I think Republic wireless is crap. Might as well just use google voice over wifi.
Seriously, this. With mindful mobile usage,
you could combine Google Voice with Truphone SIM, and get better service and coverage (with mobile phone and data!) for less than $10/month. It's not as hard to set up as some people would lead you to believe.
Ok IP Daley, I've attached a doc that has an itemized usage of data, messages, and minutes used for myself, my wife, and my mother-in-law
I should have added that my mother in law is bundled together with my wife and i through verizon right now. she will likely join us wherever we go, so if we can all bundle together to save money somewhere, that would be AWESOME.
Oh, and my mother in law has an iPhone 5 like my wife.
Your usage between three lines eliminates Puretalk USA.
The usage between the three lines also sets the expectation of a cost of $60 plus taxes with Republic ($25/line for data, $10 for voice and SMS only), unless your MIL is willing to go without as well. I figure if your wife won't, though...
When estimating usage and picking buckets with providers like Consumer Cellular and Ting, aim for the buckets that cover worst case usage for maximum cost estimates. It's also worth checking to see what the lowest price is based on minimal usage.
Going Consumer Cellular, cheapest and most expensive over the past six months would be a solid $60/month cut either way, and give you up to 750 minutes, unlimited texting, and 1.5GB of data to share. Unfortunately, if you find yourself needing more than 750 minutes of talk time in a month (cutting close a couple times, but not exceeding), you'll either get charged 25¢/minute or you'll have to manually bump up a level and pay an extra $10 for 1500 minutes making your cut-off 40 minutes over (790 minutes total) before selecting the the 1500 minute page will save you money. They're good about notifying you of usage and potential overages, but you have to manually change plan options before bill date if you have overages. That said, your usage pattern the past six months hasn't even broken that $60 baseline, and their customer support may have IVR menus before you can talk to a person, but it's good enough to keep Consumer Reports, senior citizens, and the AARP happy.
Going Ting, you'd range between $54-76/month with Ting auto-adjusting between buckets on billing for you and you'll have better usage controls per line, but you'll still average around $60+ most months. Ting month to month could
theoretically occasionally come in less than Republic or Consumer Cellular some months, but due to their bucket structure, will run closer to $60 or more most months. Their account controls might have more features and auto overage bucket adjustment, and their customer support just answers the phone with live people, but you're trading that for far spottier physical coverage and a
far smaller mobile data coverage footprint.
Either way, between Consumer Cellular, Ting and Republic, you're looking at about the same cost per month, about $60 plus taxes... and if you went Republic, you'd personally sacrifice mobile data access all the time for that price. Your best bet is clearly Consumer Cellular, all three of you can keep your handsets and keep using them all without
any changes in usage habits, you get coverage comparable to Verizon, you'll get great customer support that you can call, the iPhones should auto-configure with the new SIM cards, and the SIM cards themselves are free so the cost to switch is literally
nothing. And for the record, with a little fine tuning on the iPhones to reduce and eliminate background mobile data usage (like software updates) and your willingness to go without data entirely, you could even get the Consumer Cellular bill down to $50/month.
There you go, Consumer Cellular. Exact same price (or less!) as what you'd spend on Republic for all three handsets, you'd get to keep your phones, there'd be little to no usage modification by any of you, and technically all three of you will get more and better service for the money.
You're welcome. If you feel inclined to share your thanks, you can do so
here.