Hello everyone,
Recent forum user but I've been following the blog for almost a year now! I am also new to this land of US of A, coming all the way from Europe.
I share a tip of how to pretty much have 0$ cell phone bill!
Coming from Europe, I was astounded to find extremely expensive plans to what I was used to. Everything I looked for was 50-80 dollares a month for not so good service it seemed. Additionally, it seems I'm stuck in a universe where people just buy phones from operators instead of buying them directly from the manufacturer, which means if they're unhappy with their carrier usually they can't use that phone in their carriers.
It didn't make sense! I already had my phone from Europe wwhich was an unlocked phone already with all the GSM bands available.
Finally after much research I was able to devise the following plan:
- Sign up for H20 Wireless and used their PAYG plan of 10 dollars which comes with 300 minutes of voice and data and texting is charged as well. I'm usually within an area where I have WiFi much like MMM and sure 300 minutes may not be enough. Actually I use more than that during a 3 month period. This 10 dollar plan has 90 day expiration and is what allows it to be so cheap. Usually even Straight Talk or Cellular Wireless have expiration periods small than that. It means you are paying 40 bucks a year for a phone number with 1200 minutes in it.
Now... here's where having a smartphone (unlike those crappy StraightTalk plans with straighttalk phones) comes handy:
Setup a Google Voice account and setup your own phone number. Forward everything to your SIM card from H20 phone number, so that in case you're out of a Wifi area people can still reach you.
In the end result... I have unlimited minutes of voice + 300 minutes in case of emergency or when you're out of WIFI area... and unlimited texting.
Plus the benefits of having an unlocked phone. Whenever I want, I can just switch carrier and don't even have to port my phone number - my phone number which I give people is my GVoice number so I can just go to the dashboard and forward it to a new number.
All in all, I am now paying 3.33 USD per month.
If I ever am in need of more I can just change it with H20 for that specific month.
You can get yourself a good smartphone unlocked from Huawei or others for around 50-99 bucks... you can have a TOP OF THE LINE smartphone totally unlocked from any carrier for about 200-300 USD especially from the very recent chineses techological companies such as OPPO (a luxurious blue ray company that spinned off with smartphones now), Xiaomi (the latest flagship killer) where it's considered the best Android phone for -50-70% of what a normla flagship costs ... or 1+ One.
With this setup I can call whoever and my Google voice number will always show up as the ID instead of the carrier one. The same for texting, which is what you want.
This is in opinion much better than Republic Wireless, where you have to buy their specific phone. And it ends up being cheaper and probably less buggy as well since most Android ROMs that are tinkered by carriers are just pure garbage.
If you don't care about technology just buy a cheap smartphone like 50 usd or so and you're set. If you want something better, go to the top of chinese brands which are top of the line phones but they cost around 299 USD - which is still cheaper than what most people pay.
(For badassity's sake!! my father in law is paying 260 dollars for a 4 line plan with Verizon... with phones that after the contract expires are tough to make them work with other carriers - unless they use the same CDMA technology)
