Now we're staying inside with Wi-Fi, have you changed your cell plan?

Posts like this remind me of the differences between cell phone data markets relative to your country. I pay €15.99 a month for my cell plan (discounted from €19.99 because the same providor does my home internet/cable TV/home phone bundle) [0]. That gets me 100GB of data, unlimited texting, free calls and texts to much of the world, and the same deal should I roam in many countries, including those closest to home where I am most likely to travel pre- and post-COVID19.

I’m sure it has something to do with the competition, the density of the population and the impact of that on infrastructure, and the government financial support for communication infrastructure rollout. Probably more complex than that, but at €15 a month it’s nowhere near the top of a list of expenses to cut right now.

[0]:http://mobile.free.fr

I'm in the UK, and have long been a "no contract" user. I've saved literally thousands from buying the phone outright and using pay as you go variants [2].

I currently use giffgaff, who offer "goodybags" [1] which are essentially sim-only deals that last a month for comparable or cheaper prices than contract phones.

When the lockdown was announced I dropped from £12/mo to £0/mo. I have roughly £8 credit on my phone and haven't used it.

[1] https://www.giffgaff.com/sim-only-plans

[2] most phones are cheaper to own this way, even factoring in all sorts of risk. The exceptions are phones specifically targetted to make the most of the loan setup; from experience the top of the line iPhones have always been cheaper on contract.

In India, after Jio's success, all operators have now killed the old pricing structure or made it unviable. That structure provided us the ability to lower our plans to bare minimum (low talktime, long validity). Now everyone is on the subscription bandwagon which is atleast 6 times costly when comparing the cheapest plans. But that's still ok I guess, for 200rs (~3USD) per month we get 1.5GB 4G data per day, Unlimited calls and SMS. Sucks that they are selling our data though.

I like Ting [0] a lot it's only $6 per line and they only charge you for what you use. Even in months where I have heavy usage the total bill for two lines typically ends up in the $60 range. US based phone support. Easy to use and understand website. Can't say enough good things about it.

The also offer fiber Internet if you are lucky enough to live in one of the handful of cities where they offer it.

[0] https://ting.com/

As part of the agreement with SEC(?) to be allowed to merge with Sprint, T-mobile agreed to offer low-priced plans, I suppose to help low-income or access-disadvantaged Americans get cheaper cellphone access.

$15/month (incl 2GB): https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans/connect Not as cheap as some barebones MNVOs but seems attractive and by a reliable-enough carrier.

Personally, I have my parents on the Google Fi $20/month plan ($15 for 2nd line) which charges $10 per GB of data, so at this time they're not using almost any data. It's cheap enough to be not worth it to switch right now.

I'm from Romania and I pay €14 for 75 GB monthly data, 300 international minutes, unlimited national minutes/sms.

It's cheap enough that I don't mind paying for it while indoors.

I would've switched to Prepay actually, as here you get even better deals with Prepay, but I've got a older and easy to remember phone number that I don't want to lose. And technically I could recover a Prepay number in case I lost the SIM, but with no contract in place I would depend on the benevolence of the operator.

I wrote a post about downgrading to T Mobile connect. https://link.medium.com/kU4juJLIB6

I've been using US MVNO's for years and buy lightly used smart phones. When you look at a 10 year time span, it is much cheaper than essentially leasing your phone and upgrading every 2 years.

Customer service is different with all the MVNO's we've used. They don't have sophisticated billing systems or the hated phone trees. Ting had the best customer service but also didn't have great coverage and when you go over data for your plan it was a little expensive.

Our current provider (Visible on Verizon network) doesn't even have a phone number to call, just text or social media for support. If you get 4 people together you can have "unlimited" data for $25/mo in US. On previous MVNO our usage never approached the level where "unlimited" became slower.

Use Ting. Pay for what you use. https://ting.com/

If Xfinity Mobile is an option for you, and you're already an Xfinity customer (if not, there's a $10 fee I think), you can get service for $15, if you have a supported phone (iPhone, Galaxy, or Pixel; they also sell phones by standard lease plans, but I assume that would defeat the purpose). They only bill for data. They're on the Verizon network; I switched from Verizon to them for a while. The service was good, but I needed the unlimited data that Verizon provides, and apparently Verizon speed caps their MVNOs, as the speed on the same phone was substantially less. (I still have a backup phone on Xfinity: it (Galaxy Note 10) speed tested at around 4Mbps; my Verizon iPhone XS Max was 15-30Mbps.)

Not really covid-related, but switched to Mint Mobile last fall and have been pretty happy with it. $20/month for 8GB I think (I’ve never run against the limit so I’m not sure off the top of my head). I’m in NYC and rarely leave the city, so I can’t speak to consistency of coverage in other areas, but I’ve never had any problems. The only real complaint I have is that their international coverage is unusably bad. It’s pre-paid, and pay by the MB So manages to be prohibitively expensive and also unreliable. I normally just pick up a cheap temp SIM card when I arrive in a country, but I understand that some people this is too big an inconvenience, or not a possibility.

I cut down on my cell phone plan a long time ago. I used to pay about $70 a month, then I went to the AT&T prepaid service. It's $35/month ($30 if you do recurring billing) and you get unlimited calls and texts, and 2 GB of data per month, which is more than enough for me. Tethering also works great. I've also heard a lot of people like ting, but then you're paying by the minute, although the base price is much cheaper.

(I also got a really great deal on an iPhone SE for signing up for $149. 6 months you have to keep the plan and then you can unlock the phone. If you're looking to upgrade your phone, try to swing that too!)

I'm using Visible with three strangers (https://www.reddit.com/r/VisiblePartyPay/) to get unlimited everything (including one device tethering) on the Verizon network for $25/mo. I downgraded from regular Verizon which was like $90/mo and other than some setup hiccups haven't noticed a difference.

I use google fi so it's just automatically cheaper. Previously I could pay up to 80/mo for unlimited data, 20 base, 10 bucks per gig, free thereafter up to 15 gigs, throttled after 15 gigs.

I've been paying between 20 and 30/mo for it.

Mint Mobile (a T-Mobile MVNO) has unlimited talk & text with 3GB data (and unlimited throttled data after that) for $15/mo. (I'm not affilliated, just a happy user -- if you want a $15 credit, DM me for a referral code.)

I'm using Google Fi for the international coverage & traveling indefinitely, albeit not so much since March. I could get cheaper local plans, but buying local sims is not always easy or convenient.

I use Tello and love it! I’ve been working from home for a while and switched a few years ago. I also use Google Voice for my home phone number and connect it to an ObiTalk box, which connects to my modem, so almost all my calls are over WiFi too. I could probably get away with their cheapest plan, which I believe is $6 (for the same network as T-Mobile or Sprint), but even without going the cheapest, my bill is always under $10.

Yes, I switched from a bill to a prepay option. I only really used my phone for internet anyway, so will only need to top it up if I’m not home (which currently is only to go to the shops or for exercise, where I don’t need internet/phone). My current prepay option gives me unlimited download for 30 days for less than the monthly cost of my previous bill, so it’s quite reasonable if I do find I need it.

I am not paying for my cellphone, I see everyone is on WhatsApp already and I call them on WhatsApp.

That said I live in India. I already pay for fiber gigabit connection at home, so spending extra on mobile is not worth it for me.

That said, most of job is done on email/WhatsApp and I rarely need to call anyone.

And if need comes, I'll just recharge my mobile through internet and get it going within 5 minutes.

I still prefer having a solid secondary option in case my home network has an outage. (One occurred a few weeks ago) I'm currently paying 18.90€/mo for 50/50mbit/s 4G + texts and calls that I never use. My home connection is a complementary 100/100mbit/s, but as I mentioned, it does go down sometimes.

I pay $26 on a T-mobile family plan. That's after the AutoPay and KickBack discounts. (The KickBack discount applies if you use less than 2GB of data.) I find it cheap enough not to care much; it's less than half an hour's worth of wages. It's supposedly unlimited data, but throttling may happen after 50GB.

My whole family is on TracFone. They're 15 bucks a month. I suppose we could get it cheaper, but it's worked for us, for a long time. When the lockdown began, I ordered new Internet-only service for the family, and we're going to finally ditch our land line.

Not an option in rural Australia. My home internet connection (ADSL2 over copper) gets between 1 and 1.5Mbps down on a good day!

I plug a 4G USB dongle into a WiFi router. This gets me to about 4 or 5Mbps if the weather is good and I put the router on the roof. sighs

I pay around $15/month for something like 40 gb of data and free calls and texts. It's so cheap I didn't bother lowering it, and it so happens that my WiFi is shit enough that using 4g is sometimes better in some places of my apt.

Even though I am 99% using the WiFi, I have to stay on a plan in my mobile just to receive and make calls. As people still prefer normal calling than using internet based calling features.

Thought of this today. I pay a huge bill. Time to downgrade.

My cell plans are crowded as I have every provider in our country. From 100GB data only for 10€ to full fledged plan for more than 60€. COVID changed nothing.

Yes. I dropped from unlimited family plan to 4Gb/mo across three devices. It saved a good bit. It’s nice that it’s easy to switch plans these days.

I am on T-Mobile and Magenta plan at $70/mo. Honestly I don't even think there is a cheaper plan.

I've used Mint for years. 20/mo for more data than I'll ever use. Not one complaint.

Sure, use "pay as you go". Can't even remember when paid for cell last time.

No, but I have given my microwave a tin foil hat.

If the wife makes tea, it fries my wifi connection.

I had the cheapest plan available, so I had nothing to change.

Yes, I've changed to a plan with a lower internet cap, at €3/month.

I was already on the cheapest plan so I'm good :)