What's Your Prepaid Phone Plan? (prices, sale, best, old)
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As of November 2015 Verizon Prepaid charges $30 a month for unlimited talk and text. On a smart phone you get no cellular data (onl wifi), but on a basic phone you get unlimited data (old fashioned news feeds etc). As that is the most expensive network, and the most expensive company, that price should be a benchmark for you. You can get all sorts of things for $30 a month on different networks, because some people don't care much for unlimited talking.
If you put a Verizon phone on Straight Talk and it will be on the Verizon network, $45 unlimited talk/text and 5g of 4G data
I purchased Ooma Telo for my home phone service. It's VOIP so uses the internet. The device cost me $99 on Amazon and it started off at $3.79/month for taxes and fees for 5000 minutes per month. It's now up to $4.30/month a year and four months later. You have to be careful not to go over the 5000 minutes per month as I've heard they will cancel your service if you do. I use no where near that many minutes. My internet quality is very good and the Ooma Telo works very well for me, in fact, the sound quality is better than AT&T U-verse telephone service was.
Only problems I've had is once or twice I had to hang up and call someone back because the sound was a little off, and the sound was ok then, and a couple of times I had someone call me and say they had to call twice because the call didn't go through the first time. Those very rare occasions happened only when someone called me, I've never had a problem when I initiated the call. Three or four problems in one year and four months isn't bad, and definitely worth it considering how little I pay for the service.
You do have to pay extra for the wireless attachment, but I didn't buy it. Just connected Ooma to my router with the cord they provided. Think it's about $30 for the wireless attachment. The company's site will sometimes offer special deals giving the attachment for free as a promotion when you buy the Telo at full price ($129), but considering you can get the Telo on sale sometimes on Amazon for around $99, you're really aren't saving any money.
The Ooma Telo doesn't come with a phone, you use your own, which is what you said you want.
For a cell phone I use a cheap Tracfone for use when I'm away from home and as a backup to my Ooma Telo. I pay $21.83 every 90 days for 60 minutes x 3 (triple minutes) = 180, plus any bonus minutes I find a promo code for online (the last couple of times it was for an extra 60 minutes, but prior to that the best I could find was for an extra 30 minutes). So I normally end up with 210 or 240 minutes and 90 days of airtime for $21.83. I have close to 2000 minutes built up because I rarely use my cell phone.
Before I bought Ooma I was getting a measly 250 minutes from AT&T U-verse for phone service per month, while having their triple play, and was paying close to $24/month. They were stubborn whenever I negotiated a new one year contract with them and wouldn't budge off the 250 minute limit. I let one of their reps negotiate that in one year to get a lower price on all three services, and they would never allow it to go back to unlimited minutes, which is strange because I hardly used 250 minutes per month so it shouldn't have been a big deal for them. In the end it cost them when I dropped their phone service at the same time I got rid of U-verse tv. Started saving a little more than $100 per month when I dropped both. Just kept the internet and the price barely increased on that.
Just to make it clearer... that 5G of data over 4g pipe just shifts to 'unlimited' at lower speeds...no extra $$. It resets monthly of course.
(I guess there may be a limit somewhere, dunno...never mattered to me)
Correct..I've never used even close to the 5G so I'm not sure how slow it gets after your reach the limit but presumably it would work well enough for you to access your email etc.
Im thinking about getting a new prepaid plan that has a "bring your own phone" type program to it, if possible.
Do you like your plan? What do you pay?
Which one is best depends on how many minutes you use a year. Do you have a guesstimate on that? Do you have a SmartPhone? Do you need to use the internet on your phone, too, or just as a phone?
I use Tracfone. I don't use the internet on my phone (my phone is too slow). I shopped around yrs ago and found that that's the lowest cost prepaid plan for someone who doesn't use a cell phone that much. I use at most several hundred minutes a year. I don't use the internet on my phone.
The phone selection isn't great, but it's okay. And I think it has a bring your own phone option now.
Once you buy the phone (I think I paid $30 for an LG touch, not a SmartPhone, altho Tracfone has smartphones, now), it's only air time you purchase. My phone has triple minutes. So for every minute of air time I buy, I get 3 minutes on my phone.
I usu. purchase a 365-day airtime card for $99, with 400 minutes ( my phone triples that, so I get 1200 minutes). That's $8.25/mo. All unused minutes roll over forever.
But Tracfone has started an extension plan, where you pay $50 to extend your plan for one year w/o adding minutes. I did that last year because I had several thousand minutes stored up. So I paid $50 last year. ($4.16/month)
I think AT&T's GoPhone is pretty good and cost efficient for those who use their phone a lot more. My sister had that.
Tracfone has been highly rated for customer satisfaction.
I use TracFone, which is $19.99 every 90 days, so $79.96 a year. I hardly ever use it so it works for me, as a back-up or to text, but for long calls it would not work because the minutes would be used up quickly. I hate talking on phones so it works for me.
I use TracFone, which is $19.99 every 90 days, so $79.96 a year. I hardly ever use it so it works for me, as a back-up or to text, but for long calls it would not work because the minutes would be used up quickly. I hate talking on phones so it works for me.
I've been using Tracfone since 2007 and I have been happy with it. I talk/text very little, but it's nice to have it. I have the LG Ultimate 2 smartphone. I use it on wifi a lot and I use a little bit of data while I am out sometimes. I have so many units built up (over 3000 each talk/texts/mb data) that I won't have to put any on it for a few years. (I got the minutes on some half price sales that I found a couple years ago.)
Metro PCS we pay $67.00 a month I have 2 gigs & my wife has 1. We keep them on WiFi at home so we never use all are data not even close to it. Great service so far runs off the T-Mobile network.
Right now you can get two free phones from Metro and I have the 40.00 each plan. No contract. I have never had a problem.
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