IP, I am glad you gave me your honest opinion.
No worries, the entire purpose of the guide is to be an honest, unflinching, marketing free guide for quality service options. I don't like seeing people buffaloed with slick marketing, meaningless numbers and greed manipulation. A poor man can't afford to buy garbage just as much as a rich person doesn't remain so if he does likewise. Always pay for what you
need. On one hand, the power of $10/month saved is impressive... but if you have the capacity to already more than halve your costs even at the high MVNO end, even an extra $15-20 a month is worth the investment if you
need that mobile service and rely on its availability.
I'm going to second Paul, do you actually
need 1000 mobile minutes a month? Is that based off of average usage from your bills, or a gut number? If it's your gut, check the bills and get hard numbers. Data's also easy to gut by using offline GPS and simply exercising self control over streaming media usage. Even with an Android smartphone, you limit software updates to WiFi, use something like the Dolphin or Opera browser where you can turn off/compress images when on mobile data, K9 Mail to restrict email attachment downloading to WiFi, use offline GPS, and leave the video and audio for home... under 150MB a month is a
trivial goalpost to slide under... especially if data is only a perk and viewed as unnecessary by the person using the phone.
I'm also going to suggest you avoid CDMA MVNOs in general (Sprint and Verizon) unless you absolutely MUST have CDMA service, because right now it's just an unholy mess. The only Verizon MVNOs that allow 4G handset activation currently are owned by Carlos Slim (Tracfone/NET10/StraightTalk/SIMple Mobile/Page Plus), so the customer service and billing is dreadful, and you're locked into a minimum of $30/month if you use a 4G handset anyway. There's cheaper Verizon CDMA plans with better support from other providers, but it requires using one of a slowly dying and shrinking pool of approved non-LTE handsets. Also, native Verizon coverage in Oklahoma outside of the metro areas and interstate corridors is pretty crappy anyway. This is US Cellular/Pioneer CDMA territory. On the Sprint end, the recent unlocking policies and changes to their activation restrictions with MVNOs, although were encouraging, have been a trainwreck. Nearly all handsets being brought in for activation despite having clean ESNs are not able to be activated... this mess is impacting almost everyone but Sprint's own in-house brands since they won't activate Sprint postpaid devices on their prepaid services (Virgin, Boost). Sprint's network doesn't seem to be getting better with age, either. Ting's nice (with the roaming), as is Ecomobile and Kajeet, but if you're wanting limited network coverage and cheap prices, you're still better off going with a T-Mo MVNO. GSM service really is where it's at.
If you're personally having problems with T-Mo reception (and it's not your dying phone), then I'd encourage you to go with an AT&T MVNO instead. No matter who you go with, you honestly shouldn't need to spend more than $30/month, and if your usage is reasonably lower than 1000 minutes and you don't really use mobile data, $22.50 or less is easily within reach as well.
I.P. Dailey, what if you want to use more than the bare minimum cell minutes/text/data?
Already covered, repeatedly (including in this very post for Clone's sake), and your pricing is
way off. You're also letting irrational fear and hedonic adaptation override common sense. I'll be blunt, my guide is not for your mindset. I focus on
quality, not quantity... and let's be honest, are we not supposed to be rejecting the materialistic consumption of quantity in life and focusing on quality by pursuing the philosophy espoused by our host?
Quality over quantity should be a key focus point on everything we do, no matter how "cheap" it appears to be. We don't make the world a better place by playing real-world Hungry Hungry Hippos.