Convincing SOs for cell service change

[livetogive]

my SO uses a cell phone for work and qualifies as the "road warrior" type for the cell plan thing.  I approached her with a $30/mo caddilac plan that would suit her needs, but no dice.

Any advice on how to sell her on it?  It's 100 min per month + unlimited data so she can do VOIP all day long, and our area has great LTE coverage.

[mgreczyn]

Obvious question maybe, but if she uses it for work what about getting her job to pay for it?  My company provides phones, they work but they suck.  My wife's company reimburses up to $100 per month for their employees cell phone plans if they can demonstrate legitimate work need.

[smalllife]

Most of the pre paid carriers I've seen have a $50/60 unlimited package which is probably less than you are paying now with zero side effects.  After a few months review the usage and see if one of the lower plans would work, or bring up the VOIPs and other minute saving changes.  If they are a road warrior, it might be best to do that for a month or two anyway as you see what *all* of the minutes actually are (as opposed to free-in-network and voicemail minutes, etc.).  If you are prepaid it is easy to switch limits.

[Daley]

If she's actually a road warrior and dependent upon reliable wireless phone service, I don't blame her for rejecting your proposal because it's a BAD IDEA. VoIP over wireless internet is not the way to go on this... and if usage is high enough to justify "unlimited" plans and the potential for roaming off-network is there, then any sort of service that is network restrictive or has soft usage caps that result in account termination are doubly bad. This means MVNOs are off the table.

I do agree, however, that her work should be paying for the service.

Right tool for the job, etcetera.

[livetogive]

I appreciate the advice.  I'm currently trying out the prepaid service for her and it's completely fine.  She doesn't necessarily travel much but uses her mobile as her primary work phone.  We can attempt to negotiate expensing that but she recently negotiated a raise (that far exceeded the expense anyway, so we're still better off I think).

What's funny is there are some great resources on here for bargain basement plans but nothing yet for a forced compromise.  If you assume your typical ATT/Verizon smartphone megaplan is about $80/mo after discount hunting I can use an MVNO or similar but our all in costs are very close to what a reasonable share everything plan is.

Head is spinning running spreadsheets with 1MM different options, so i'll revisit tomorrow and will post if I come up with anything fantastic.

[Daley]

I should probably clarify for the sake of argument why I'm not a fan of VoIP over wireless. The biggest argument is thus: it's simply less reliable. This one statement can unfold into a massive thesis, and is on my short list to do just that over at the blog.

I do VoIP in my communications setup, and I even forward VoIP calls to my cellphone, but I do not use native VoIP over cellular networks.

If one actually needs mobile minutes, pay for them. The humorous thing about your $30 price point and approach to service wanting to be frugal about it is that if you can go GSM carrier (either T-Mo or AT&T network exclusively) and either need no, limited or slow data, you can do "unlimited" talk and text plans through Spot Mobile ($25, no data - T-Mo), Airvoice ($30, 100MB 3G data - AT&T), or GoSmart Mobile ($35, "unlimited" 2G data - $35) for nearly the same cash. Using WiFi at home and work, eliminating streaming and social media and using offline GPS eliminates the need for any significant data usage, and either unmetered 2G data or 100MB of 3G data a month should be plenty for email, occasional light browsing (preferably with image loading disabled) and SMS replacement apps like XMS, Kik or Nimbuzz. None of the caveats of your approach for right around the same price point. The only disclaimer I would add is that it would probably be best to not exceed about 2500 minutes (over 40 hours a month) with any of those plans just to err on the side of caution.

Is data useful? Sure, but it's not a magic replacement for voice service with mobile phones.

[livetogive]

That's a great way to look at it,  thanks!   I went the other route and dropped minutes for high lte thinking voip would work as a phone sub.   

She still has an iPhone and our voip calls sound great to me but she says they're bad so I wonder if my phone just isn't up to snuff for it.