No cell phone bill anymore!

[Tim89]

Over the past couple of years before finding MMM I had already begun a quest for frugality. One of my main focuses was eliminating monthly recurring bills as much as possible to boost positive income. I began to explore eliminating my families cell phone bill completely. Since December, we have paid $0 for my entire families cell phone bills. This is through a combination of Freedompop phones for me and my wife (free service) and google hangouts. Essentially, if we are not in a Wifi network, we utilize the Freedompop number associated to the phone to talk to each other (free between FP users, 200 minutes/500 texts/500MB otherwise). If we are on Wifi we utilize our Google hangouts number (unlimited talk/text/mms). I wanted to share this method with the MMM community as a way of giving back for the wealth of knowledge I have gained!

[Gin1984]

How do you set up a hangout phone number for people to call and have it go to your phone?

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

[ranjithfire2028]

Cool!!

[Spitfire]

Freedompop also has an unlimited whatsapp free plan. Whatsapp does texts, calls, and video, and freedompop's plan doesn't count any data used by whatsapp towards your limit. I'm not sure how it compares to using hangouts though.

http://blog.freedompop.com/freedompop-embraces-whatsapp-launches-first-u-s-sim-unlimited-zero-rated-whatsapp-plus-free-data-across-30-countries/

 

[acroy]

COOOL!
Badass!!
way to leverage the tech. Nice!!

[Tim89]

How do you set up a hangout phone number for people to call and have it go to your phone?

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

It is a "Google voice" number that you initially set up. Afterwards you can have texts/calls route through it to hangouts when someone calls your Gvoice number. You can also set up multiple forwarding numbers for when someone calls your Gvoice number. I have 3 different phones ring when someone calls my Gvoice number.

[Gin1984]

How do you set up a hangout phone number for people to call and have it go to your phone?

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

It is a "Google voice" number that you initially set up. Afterwards you can have texts/calls route through it to hangouts when someone calls your Gvoice number. You can also set up multiple forwarding numbers for when someone calls your Gvoice number. I have 3 different phones ring when someone calls my Gvoice number.

Thanks

[hobbes1]

Cool. Thanks for posting

[Johnez]

So damn tempted to do this.

[jade]

Anyone in the UK had success with this?

[bluecollarmusician]

I feel you on eliminating recurring bills.  I have spent a considerable amount of time on this.

I started out with freedompop and google voice a couple of years ago (maybe 3-4?)  I found the call quality didn't work well enough- thought maybe it has gotten better. 

We switched to Ringplus which was amazing- for a couple of years we used it I could not have been happier.  Now that it is gone we are using Ting- but I have been thinking about trying freedompop again.  Google Voice over data has gotten much better and my hope is that freedompop has gotten better as well.

Good luck eliminating those bills!

[gimmi80]

Can you put their SIM card in any unlocked phone?
I've an old unlocked ATT iPhone sitting in the drawer. Can I put the SIM card in and give them a try?

[sw1tch]

The main issue I have with Freedompop is that their calling service is actually VoIP over cell network data.  So, you don't have any "actual" cell calling service.

In my own experimentation, calling with VoIP over data doesn't seem to be as reliable when you're on the go (ie. making a call while you're driving) and generally uses more resources on your phone since the calling is handled by an app or equivalent (probably not an issue if you have a higher-end phone) - this can drop calls more easily, weird call quality issues, etc, if you don't have enough resources.

This is one of the reasons why I went with Tello after Ringplus was shut down.  It's not that I need phone service all of the time, but for those times when I do, I can pay as I go for phone calls and have them more reliably.  Yeah, yeah, I know not free but still pretty affordable.

Truth be told, I'm glad that Freedompop works well for you.  Keep us updated with how it works out for you.

Also, an alternative I've been using instead of Google Hangouts is TextNow which is similar and also provides a free phone number.

[PiobStache]

Pretty innovative approach there.  My company pays for my cell phone and that's pretty much how I eliminated that. 

[hoping2retire35]

So damn tempted to do this.

agreed. Though my $12.26 for Rep wireless has a lot of momentum to keep me from changing.

[Ed Mills]

Interesting post.  I know here in Mexico everyone uses Whatsapp, and it seems to get preferential treatment on all cell plans.  I'm still trying to figure it out.  Last December my Republic Wireless Moto E phone broke, so I resorted to a $9.50 ZTE phone that a buddy gave me for free.  I use it to make Google Hangout calls using a Google Voice number.  I also have a Skype subscription that I use for $80 a year.  Next up, I need to figure out how to make calls off the WiFi for free or cheap.  I'm suddenly very interested in learning more about FreedomPop.  Thanks for the ideas.  Ed

[facepalm]

Awesome info.

I'm not quite at the point where i can dump my cell plan, but I did switch from AT&T to Google Fi this month for a savings of about $30 a month. Selling the iPhone should net me a few hundred bucks as well.

[aaahhrealmarcus]

Awesome info.

I'm not quite at the point where i can dump my cell plan, but I did switch from AT&T to Google Fi this month for a savings of about $30 a month. Selling the iPhone should net me a few hundred bucks as well.

I'm in the same boat. Switched to Google Fi a while back and have yet to pay over $36 in a single month! Not the absolute cheapest, but I love the phone. If something unfortunately were to happen to it I may check out Republic.

[nitsuj1225]

I have been using Republic for almost 3 years now and you can't beat the quality for the price when it comes to their refund plan.  I pay $12/month for unlimited talk/text and have wifi 95% of the time wherever I go so don't use hardly any data.  Call quality on wifi is sketchy but on cell it's almost perfect so I usually just turn off wifi if I need to make a call.  Unfortunately I think they did away with their refund plans so they aren't as cost efficient as they once were which is why I'm sticking with them and my original Moto X for as long as possible.

My wife uses Google Fi and has not had any issues.  Her phone got stuck in a boot loop after about 10 months of use and Google sent her a new one no questions asked for free (they come with a 1 year warranty), so you can't beat the customer service which is tough to say about some of the other big 3 carriers.  Due to Google Fi adding a family plan line, I will be switching to Fi once my Moto X dies on Republic. 

I also have a Freedompop phone I bought as a backup.  It was generic Moto E so bottom of the barrel but can't beat free service in case of emergency and even a free 500mb of data each month.  So for a one time fee of $50 for the phone, I have a backup phone and free 500mb of data every month.  The call quality is terrible which is the only thing preventing me from switching to this phone entirely.  If the call quality could be fixed, I would seriously consider using Freedompop as my only phone.  For some reason I can't get rid of the echoing on the other end of the line.  Whoever I'm talking to hears a horrible echo when they talk (I don't hear it on my end) but all the workarounds I have found only seem to help on random occasions so it's not reliable enough for me to use as my everyday phone but wish I could.