(I use Google Fi, but it often seems like it has poor performance and issues sending MMS and receiving group texts to/from mixed Android/iPhone groups)
edit: from the article...
> The discount carriers were, on average, up to 46 percent slower than my Verizon connection. That sounds like a lot, but in real-world tests, I didn’t notice a difference
But then...
> “Is it worth it?” he said. “We’re saving about $1,000 a year. I’ll deal with the hassle for that.”
I am using Mint Mobile’s unlimited plan and paying peanuts compared to my partner’s Verizon plan. But their signal is often completely fine where mine even an hour or two outside of a major metro is bad to unusable. Doubly so in large buildings.
I've been on Straight Talk, which was great because they spanned carriers and you could pick whichever carrier worked best in your area. I used T-Mobile with them and coverage + speeds were all around great, in and out of the city.
Then Verizon bought them and forced everyone on their network. My in-city speeds went down significantly (as in, over 75Mbps slower) in the city, and the coverage in rural areas was not any better than my spouse who's on AT&T.
Verizon missed the boat on 5G, they are no longer the one stop shop for coverage that they were.
That’s just Tmobile - we have plans both directly and with Mint and the coverage is identical. There are some other first party MVNO’s like Visible which run on Verizon you might be interested in.
Turn on Wi-Fi calling & that'll help with the coverage part. They operate on T-Mobile which generally has sub par coverage. I expect it to improve in a year or so
Was about to post the same thing. On vacation in a major city, one of the folks with us had their iPhone battery drain to nothing while it constantly searched for a Verizon signal using a MVNO. We were on Verizon too, never had an issue, no battery draining.
I personally hate every cell provider and really liked Google Fi, but I constantly had issues receiving text messages and terrible call quality.
Something else must have been wrong, because that's not the way QoS works IIUC. MVNO subscriber equipment receives the same signal strength as the carrier's own subscribers do, but packets are deprioritized, resulting in occasionally slower service with higher latency. But battery draining isn't supposed to result.
Oh, interesting! My Pixel 7 seems to run out of battery really fast too (vs previous Pixels, which I've had many of). I first thought it was 5G, but LTE doesn't seem much better. Now that I think about it, I switched to Fi at around the same time... wonder if it's actually that causing the drain?
I have an old $100/4 line plan (with something like 100gb of mobile data) from total wireless (now total by verizon) which I don't anticipate giving up for a while
When I was using an LTE only device (granted a pretty old one with likely fewer frequencies than a newer LTE device), I would get no service in time square whereas I updated to a phone with 5G and more LTE frequencies (I suspect) and now I get service just fine
I definitely get slow service at high congestion moments but I'm not a heavy user so I generally don't really care (I use my phone mostly to read books/articles that are preloaded as opposed to watching videos like millennials...)
I'm sure it's a good calculus for some. Personally I tried one of these and the service was fine the majority of the time, but that savings doesn't look nearly as good when you're traveling for work and can no longer access Slack because you're in a major metro and don't have wifi passwords.
The fact is you're more likely to want cellular data exactly when the MVNO is going to get you de-prioritized. If you never leave home, like a coworker of mine, it's a great deal. If you travel for work it's a recipe for frustration.
This is why, if work wants me to have cellular connectivity, they can buy me an appropriate phone and plan to go with it. It's not my responsibility to have a high reliability plan on my personal phone if I don't care (and I don't - I currently carry a flip phone).
I've played the "combined personal and work phone" game in the past, rather extensively, and have come to the conclusion that it's a sucker's game, because it means you always have access to work - and will therefore spend a lot more time thinking about it than you would with separate devices.
It depends. Every carrier has multiple QCI or service standards in laymans' terms. Think of it as boarding priority via zone on the plane. You pay less, you get less. Same goes for coverage wise, where carriers do offer MVNO a choice to have less coverage at significant discount.
So ultimately, it depends on the person use
Cricket user and I frequently have problems at Costco when it’s crowded but not when it’s empty. Lately I just sign in to the Costco guest WiFi network.
Some offer premium data which is prioritized but whether or not that’s the same priority as post-paid traffic is not clear.
Even on post-paid, the plan you’re on can determine network priority. I usually carry two phones and sometimes the MVNO SIM data is completely unusable.
> premium data which is prioritized but whether or not that’s the same priority as post-paid traffic is not clear.
The details are a bit sparse, but sometimes it's possible to find the QoS class/level listed for a given MVNO and plan, and some of them are indeed identical to that of the network's first-party plans.
T-Mobile Connect prepaid has low prices ($15 for 3GB) including hotspot usage. No MVNO. It was a gov-mandated condition of the Sprint merger. No international coverage. Wi-Fi SMS/voice for international use on Wi-Fi or data eSIM. Monthly data quota at each tier increases by 500MB in 2024 and 2025.
For basic international coverage, reloadable prepaid eSIMs can be purchased online, some with international roaming. But high latency back to the originating telco can make those unusable for voice traffic. Good enough for web/text. Sample price: $75 for 15GB for 365 days, in 144 countries. Use with VPN to make traffic opaque to random telco selling the eSIM.
I've been using a discount, prepaid MVNO since 2012, and I'm stunned that so many people in my real-life social circle still haven't heard of these things and just keep paying the "big carriers" multiples of what I've always paid for essentially the same thing.
These days my cost is down to just $5 per month (Red Pocket GSMA annual plan). 500 MB of data is plenty for messaging apps, driving directions, and very light web browsing when I need to look up things while on-the-go without WiFi.
The Mint unlimited plan is still only $35/mo, and I’m sure there’s something cheaper out there. That’s still a whole lot cheaper than the big carriers, with zero of the data usage management.
No international roaming (or crazy prices) is one of the big downsides of MVNOs. And no, I'm not interested in buying a local sim card. Roaming is quite affordable these days with the big three and the hassle is not worth it for me.
If you don't need that, I think trying some MVNOs make sense.
Another item is hotspot - typically MVNOs upsell that into a higher tier plan, although presumably not all of them.
That said, if aren't willing to bounce around, prepay months, etc... and are careful about buying new phones on decent promotions, I think the big three are not nearly as much more expensive as the article suggests.
EDIT: I should say, I do have to make phone calls with my existing number, and can't always use wifi or app calling, so I am more inclined to use roaming. I guess for many esim apps work well.
> do have to make phone calls with my existing number, and can't always use wifi or app calling, so I am more inclined to use roaming. I guess for many esim apps work well.
Your existing number can be routed via a 2nd/data eSIM via "Wi-Fi calling", for voice and text.
T-mobile has free low speed data, reasonable calling/text rates and a $35 10-day 5GB pass and $50 30-day 15 GB passes. Works for me to avoid the hassle of local sims.
It's not clear to me why the big asset owning carriers would continue to allow MVNOs. At some point the cannibalization from their own businesses is going to outweigh the revenue from the MVNO.
They don't just allow them, in some cases, they own them.(ex: at&t owns Cricket). There's a lot of price discrimination happening to try to get people to pay their maximum price for service.
For example, I'm on Fi with my android, but my wife has an apple watch with cellular connectivity, and the only game in town was to shell out for at&t.
- They are selling spare network capacity, and throttling MVNO traffic during peak usage times.
- The existence of MVNOs means they themselves can target the mid-high end market and don't have to advertise cheaper plans on their website and under their brand. In some cases the big carriers themselves own MVNOs.
- In addition to consumer facing MVNOs, these carriers also make a ton of money from operators of stuff like IoT networks, GPS trackers, vehicle manufacturers and really anything that needs internet access.
I'm not sure if the large networks are called Local Exchange Carriers (LECs), but if they aren't I presume there are similar resale requirements for them anyway.
If you get service through a cell tower and all other network infrastructure owned and operated by AT&T then you are on AT&T's wireless plan. Whether they sell it to you directly or through a discount MVNO isn't that big a distinction.
A small number of people filling up a tiny bit of spare capacity on a big carrier's network is hardly the revolution the article makes it out to be. You are simply on AT&T/Verizon/TMO's lowest tier plan, which just isn't advertised as such to preserve their brand.
You also deal with payments and support through the MVNO though. Sometimes (like with Google Fi) they can be a LOT better than the actual carrier's outsourced support.
Many MVNOs can roam between multiple carriers too, which may or may not improve reception.
Some MVNOs also have international partnerships. In the US that's unusual for the big carriers themselves except for T-mobile (which is German, I think?). Fi's international services are dramatically more affordable than AT&T or Verizon's.
I think it's similar to the multi cloud discussion, just applied to telecoms.
Sure but just because you are dealing with a company that AT&T outsourced its billing and support to doesn't mean you are somehow sticking it to AT&T. As long as they operate the towers they will continue to own the market.
Readit News
(I use Google Fi, but it often seems like it has poor performance and issues sending MMS and receiving group texts to/from mixed Android/iPhone groups)
edit: from the article...
> The discount carriers were, on average, up to 46 percent slower than my Verizon connection. That sounds like a lot, but in real-world tests, I didn’t notice a difference
But then...
> “Is it worth it?” he said. “We’re saving about $1,000 a year. I’ll deal with the hassle for that.”
Then Verizon bought them and forced everyone on their network. My in-city speeds went down significantly (as in, over 75Mbps slower) in the city, and the coverage in rural areas was not any better than my spouse who's on AT&T.
Verizon missed the boat on 5G, they are no longer the one stop shop for coverage that they were.
I personally hate every cell provider and really liked Google Fi, but I constantly had issues receiving text messages and terrible call quality.
When I was using an LTE only device (granted a pretty old one with likely fewer frequencies than a newer LTE device), I would get no service in time square whereas I updated to a phone with 5G and more LTE frequencies (I suspect) and now I get service just fine
I definitely get slow service at high congestion moments but I'm not a heavy user so I generally don't really care (I use my phone mostly to read books/articles that are preloaded as opposed to watching videos like millennials...)
The fact is you're more likely to want cellular data exactly when the MVNO is going to get you de-prioritized. If you never leave home, like a coworker of mine, it's a great deal. If you travel for work it's a recipe for frustration.
I've played the "combined personal and work phone" game in the past, rather extensively, and have come to the conclusion that it's a sucker's game, because it means you always have access to work - and will therefore spend a lot more time thinking about it than you would with separate devices.
What do you do instead? Get a new SIM card everywhere?
I've never been in a situation where my partner didn't have signal but I did.
Some offer premium data which is prioritized but whether or not that’s the same priority as post-paid traffic is not clear.
Even on post-paid, the plan you’re on can determine network priority. I usually carry two phones and sometimes the MVNO SIM data is completely unusable.
The details are a bit sparse, but sometimes it's possible to find the QoS class/level listed for a given MVNO and plan, and some of them are indeed identical to that of the network's first-party plans.
Not as a general rule, although it's common.
I'm using one that's only deprioritized after the first 50 GB per month, and even that only ever on low-rate 5G and LTE.
For basic international coverage, reloadable prepaid eSIMs can be purchased online, some with international roaming. But high latency back to the originating telco can make those unusable for voice traffic. Good enough for web/text. Sample price: $75 for 15GB for 365 days, in 144 countries. Use with VPN to make traffic opaque to random telco selling the eSIM.
These days my cost is down to just $5 per month (Red Pocket GSMA annual plan). 500 MB of data is plenty for messaging apps, driving directions, and very light web browsing when I need to look up things while on-the-go without WiFi.
Yeah the coverage is maybe slightly worse and I'm sure that I get "deprioritized" but worth the 720$/year of savings.
If you don't need that, I think trying some MVNOs make sense.
Another item is hotspot - typically MVNOs upsell that into a higher tier plan, although presumably not all of them.
That said, if aren't willing to bounce around, prepay months, etc... and are careful about buying new phones on decent promotions, I think the big three are not nearly as much more expensive as the article suggests.
EDIT: I should say, I do have to make phone calls with my existing number, and can't always use wifi or app calling, so I am more inclined to use roaming. I guess for many esim apps work well.
I think they basically piggyback off T-mobile's international partnerships.
The only downside is that u can't do iMessage from your actual number.
Your existing number can be routed via a 2nd/data eSIM via "Wi-Fi calling", for voice and text.
Version and AT&T each charge $10 per day for international data, and T-Mobile's cheapest plan with international data is $90/month.
"in May 2000, legislation passed that required network operators with significant market power to open up access to their infrastructure."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_opera...
For example, I'm on Fi with my android, but my wife has an apple watch with cellular connectivity, and the only game in town was to shell out for at&t.
- They are selling spare network capacity, and throttling MVNO traffic during peak usage times.
- The existence of MVNOs means they themselves can target the mid-high end market and don't have to advertise cheaper plans on their website and under their brand. In some cases the big carriers themselves own MVNOs.
- In addition to consumer facing MVNOs, these carriers also make a ton of money from operators of stuff like IoT networks, GPS trackers, vehicle manufacturers and really anything that needs internet access.
It's not really that confusing that they would want to brand a lower quality service differently.
I'm not sure if the large networks are called Local Exchange Carriers (LECs), but if they aren't I presume there are similar resale requirements for them anyway.
A small number of people filling up a tiny bit of spare capacity on a big carrier's network is hardly the revolution the article makes it out to be. You are simply on AT&T/Verizon/TMO's lowest tier plan, which just isn't advertised as such to preserve their brand.
Many MVNOs can roam between multiple carriers too, which may or may not improve reception.
Some MVNOs also have international partnerships. In the US that's unusual for the big carriers themselves except for T-mobile (which is German, I think?). Fi's international services are dramatically more affordable than AT&T or Verizon's.
I think it's similar to the multi cloud discussion, just applied to telecoms.