Eric F

I use them. ATT has crap coverage in my area, plus Mint is so cheap. I think it costs me like ~$180 all told for the year which is a steal. What they offer on the basic plan for me is plenty, just enough to stream Spotify in the car.

I also have a 5G phone now, although T-Mobile's 5G network in my area is pretty poor. Even though I can get a 5G connection, most of the time LTE is much faster.

lwhy?

Verizon Prepaid has new plans with loyalty and autopay discounts now. I pay $28 a month for unlimited talk and text and 5 GB of data

TheBang

I'm just about to switch my wife's phone over to Tello. I checked her historical usage, and between July 2019-June 2020, she only used 1 GB data total. Since the pandemic began, she's used almost no data.

I'm switching her over to this 12 month plan for $75 total. Unlimited talk/text and 1GB data per month: https://stacksocial.com/sales/tello-...-data-free-sim

After the 12 month promotion period, I'll switch her to something like 500 GB/month data and maybe 300 talk minutes (all plans have unlimited texting). That will save a few dollars per month. She's currently on Mint Mobile, and Tello is also a T-Mobile MVNO, so the service should be the same. The pricing works out such that if you have 2GB or less of data usage per month, it's cheaper than Mint. If you can cut your voice minutes down from unlimited, you can save a few extra bucks per month also. And if you run out of data, it's not like you're SOL. You still have unlimited 2G data, like Mint, and you can also buy extra Pay-as-you-go high speed data, or renew your monthly plan early.

tonyc3742

After my 3 month, I got the 'here's your history' - Mint actually recommended I up my plan. But i was doing a lot of on-cell speed tests just to check, which used up big chunks of data.
I renewed with the 12M/4GB plan. No complaints.
My son blew through his 4GB of high speed data in like a week, but he uses Spotify and Snapchat a lot which are huge data hogs. And he still has data, just at lower speed, which is fine for things other than downloading apps.
He'll be getting a new phone and I'm looking into the 5G. From what I've read Mint uses a band that isn't actually the most 5G, and some phones struggle with it. So I'm not sure if we'll bother going to that at this point.
Yeah, definitely using less data since I'm at home 95% of the time....

TheBang

Here's info about T-Mobile 5G and the phones that support it. Most of their deployment is on n71 (low band), n41 (mid band) (use the checkbox to filter by "Low & Mid-band 5G"):

https://www.tmoband71.com/

tonyc3742

Cool, thanks!

tonyc3742

So this may be an awfully specific question - does anyone have the Motorola Edge 2021 on Mint?

My son is getting a new phone and that's what he's looking at. Trouble is, I'm seeing conflicting info regarding its capability of wifi calling. Maybe it's a holdover from my AT&T or Republic days where I had no AT&T signal at home since I lived near a nuclear plant, and RW wanted you to prioritize wifi all the time, but I'm looking to put as much on wifi as possible. But the TMo network is much better at my house (I just got 60 MB download on it in my basement, whereas on ATT or RW cell I may not have had any connection whatsoever.) So it may not be a thing we need to use as much anymore.

I've seen "has wifi calling", "doesn't have wifi calling", and "has wifi calling if it's locked".

So, specifically - anyone know if the new Edge has wifi calling at all, especially with Mint?
And generally - if it doesn't, does it matter? If we have good cell connection, is wifi calling necessary? I assume data will prioritize wifi if connected to wifi. Although we do occasionally go places where there's wifi but no good cell signal, and being able to text/call in those places would be nice.

tonyc3742

So, apparently Mint is getting a bit of a spanking with their 'Unlimited' terminology.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/21/...d-unlimited-ad

I've seen it say "35GB" right beside unlimited but hey, that's not unlimited.

Also, I didn't know this - apparently after you cap out your data, they throttle you to 2G. Which, if I'm not mistaken, is slow as s**t.

My son burns through his monthly 4GB in like two weeks. I asked him to search for something one time and he said he couldn't, his data was so slow. Throttling to virtual unusabilty is not what I expect from throttling.
When he renews, he'll go to 10 or 15gb, but now's the time to research and use the consumer voice. Probably still worth it if he can find the right data level.

Do other MVNOs throttle speed down to 2G? Is that a common disadvantage with using MVNOs?

milo bloom

We have an unlimited plan with Cricket and we don't get throttled anymore. And my kid will chew through data like crazy.

kd5

We got in on a plan with T-Mobile, their Magenta Max plan (unlimited talk/text/data) for half off = $70/mo. for both my wife and I, taxes and fees included. That would be comparable to getting a $25-$27/mo plan per person plus taxes and fees. I think we got a half decent deal but the 50% Off plan is only available in limited areas, we had to go through some shit before they finally got the bugs worked out of it, but it never did cost us more than they said it would (first couple of months were actually a little less). I like that we don't have to worry about how much data we're using each month.

General Zod

We switched to Spectrum Mobile this week. We had the Verizon unlimited everything plan for 3 lines and with everything it came to about $160 a month. Spectrum uses the Verizon towers (Which we need out here - AT&T towers don't get nearly the coverage) and is $29.99 per line with no taxes or fees for the same unlimited (Actually a little better - Verizon would start to throttle at 10gb data but Spectrum starts it at 20) . So $90 vs $160. Easy enough and simple.

joeblow69

I recently switched from AT&T to USMobile.
Was paying $130 for 2 lines unlimited (which came with free live TV). They were cancelling their live TV service, so I wanted to find something cheaper.

Now I'm doing US Mobile, 2 lines sharing 12 gigs (I never went over 8 gigs anyway) for $43, and just supplement with a slingTV subscription. Haven't had any problems with US Mobile, it uses Verizon for me (but will be TMobile for some)

TomOpus

I think one of the latest ones is pretty funny. Bringing in Blake's sister.


Nothing else to add to the thread.

Why So Blu?

^ Very cute for an old broad - great body.

On the Mint side, my next year of service renewed and Mint has been nothing but awesome for me. Just thinking about all that money saved blows my mind.

Eric F

I just renewed for the 3rd time.

$200 for a year suits my purposes just fine.

tonyc3742

My annual is due for renewal in about a week.
No complaints with the service, and I'm betting I couldn't find a legitimate competitor's offering cheaper.
It looks like there are no deals for existing customers (other than referral discounts)? I guess it's hard to make it much cheaper than they do, and they have been aggressively courting new subscribers.

TheBang

Tello recently reduced their Data prices, so if you're a low/medium data, low talk user, it might be cheaper than Mint.

My wife's been on Tello for a year now, and the service is pretty much indistinguishable from Mint (both are T-Mobile MVNO's).

Why So Blu?

I tried pricing a Tello plan and Mint is a better deal for me. Tello loses it at my Mint sweet spot.

tonyc3742

Thanks for the pointer! I'm on the border between where Tello or Mint is better for me. I think I'll stick with Mint because at my plan, using Tello would save 1.00 a month but only get half the data.
At Tello's prices, though, it's almost worth it having a backup cell phone. I used to have a $10/month Vonage Voip line as my emergency 'house phone'. My folks use TracFone as their cell phones, I know they get deals but it seems like Tello's lower plans would be great for them.

JTH182

Anyone ever switch from Google-Fi to Mint? Wondering if it's worth it? I know they're pretty much on the same networks.