Cell phone plan

[Cwadda]

When my contract with AT&T expires I want to get a non-overpriced smartphone plan. I have an IPhone 5 and do like it. I've looked at MMM's blog posts but he lives in Colorado and I live in CT. Anyone know of any good smartphone plans for the New England area? I use under 500 minutes, under 500 texts, and not very much data.

Do these taken from the blog provide the same coverage as AT&T (which works well in my area)?
Airvoice, Black Wireless, Fuzion Mobile, H20 Wireless, Straight Talk

Just want to know your experiences with any of them, recommendations, etc. Thanks.

[MustachianAccountant]

AirVoice uses AT&T's network, so your coverage should be the same, and their $10 plan sounds like it would fit you perfectly.

[Cwadda]

AirVoice uses AT&T's network, so your coverage should be the same, and their $10 plan sounds like it would fit you perfectly.

Thanks for clearing that up.


Does anyone use Google Voice? I don't have a landline nor do I plan on having one for years, but I read that it's good for cutting costs.

[MustachianAccountant]

Start with the Superguide:
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/share-your-badassity/communications-tech-isps-voip-cell-version-2/

[wizlem]

AirVoice uses AT&T's network, so your coverage should be the same, and their $10 plan sounds like it would fit you perfectly.

If you're using anywhere near 500 minutes and 500 texts then I don't see how the $10 plan would work so well considering you only get some combination of 250Minutes/500Texts for 30 days and each minute takes away 1minute/2texts. That is unless you supplement your usage with some other service.

I second the superguide.

[Ashyukun]

I recently switched my iPhone over from AT&T to AIO Wireless (http://www.aiowireless.com/home.html). Was pretty painless (some dickery on AT&T's part regarding not pro-rating when I left aside...), and I cut my monthly bill in half. They're technically owned BY AT&T and are using the exact same network, so the coverage should be the same as if you were still on AT&T. It sounds like you could use their Basic plan which it looks like if you're auto-paying is only $35.

[Cwadda]

Because I have an IPhone, I rarely use actually text-messaging (green messages), rather I use iMessage (blue messages). I would estimate that as using 100 green messages at most per month. For calling I think I may use 2-3 hours per month at most. I use data the most out of anything, but I can cut it down with Wifi significantly.

Thanks for the link, reading it soon.

[Daley]

It sounds like you could use their Basic plan which it looks like if you're auto-paying is only $35.

Aio technically does not permit their $35 plan to be used on smartphones.

Cwadda, read the Superguide.

[plantingourpennies]

Check out the Ting coverage map - http://ting.com/coverage
Ting runs on the Sprint network, which for us has gotten dramatically better since we last tried it out in our area in 2007-2008. 

But we switched our 2 iPhone Verizon plan ($161/mo), and our average bill is going to be more like $50/mo on Ting to keep having 2 iPhones and not notice any sort of difference in usability or service.
Our usage combined across the two phones for comparison:
< 500 min
< 100 text messages (since most of our messages are iMessages)
~1GB data (some months just over, hence the average bill...)