Call phone providers that sell minutes/data that doesn't expire for a year?

[Redbugdave]

Right now I have T-Mobile. I don't have good coverage for the places I go. Verizon is best for me comparing coverage on my friend's phones. Next month I will be transferring over to Red Pocket using the Verizon network. Red Pocket offers all the different networks...you pick. T Mobile is GSMT. AT&T is GSMA. Sprint is CDMAS. Verizon is CDMA.

 

[triangle]

Excellent find! Thanks! I just switched my last line to Hello Mobile from Tello for the unlimited voice alone. It costs 9/mo for Tello to have unlimited voice/text and 500MB LTE data, almost double the price.


Do you know if by switching the plan right before the month is up in Hello Mobile, the unused data will be rolled over and added to the new plan? In Tello I do that so though my plan remains to be 500MB data, I have over 6GB balance from a year of monthly manual plan change.

I do not how data is treated and rolled over if a new plan is selected. I am just a few days into my second month of service and see that I have over 500MB (less than 600 MB) of data available on my 500MB service plan. I did not monitor last month's usage to see how much I actually used, but it was a small amount in order to verify that it worked. So maybe they are rolling over 5-10% of unused data into the next month....but that is just speculation on my part, I have not seen anything like that written down.

That $5 deal is amazing and way better than Tello since it includes unlimited calling and texts AND free international calls and texts to tons of countries. How long have you been using them and have you had any issues at all? For now I'm staying with Tello simply because I have about 3 years worth of referral credits to use but I would certainly consider moving to this plan for the free international calling.
Thanks

Yes, the international calling is a bonus and includes more countries than I expected. It could be very useful to someone with family or friends in a supported country. As noted above, I have just started my second month of service. I am not a heavy Voice or SMS user (mostly use Messenger and other over the top services for communication), but it has worked fine so far. I believe HelloMobile uses Sprint & T-Mobile's network so their service would depend on that coverage in your area.

They even included the second month of service free, I think as a result of porting my number over and thereby switching carriers for this bonus. So far I am very pleasantly surprised to have gotten two months of service for only $5 and no extra charge for the SIM. I do not know how long this service provider has been operating but I get the sense they are somewhat new as their website had some conflicting information about my plan at the very beginning (it showed I had a certain number of minutes/month on one screen, and unlimited on another) which has since been cleaned up.

 

[teetee]

According to

https://bestmvno.com/mvnos/hello-mobile/
Hello Mobile started operating in 2018.

 

[SmallCityDave]

What happens when you run out of data, can you still talk and text?


I'm currently on the Verizon network and I like their coverage but 3 of these providers stand out.


Hello is the most affordable @ 9/10 per month but what happens when you are in a "partner" network are you roaming and are charged as such?


Red Pocket seems good and simple but their phones are price but we could bring our phones.


Tracphone also seems tempting, they have a good variety of phones plus I think I can switch to net10 and do a yearly plan with them (verizon).

 

[teetee]

What happens when you run out of data, can you still talk and text?

As long as the provider doesn't use VOIP for voice, talk and text are separated from the cellular data. You can do a simple test by disabling wifi and cellular data and see if you can dial/text. I think all three providers discussed here have voice/text plan separate from data.


Also most of data plans allow you to have 2G data when 4G data runs out.

 

[tb001]

ATT has a 360 day plan for $300 and includes 8gb data per month (and will roll over to the next month) and I have been pretty happy with it two years in. Swapping the SIM to a new phone (GSM) is painless.

https://www.att.com/prepaid/multi-month-plans/

I switched to this plan at the start of the year too. It was painful getting it set up—the att reps often could t figure out what plan I was on for some reason. And I could not get it to work reliably with my old iPhone. I upgraded to a new iPhone and it’s been great. A few blips due to coverage, but the flip side is I’m getting 5G service where available.

The only weirdness I’ve seen is that when I was on Verizon I had an unlimited data plan but only ever used 1-2 gb/mo according to Verizon. When you looked at my phone it said I was using 7-8gb. Att seems to agree with my phone, so I’ve had to turn off a few things that were using a lot of data in the background.