oh wow, what a trainwreck. Thanks for letting me know -- I didn't receive anything!
- rotodos 9y ago
  It seems the CNMC forbid their number provider (Parlem... previously known as FonYou) from reselling those numbers to be used as VoIP numbers, and FreedomPop took in a rush the route of porting everything to MasMovil and forcing you to buy new MasMovil 4G cards for 2€ shipping and port your Parlem number to them to keep your free service. And announced all of this on the middle of August when pretty much half of Spain is on holidays. The advantage is that the new cards are pretty much plain Masmovil simcards, so calls and SMS go over GSM directly and 4G works at decent speed over the Orange network. But if you look at the whiteboard behind the CEO on the picture on the article, they were intelligent enough to leave written on it things about their roadmap like "Blocking SMS" or "Masmovil = ?appnet? calls + SMS" which leads to think that they will migrate both to their app in the future. At least they also have "holiday" written on the whiteboard, so probably they also thought about how bad of an idea is to do all of this on summer holidays.
ahhhhhhhhhh 9y ago
>“You could throw out a $1,000 bonus, and they would be more motivated by the tequila,” no, definitely not - employees are too afraid to tell their boss otherwise
tedmiston 9y ago
> FreedomPop pays Sprint and AT&T based on customer usage. The two big carriers can see what websites FreedomPop users are checking out, but neither they nor FreedomPop can record or monitor calls as long as only FreedomPop users are participants. I wonder if the major carriers track and log web browsing history of their own customers as well? And if we can opt out...
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  Yes & No (unless use TOR). To ask the question is to answer...they will do whatever they can get away with. Haven't you heard of the Snowden revelations?
  - theEXTORTCIST 9y ago
    TOR does not protect DNS queries out of the box. You must configure your PC to query through TOR or all of your DNS queries have the potential to leak to your ISP https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/8/how-does-tor-route-dns-requests https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/8/how-does-tor-route... Verizon has been adding headers for tracking for some time (probably via Blue Coat ProxySG forward proxy or similar technology) https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/unique-identifier-header-faqs/ https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/unique-identifier-he...
- samstave 9y ago
  Of course they can. Of course you cannot. T-Mobile, for example even monitors and freaking blocks your usage to certain sites when on airplane mode and on wifi - even when you have wifi assist disabled. Further, they even deduct from you data usage wifi use! It's provable! I've proved it and T-Mobile Philippines call center says "oops let me reset your data plan" when called on it. I proved it by only being in airplane mode and used wifi calling, and seeing that data was being deducted from my account when I wasn't using cell data.
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    It's a shitty system, but they openly admit to doing this: https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-1680 https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-1680 If you have a plan that doesn't offer unlimited calling, calls made over Wi-Fi Calling count against your plan minutes. For Pay In Advance prepaid lines, calls made over Wi-Fi deduct from the plan bucket just like regular calls.
throw7 9y ago
Recently I looked into moving some family members onto cheaper plans. I did look at freedompop, but decided to try mintsim; freedompop seemed... "sketchy". But the problem was I ran into barriers for byop. The 1st phone was a verizon phone, which, while unlocked, they disabled access to configure APN settings. The second phone was a net10 android one phone. When I called them, they said they couldn't technically unlock the phone and the best they could do would be to send me $5 dollars for it.
- rb808 9y ago
  thanks mintsim actually looks great. Aside from the $15 2GB/mo LTE, unlimited 2G is gold, is good enough for getting messages, email and traffic in navigation.
pbnjay 9y ago
I tried FreedomPop a few months ago. The service was terribly unreliable and call quality was poor. I cancelled after 2 weeks, and surprise the renewal still charged me. Which I contested with my cancellation confirmation email. Then a got a message from a collections agency about the still unpaid charge. Still no closure, worst experience I've ever had with a phone company! I used straight talk for years, and I'm now on project fi. Both are miles above FreedomPop.
- jgh 9y ago
  Project Fi seems cool and something I would happily subscribe to. Too bad it only works with Google phones.
  - z2 9y ago
    I can't speak to any agreements or conditions of use, but technically you need only a supported Google phone to activate the SIM card and tie it to a Google account. Afterwards, the card works in any phone.
    - jgh 9y ago
      Fair enough, but that means I have to find someone who has one of those phones ;)
    - pasbesoin 9y ago
      My Nexus 5X (purchased through Fi, by the way, but recently using my Verizon SIM because of certain network coverage, etc.) bootlooped. I'm waiting for the Pixel 2, unless I decide on something else, and I picked up a Motorola G5+ to tide me over until then or I "unbootloop" the 5X and decide I can trust it. Anyway, comments on Amazon and/or Newegg about using the G5+ on Fi state that it works but that calls can only be made on the T-Mobile network. IIRC -- this wasn't a factor, for me, so I didn't make a mental note to self to particularly remember that detail.
  - e40 9y ago
    Agreed. And currently available phones are really expensive. Supposedly the Moto X4 will work on Fi soon, but that's gone from a lower cost phone to a higher one, last I read. Around $400. I was hoping for $250-300, in case one of my 3 5x's bootloops or dies. At this point, I really, really like Project Fi. Too bad Google can't get more phones out, though.
mfrommil 9y ago
"but neither they nor FreedomPop can record or monitor calls as long as only FreedomPop users are participants." If Freedompop has a couple million customers, chances are that 95+% are not calls only involving 2 Freedompop customers... So 95+% of Freedompop customers' calls are likely monitored and recorded by Sprint or AT&T. This is scary.
lasermike026 9y ago
Remember NetZero?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
eof 9y ago
freedom pop is sketchy AF. without clicking that link, based on my experience its: hiding fees, making it difficult to cancel service, not actually canceling service once the service has been canceled.
cwyers 9y ago
TL;DR: It doesn't.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... (I suppose a corollary: in the negative if grammatically appropriate)
cs702 9y ago
The details may be complicated, but the answer to the question is the same as for other "free" services: If you don't pay for the product, YOU are the product.
dougmwne 9y ago
I've actually had surprisingly good luck with their AT&T LTE sim. I use Google Voice as my primary phone number, so as long as I have an internet connection, I'm golden. The Freedompop sim goes in a burner phone that I take to the beach or out on the water. The trick here is to realize that they are basically a scam company and treat them as such. I used a temporary credit card number to prevent any unwanted charges. As long as they're willing to give me a backup LTE connection for free, I'm willing to take it. When they inevitably implode, oh well.
rocky1138 9y ago
The money shot, albeit unsurprising: "FreedomPop collects data about users’ backgrounds and phone habits."
PascLeRasc 9y ago
Ting costs just a little more than this, but I had amazing customer service when I was with them, and pretty good coverage. They were super helpful with porting over from Verizon and back to them a few years later. Back in 2013 when I started with them they would help you look on eBay for a compatible used phone, but I can't find that on their website today.
akhilcacharya 9y ago
I had read about FreedomPop when it first launched...I'm surprised it has lasted 4+ years now.

58 points by mcone 9y ago

> There are limits on monthly usage (500 megabytes in the U.S.) and caps on calling and texting (three hours and 500 messages). I think I'm paying something like CAD$40/month for this level of service in Canada.

adventured 9y ago

Pretty straight-forward submarine here. The article is overloaded with gonna and might and could be and by end of x date. And then of course the not subtle money revs. Whatever PR firm put together this submarine, made them sound desperate: "The Los Angeles company says its emergence over the last six years has led" ... "a near-acqusition for as much as $450 million" "The company is reviewing a previously undisclosed acquisition offer, but discussions are continuing about potentially going public next year." "A near-bankrupt FreedomPop was hours away from selling to Sprint in 2015 when a new $30-million investment came in from venture capitalists. Stokols isn’t in a cash crunch this time around." "Investors are equivocal about when to sell, saying that they’ll weigh any offers, like the one on the table now, but that they generally want to see the company remain independent for some time." "If they hold out, investors could turn into potential acquirers." (har har, nice fake spin by the PR firm on trying to project power) So what you're really saying is: you want to sell (soon!), you're going to hit a money crunch because the business has no margin and it's very expensive to compete (but we could IPO any minute now, so you better buy us first), your investors are worried (we like putting more money into a red ink machine that nearly went under before), you're fake-touting strength when you're actually not in that position at all (we might buy the entire telecom industry!), and everything you might accomplish is forecast to x date into the future (when you hope to have already sold, so the cash burning 'business' is a problem for someone else). Want to know what this really is? History rhymes. It's PeoplePC from the dotcom bubble.

mason55 9y ago
For those wondering what a submarine is: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- numbsafari 9y ago
  I, too, have seen the fnords.

walterbell 9y ago

Is the Sprint/FreedomPop network compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile phones?

jdhawk 9y ago
I have an unlocked T-Mobile iPhone 5s that I put a Freedom Pop sim in as a "guest phone" for my visiting Non-US Friends and Family. It seems to work just fine. It is strange that its not a real phone number, only a VOIP style app - but it still works with iMessage and WhatsApp, and they can make and receive calls in a pinch.
- tedmiston 9y ago
  You mean FreedomPop can't make / receive normal phone calls, like through the iPhone phone app? Can you send / receive text messages to short codes?
  - jdhawk 9y ago
    If you use the FreedomPop app, yes...using the native dialer and messages app for SMS, no.
ReverseCold 9y ago
No, Sprint is CDMA, T-Mo/AT&T are GSM.
- Gaelan 9y ago
  Reasonably new iPhones support both.
forbiddenlake 9y ago
It's complicated. In general, no, due to different base technologies (GSM vs CDMA), and the US carriers' unlock policies (the carriers can sometimes lock your phone to their network). In specific, maybe, because some phones (mostly new iPhones and Nexus/Pixel devices) can be used on all US networks, and the CDMA carriers have started to use SIM cards like the GSM carriers.

etaty 9y ago

FreedomPop is operating on a scamming shady level by not being honest about what they are selling. They don't give you a real phone number, just some app you need to use to call. Avoid them. Edit: Is it how hacker news community is? downvoting because I tell the truth how their service is? I had the experience of getting charged for months without warning. They use your credit card, instead of direct debit in the UK so even more annoying for cancelling. And no requiring customer to read every details of your contract is not fair. Fair is an important part of any contract, finding you are getting a VoIP number is not normal.

Karunamon 9y ago
? I have their SIM card installed in a smartphone. It works like any other phone.
- zanny 9y ago
  It gives you data but not native calling or SMS. You get about as good voice quality over freedompops VoIP as you do on google voice.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ReverseCold 9y ago
It's real data and a VoIP number, looks okay to me. I thought they make money off the no confirmation "upgrades" with monthly fees. While sketchy, it is actually free after the "activation fee" etc. There was also ring+ which shut down, pay a few hundred up front for 5GB data "for life" + a real non VoIP phone number. All in all unless you can't afford cell service at all, it really isn't worth the hassle (no real phone number, just VoIP so it gets rejected for verification).
- wyldfire 9y ago
  If you take the price I paid for RP data and divide it over the number of months for which I had service, it still comes out with a competitive rate. So I'm not too disappointed there.

rb808 9y ago

I had a FreedomPop mifi box for 18 months which was great, cost me about $60 from memory for the hardware and a few dollars/mo in fees when I upgraded something. It stopped when Sprint turned off Wimax. I think there is a big market for people that want to pay $5-$15/mo for a small data only plan for people that will use Wifi on their phone 90% of the time but want to use mobile data just occasionally. Most of the major plans start way over that. I see they're selling data-only SIMs for phones. Is that new? I thought Apple & Google insisted phones must have plan with a phone line. (If its good I think I'll go back to data only (with Google Voice))

danellis 9y ago
Google Voice just used to use data to set up a PSTN call. Has something changed?
- limeblack 9y ago
  I think you mean Google Hangouts if you are taking a about the app(which is confusing and frankly my work on both on Android) and incoming calls only works on Android.
  - danellis 9y ago
    > I think you mean Google Hangouts No, Google Voice predates Google Hangouts.
    - limeblack 9y ago
      I misread the comment. > Google Voice just used to use data to set up a PSTN call. Has something changed? Google Voice did not originally support data only calling(VOIP) like I said read the comment above me. He is supporting what I was saying. > Yes. About 4 years ago they integrated full VoIP calling into something they call the Hangouts Dialer. Outbound works well, although I often have to initiate a call twice due to setup connectivity weirdness on LTE. Inbound basically never works, so I leave the PSTN forwarding on for that reason. I have been on Google Voice for a fairly long time. Google Voice used to only supports PSTN calling although it uses data to trigger the call.

sweep4r 9y ago

FreedomPop in Spain was a free service until recently. It was completely unusable. They were selling Three (UK) cards that worked here in roaming. The internet service simply didn't work. They were assigning telephone numbers they borrowed from another company. That company didn't have a licence to lend their assigned numbers, that was illegal, so they had to stop providing their services and I suppose they'll get fined, big time. Now they stopped giving that free service, and you have to pay. I don't think many people will pay anything. It's a scam.

GranPC 9y ago
Huh? I have two FreedomPop SIM cards, which I made a one-time payment of 3 € for (with no monthly fee), and it's been mostly reliable so far. Are you saying they're gonna add a monthly fee, or is the one-time payment new?
- sweep4r 9y ago
  https://bandaancha.eu/foros/freedompop-dejara-sin-servicio-clientes-1727421 https://bandaancha.eu/foros/freedompop-dejara-sin-servicio-c... I received an email regarding this this morning.
  - GranPC 9y ago
    Oh wow, what a trainwreck. Thanks for letting me know -- I didn't receive anything!
rotodos 9y ago
It seems the CNMC forbid their number provider (Parlem... previously known as FonYou) from reselling those numbers to be used as VoIP numbers, and FreedomPop took in a rush the route of porting everything to MasMovil and forcing you to buy new MasMovil 4G cards for 2€ shipping and port your Parlem number to them to keep your free service. And announced all of this on the middle of August when pretty much half of Spain is on holidays. The advantage is that the new cards are pretty much plain Masmovil simcards, so calls and SMS go over GSM directly and 4G works at decent speed over the Orange network. But if you look at the whiteboard behind the CEO on the picture on the article, they were intelligent enough to leave written on it things about their roadmap like "Blocking SMS" or "Masmovil = ?appnet? calls + SMS" which leads to think that they will migrate both to their app in the future. At least they also have "holiday" written on the whiteboard, so probably they also thought about how bad of an idea is to do all of this on summer holidays.

ahhhhhhhhhh 9y ago

>“You could throw out a $1,000 bonus, and they would be more motivated by the tequila,” no, definitely not - employees are too afraid to tell their boss otherwise

tedmiston 9y ago

> FreedomPop pays Sprint and AT&T based on customer usage. The two big carriers can see what websites FreedomPop users are checking out, but neither they nor FreedomPop can record or monitor calls as long as only FreedomPop users are participants. I wonder if the major carriers track and log web browsing history of their own customers as well? And if we can opt out...

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
Yes & No (unless use TOR). To ask the question is to answer...they will do whatever they can get away with. Haven't you heard of the Snowden revelations?
- theEXTORTCIST 9y ago
  TOR does not protect DNS queries out of the box. You must configure your PC to query through TOR or all of your DNS queries have the potential to leak to your ISP https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/8/how-does-tor-route-dns-requests https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/8/how-does-tor-route... Verizon has been adding headers for tracking for some time (probably via Blue Coat ProxySG forward proxy or similar technology) https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/unique-identifier-header-faqs/ https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/unique-identifier-he...
samstave 9y ago
Of course they can. Of course you cannot. T-Mobile, for example even monitors and freaking blocks your usage to certain sites when on airplane mode and on wifi - even when you have wifi assist disabled. Further, they even deduct from you data usage wifi use! It's provable! I've proved it and T-Mobile Philippines call center says "oops let me reset your data plan" when called on it. I proved it by only being in airplane mode and used wifi calling, and seeing that data was being deducted from my account when I wasn't using cell data.
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  It's a shitty system, but they openly admit to doing this: https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-1680 https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-1680 If you have a plan that doesn't offer unlimited calling, calls made over Wi-Fi Calling count against your plan minutes. For Pay In Advance prepaid lines, calls made over Wi-Fi deduct from the plan bucket just like regular calls.

throw7 9y ago

Recently I looked into moving some family members onto cheaper plans. I did look at freedompop, but decided to try mintsim; freedompop seemed... "sketchy". But the problem was I ran into barriers for byop. The 1st phone was a verizon phone, which, while unlocked, they disabled access to configure APN settings. The second phone was a net10 android one phone. When I called them, they said they couldn't technically unlock the phone and the best they could do would be to send me $5 dollars for it.

rb808 9y ago
thanks mintsim actually looks great. Aside from the $15 2GB/mo LTE, unlimited 2G is gold, is good enough for getting messages, email and traffic in navigation.

pbnjay 9y ago

I tried FreedomPop a few months ago. The service was terribly unreliable and call quality was poor. I cancelled after 2 weeks, and surprise the renewal still charged me. Which I contested with my cancellation confirmation email. Then a got a message from a collections agency about the still unpaid charge. Still no closure, worst experience I've ever had with a phone company! I used straight talk for years, and I'm now on project fi. Both are miles above FreedomPop.

jgh 9y ago
Project Fi seems cool and something I would happily subscribe to. Too bad it only works with Google phones.
- z2 9y ago
  I can't speak to any agreements or conditions of use, but technically you need only a supported Google phone to activate the SIM card and tie it to a Google account. Afterwards, the card works in any phone.
  - jgh 9y ago
    Fair enough, but that means I have to find someone who has one of those phones ;)
  - pasbesoin 9y ago
    My Nexus 5X (purchased through Fi, by the way, but recently using my Verizon SIM because of certain network coverage, etc.) bootlooped. I'm waiting for the Pixel 2, unless I decide on something else, and I picked up a Motorola G5+ to tide me over until then or I "unbootloop" the 5X and decide I can trust it. Anyway, comments on Amazon and/or Newegg about using the G5+ on Fi state that it works but that calls can only be made on the T-Mobile network. IIRC -- this wasn't a factor, for me, so I didn't make a mental note to self to particularly remember that detail.
- e40 9y ago
  Agreed. And currently available phones are really expensive. Supposedly the Moto X4 will work on Fi soon, but that's gone from a lower cost phone to a higher one, last I read. Around $400. I was hoping for $250-300, in case one of my 3 5x's bootloops or dies. At this point, I really, really like Project Fi. Too bad Google can't get more phones out, though.

mfrommil 9y ago

"but neither they nor FreedomPop can record or monitor calls as long as only FreedomPop users are participants." If Freedompop has a couple million customers, chances are that 95+% are not calls only involving 2 Freedompop customers... So 95+% of Freedompop customers' calls are likely monitored and recorded by Sprint or AT&T. This is scary.

lasermike026 9y ago

Remember NetZero?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

eof 9y ago

freedom pop is sketchy AF. without clicking that link, based on my experience its: hiding fees, making it difficult to cancel service, not actually canceling service once the service has been canceled.

cwyers 9y ago

TL;DR: It doesn't.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... (I suppose a corollary: in the negative if grammatically appropriate)

cs702 9y ago

The details may be complicated, but the answer to the question is the same as for other "free" services: If you don't pay for the product, YOU are the product.

dougmwne 9y ago

I've actually had surprisingly good luck with their AT&T LTE sim. I use Google Voice as my primary phone number, so as long as I have an internet connection, I'm golden. The Freedompop sim goes in a burner phone that I take to the beach or out on the water. The trick here is to realize that they are basically a scam company and treat them as such. I used a temporary credit card number to prevent any unwanted charges. As long as they're willing to give me a backup LTE connection for free, I'm willing to take it. When they inevitably implode, oh well.

rocky1138 9y ago

The money shot, albeit unsurprising: "FreedomPop collects data about users’ backgrounds and phone habits."

PascLeRasc 9y ago

Ting costs just a little more than this, but I had amazing customer service when I was with them, and pretty good coverage. They were super helpful with porting over from Verizon and back to them a few years later. Back in 2013 when I started with them they would help you look on eBay for a compatible used phone, but I can't find that on their website today.

akhilcacharya 9y ago

I had read about FreedomPop when it first launched...I'm surprised it has lasted 4+ years now.