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Slightly OT: Has anybody had any luck with an MVNO, like Visible or Mint Mobile? I want to ditch Verizon because $98/mo for spouse and me to use 2GB between us

Slightly OT: Has anybody had any luck with an MVNO, like Visible or Mint Mobile? I want to ditch Verizon because $98/mo for spouse and me to use 2GB between us both is just the height of insanity in 2023.

ZekeSulastin 3y ago
I’ve used Visible for a couple of years now and they’re fine - I’m currently on their lower tier plan and it works well enough. I do route my phone’s traffic through a Wireguard endpoint on my home network, though, which stops the usual video throttling. Try it for a month before porting if you can - in the end it is still an inexpensive mvno and customer service is one of the places they cut costs.
delecti 3y ago
I've been happily using Ting Mobile for about 8 years, and my bill is always under $45 for two lines, 2GB, 1000 SMS, and 100 minutes (it's lower when we use less). It seems that the plan I'm on isn't available for new customers, but it looks like the new plans might actually be even cheaper.
xmddmx 3y ago
Was happy with Ting mobile for years, spending about $30/month total for 2 lines. Had to leave Ting as they don't support eSIMs and recently moved to Consumer Cellular, which I'm quite happy with - about 4GB of data for 2 phones for $35/month total.
pwg 3y ago
Happy with Tello: https://tello.com/ https://tello.com/
oluwie 3y ago
Been using Mint Mobile for a year and love it. Have had absolutely 0 issues with them even during peak times. Switched from a T-Mobile paying $70 a month for unlimited everything to $30 a month with Mint for pretty much the same service. Damn you Ryan Reynolds for selling out.
otterley 3y ago
I'm pretty happy with Mint Mobile. They are a T-Mobile MVNO (and were acquired by T-Mobile earlier this year) but I don't usually feel like I'm sacrificing anything. I pay $35/mo for unlimited talk and text, and 15GB of data. I haven't run out of data yet even though I stream music while driving. eSIMs are fully supported. When I travel abroad I install a secondary eSIM via Airalo. Occasionally I'll flip to a different MVNO because they usually have new-customer bargains. When I started on Mint I was paying $15/month for 3 months. The thing about MVNOs is that they have practically zero customer support - but apparently even that's been slashed at full-fare postpaid providers, so maybe I'm not missing much. Verizon used to have legendary customer service, but apparently no longer.
afavour 3y ago
The annoying thing about this is that it really depends on your location. I heard wonderful things about Mint so I tried it out a while back. It was awful. But I live in NYC and (my working theory is) data prioritization matters somewhere this dense. Mint traffic gets lower priority than T-Mobile proper so I was getting an awful experience. But if you live elsewhere your experience might be totally different. If you live in a different NYC borough to me your experience might be totally different! A lot of MVNOs offer eSIMs at least. An easy way to do a test drive.

ZekeSulastin 3y ago

I’ve used Visible for a couple of years now and they’re fine - I’m currently on their lower tier plan and it works well enough. I do route my phone’s traffic through a Wireguard endpoint on my home network, though, which stops the usual video throttling. Try it for a month before porting if you can - in the end it is still an inexpensive mvno and customer service is one of the places they cut costs.

delecti 3y ago

I've been happily using Ting Mobile for about 8 years, and my bill is always under $45 for two lines, 2GB, 1000 SMS, and 100 minutes (it's lower when we use less). It seems that the plan I'm on isn't available for new customers, but it looks like the new plans might actually be even cheaper.

xmddmx 3y ago

Was happy with Ting mobile for years, spending about $30/month total for 2 lines. Had to leave Ting as they don't support eSIMs and recently moved to Consumer Cellular, which I'm quite happy with - about 4GB of data for 2 phones for $35/month total.

pwg 3y ago

Happy with Tello: https://tello.com/ https://tello.com/

oluwie 3y ago

Been using Mint Mobile for a year and love it. Have had absolutely 0 issues with them even during peak times. Switched from a T-Mobile paying $70 a month for unlimited everything to $30 a month with Mint for pretty much the same service. Damn you Ryan Reynolds for selling out.

otterley 3y ago

I'm pretty happy with Mint Mobile. They are a T-Mobile MVNO (and were acquired by T-Mobile earlier this year) but I don't usually feel like I'm sacrificing anything. I pay $35/mo for unlimited talk and text, and 15GB of data. I haven't run out of data yet even though I stream music while driving. eSIMs are fully supported. When I travel abroad I install a secondary eSIM via Airalo. Occasionally I'll flip to a different MVNO because they usually have new-customer bargains. When I started on Mint I was paying $15/month for 3 months. The thing about MVNOs is that they have practically zero customer support - but apparently even that's been slashed at full-fare postpaid providers, so maybe I'm not missing much. Verizon used to have legendary customer service, but apparently no longer.

afavour 3y ago

The annoying thing about this is that it really depends on your location. I heard wonderful things about Mint so I tried it out a while back. It was awful. But I live in NYC and (my working theory is) data prioritization matters somewhere this dense. Mint traffic gets lower priority than T-Mobile proper so I was getting an awful experience. But if you live elsewhere your experience might be totally different. If you live in a different NYC borough to me your experience might be totally different! A lot of MVNOs offer eSIMs at least. An easy way to do a test drive.