Hey, I've been trying to figure out a final system before making the jump to the world of MVNOs. I have an iPhone 5 (I know, but I actually need it for work) with AT&T. My average usage over the past 12 months:
276 mins
53 texts
113 MB
I have a pretty minimal plan on contract: $39.99 for 450 mins, $15 for 200 MB and $5 for 200 texts. I'm grandfathered into the $15 data and $5 text plans. I'm a bit worried that by leaving, if I ever wanted to go back I'd have to get the minimum $20 for data. And the new minimum text plan is $20?! That's insane. I'd use the pay-as-you-go text plan at $0.20/text, but that'd be about $11 compared to my $5 plan. My plan is obviously never to go back if I can make this work.
With my grandfathered plans (and 15% off the voice portion from a work perk), my bill is $63.42, which is still way more than what I'm using.
With this usage, I'd be paying right around $20 on Airvoice, using their $10 plan. That's still a nice savings, even with my ETF of $195, but I'd like to keep it at $10/mo. I'm having trouble figuring out a good way to make that work, where I have a single phone number (my current cell #).
I was thinking of porting my number to GV and using Talkatone/GV. At home, incoming/outgoing calls and texts would be free, so that'd cut down my usage by a lot. But I want to keep data disabled, and only enable it when I really "need" it. When I go out, if I keep data enabled to be able to get incoming calls/texts, it'll drain my data usage. But if it's disabled, I can't get incoming/outgoing calls on Talkatone/GV.
Before getting started, this needs to be said...
If you
need mobile communications service, and you
especially need it for mandatory work-related communications, do not cut corners.
PAY FOR WHAT YOU NEED.
Got that? Good. Onward and upward with some rhetorical questions.
You say you need your iPhone 5 for work. Did your employer pay for your phone? (You're under contract and have to pay the ETF, so my guess is NO.)Is your employer compensating you for your monthly bill? (You're paying around $65 a month for your cellular service currently, you mention no subsidy from your employer, and you're quibbling over paying an extra $10-20 a month to get the service you state you actually need for a work tool. 15% off the voice portion of your bill due to a "work perk" is not paying you to be tethered to an obligatory financial anchor for work communications. Again, my guess is NO.)Can you write your bill or handset purchase off as a business expense on your taxes? (Again, you're quibbling over saving an extra $10-20 on a bill that you can already easily slash in half with nearly no usage modification at all. My guess remains NO.)Your usage levels also do not exactly follow the usage pattern of someone using a mobile phone for work related communications having to double for personal as well. This isn't to say that they couldn't as every person and employer is different, but work phone usage usually averages much higher than this when doubled up with personal usage, and strictly personal phone usage numbers don't.
This makes me ask:
Do you actually need your iPhone 5, or are you just trying to justify keeping a luxury that you cannot actually afford?I know I'm raking you over the coals on this one, but it's for a very deliberate purpose. Your numbers look like the average, low-end private cellphone user profile. If your
personal communications needs fits the profile of our forums lovable curmudgeon, JamesQF, where $7 worth of Tracfone credits a month gets him what he needs to communicate with the outside world for non-work related stuff? Your employer needs to be footing at least a majority of the bill on your phone. Full stop.
Again, if using an iPhone 5 is a prerequisite of your employer? Your employer needs to be footing at least a majority of the bill on your phone. Full stop.
These points should properly address your work needs as well as most, if not all, of your bill. That means there's no excuse not paying for a mobile phone plan that doesn't actually fully cover what you need to the point that you think using free service through Google is a good idea to supplement usage. It's not, especially for work related communications. You get what you pay for.
If the reality of this is that this is strictly a mobile personal communications tool, you need to determine the value of that tool in your life. It appears that you've placed a value of $10/month on that service attached to a $600+ handset. Mobile phone service costs more than fixed access phone service, and your usage levels are going to force you to make a tough decision on what you value more. Is it mobility, is it communications, is it service quality, or is it your money? At a personally placed value of $10 a month paired with a hedonic adaptation machine designed for the primary purpose of extracting money from your wallet, you're going to need to compromise somewhere.
What I really want is to use something for free calls/texts when on WiFi, and use Airvoice minutes/texts when not on WiFi, but all using the same phone number. Is that doable?
What about this: port my number to GV. Get an Obi100. Use the GV app but not Talkatone. Have GV forward calls only to GChat. For incoming calls, it'll ring home phone and iPhone's GV app. Use Obi100 + handset when home for free incoming/outgoing calls, and use iPhone's GV app for calls which will use Airvoice minutes. Texts via the GV app will always use Airvoice, but I'm fine with the $1/mo for that if need be. And I could also give out my Airvoice number to a couple people that I text most with and also have iPhones, so those texts would be free.
But will that work? If I forward GV to GChat and I have Obi100 and the iPhone GV app, will it ring both at the same time? I thought I'd read that you can really only be logged into GChat in one place at a time.
Another option would be to use e.g. VOIPo at home, but then that'd be $6-7/mo and I'd have two phone numbers. So it doesn't seem like VoIP will help?
Thanks!
Let's first answer your four questions: No, sort of, yes, and maybe.
You're already talking about stripping out data usage, but you can't do that if you're using data services for your SMS replacement, and iOS is a data pit in the wide world of smartphone platforms.
PAY FOR WHAT YOU NEED.If you actually
need a smartphone and mobile data access, there are cheaper and better solutions. Unlike the iPhone, with some work you can gut background data usage on an Android device to nearly nothing and still leave it connected 24/7 or you can use both platforms on demand as you're currently considering. If you can eliminate mobile data access, ask yourself, do you need a smartphone at all?
PAY FOR WHAT YOU NEED.By what you've described, it sounds like you could make a significant dent in your minute usage by making calls at home over WiFi with the GV/Talkatone setup.
PAY FOR WHAT YOU NEED.You're concerned about the possibility of having multiple phone numbers, yet your proposed solution relies on using multiple phone numbers.
PAY FOR WHAT YOU NEED.You're proposing to buy more equipment just to shoehorn a mediocre solution.
PAY FOR WHAT YOU NEED.Working off averages is great to calculate cost, but it's always a good idea to have a buffer and margin of error with prepaid service so you're never left stranded.
PAY FOR WHAT YOU NEED.You detecting a pattern here yet?
If you actually
need mobile phone service, don't be afraid to spend the money to get it... but the key word here is
need.
Texting in your budget is basically a non-cost if you can pay under 2.5¢ a text. The real back monkeys are the data and the minutes. If you try to supplement usage with any mobile data services, that cost isn't really going to disappear. If VoIP at home seems like a feasible option to significantly reduce mobile minute costs, but you're not using enough minutes to justify the expense and still want to have mobile service? Either pay for the mobile minutes, or just pay for the outbound VoIP while at home.
I'm going to close here with a few academic points and some links.
There are VoIP providers that can let you set the
outbound Caller ID, let you pay for outbound service only, and there are SIP based softphones available for iPhone.
VOIP.ms is one of these mentioned VoIP providers that charges
1.25¢ a minute outbound to the contiguous United States for premium routing or
1.05¢ a minute for value, they do outbound only accounts, and you can
set your outbound Caller ID information. They also support a great number of
softphones for iOS and Android both.
There are social engineering tricks you can employ to reduce your
incoming minute usage. People know they are calling your mobile number and you can say, "Give me a minute, let me call you back," without offending them or twigging them on to the idea that you're being frugal about your calling costs.
If T-Mobile coverage is an option in your area, don't forget about
Spot Mobile and
P'tel.
If AT&T coverage is necessary, don't forget about
H2O Wireless, but do keep in mind that their customer support is the pits.
Just remember, even if you only slash your phone budget in half,
that's still over $30/month in savings and you'll be saving over
$360 a year versus AT&T with no need to go back. Even at its worst and without jumping through hoops to cut costs further, have confidence that your usage levels will always be cheaper through an MVNO.
Probably not the answers you were wanting to hear, but they're answers all the same. That should get you sorted, Bray... and welcome to the forums.