Thanks Daley. From your experience/research what are the best Verizon MVNO's? I noticed there didn't seem to be many you had high praise for in your guide..
The biggest problem is longevity as keeping the lights on with a Verizon MVNO is harder than on any of the other three networks. The next biggest problem is device restrictions in place by Verizon with their MVNOs. Page Plus was recommended prior to the AM buyout because of the longevity of the business, customer support and reasonably liberal activation policies. No matter how good, most other Verizon MVNOs never even seem to make it past the six month mark, let alone two year.
Right now as of the current state of things, I'm officially pulling my Page Plus recommendation as of January 15th (will probably remove Cricket at the same time), which is when the domestic support center is shuttered. Unfortunately, they're the only MVNO with LTE support currently, which means they're the only MVNO that can activate any Verizon LTE devices now. This technically makes them the only game in town for most customers wanting a Verizon MVNO.
Selectel looks like it's in for the long haul at this point and will eventually replace PP in the guide when they ding two years, but they haven't launched LTE support yet. This means they can currently only activate non-LTE Verizon postpaid handsets, which are slowly vanishing, especially on the smartphone end. I'm holding out hope for Red Pocket's newer CDMA offerings, BYO Wireless and Puppy Wireless longer term as we need more Verizon-based competition (none of these have LTE as yet either), but they're not established enough for
me to feel comfortable recommending as of yet because I don't want to see another person go through the same fiasco as a few in these forums did with TalkForGood a couple years back (another one of
many failed Verizon MVNOs). Like it or not, Big Red clearly doesn't like their wholesalers. There's a reason why I recommend people avoid Verizon and CDMA service in general unless they absolutely need it for their region, the GSM end is cheaper and has more established competition.
It's a difficult position though, because I know these newer Verizon MVNOs won't survive without customers... so I want to recommend them, especially if they're worth recommending. Unfortunately, I also know how much of a pain it is to have an MVNO shutter in the middle of the night without any notice to their customers and the difficulty that causes to getting out and transferring your number to another provider. Some MVNOs when closing do the decent and right thing and notify their customers of the pending shutdown (and it's usually because they're long established), but most startups just vanish.
