Slashdot Mirror
Crunching the Numbers On Shared Cellphone Contracts
itwbennett writes "The Wall Street Journal has a handy online calculator to help you sort out which phone plan is best for you. But one thing you'll notice is that shared or 'family' plans rarely offer any real savings, or benefits beyond the convenience of having a single bill, says blogger Kevin Purdy, who is bracing himself to propose a phone plan separation with his wife."
That calculator leaves out the MVNOs which are decidedly cheaper. The one that comes to mind is Bandwidth.com's Republic Wireless which offers unlimited data, texting and voice No Contract for either $19/month or $29 month, depending on how you purchase their phone. (Using the WSJ calculator, the next closest price I could find for unlimited data was T-Mobile at $70/month) The main catch is that you have to buy a specific phone--the Motorola DEFY XT, which again, depending on the plan you choose is going to be either $199 or $99. They have a special feature that I think is quite interesting--probably all of the carriers should allow this--you can connect to a WiFi and use that to make or receive calls--this is a good idea for bad reception areas and basements. The phone itself seems to be okay. Its reviewed well, but it is a bit outdated. At least it is a durable, waterproof phone though. Reviews for the phone and for Republic Wireless seem to be quite good over all. Here are a couple of the best ones that I have seen: A customer review http://longmeadcrossing.com/republicWireless.htm Time Magazine Review: http://business.time.com/2013/02/22/the-19-per-month-smartphone-is-actually-getting-decent-reviews/
Two lines, very little talk, unlimited messages and 3GB/each. Family plans save me almost $20 a month across all the carriers vs going with single lines.
I'm not seeing the point.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
A shared plan can be billed to the main tax payer in the 'family', making it much easier to gang costs and take a reduction, especially when a small business is involved.
I priced it out using that calculator for 4 lines (unlimited voice, unlimited messaging, 2GB data per line). T-Mobile costs $140/month for a shared plan vs. $240/month for 4 individual plans. For 2 lines it'd be $100/month shared vs. $120/month for 2 individual plans. I see exactly the opposite of the claim: the shared plan is more economical than individual plans for everything but the most limited usage. And that T-Mobile's plans are more economical than anybody else's, which may explain why T-Mobile had such a good quarter.
Ting is a great company, and I'm a happy customer, too.
Parent is a sleazy spammer for posting a referral link without mentioning that it earns him $25 as well.
Go directly to https://ting.com/, or find a friend who's using it and use their referral link. Screw sneaky spammers.
One of the reasons providers offer a discount of families is that it makes it harder to switch away from them.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I use ting.com too. I realize silas_moeckel and I are going to come across as shills, but Ting is supremely cheap provided A. you don't use tons of data ( much past 2GB of data use and Ting doesn't save you money versus the other carriers) and B. you live in an area where Sprint reception doesn't suck, since Ting uses their network.
Lets not forget included tethering sprint wanted like 50 bucks to tether and it was only wifi and that is per phone. Ting I can tether wifi or bluetooth no added charge. My nexus 7 hooks up via bluetooth whenever it's not in wifi range. Mind you this was a few years back before I switched things may have changed.
Added ting bonus is the best customer support I've had since Nextel was business only. There heritage of being from tucows really shows, little things like a tech with a clue picking up on the 2nd or 3rd ring.
As I said though if you only need one line republic wireless 20 bucks flat.
No sir I dont like it.
It's hard not to sound like a shill for Ting, after you've dealt with traditional cell providers for so long. When you finally find one that has great prices, treats you like an important customer, has real people helping you (and fast) and eliminates all the bullshit gimmicks and fees and everything else . . . well, it's hard not to get over-excited when you try to show other people that they can jump off the shit-train of Sprint/Verizon/AT&T and so on.
(Also, you'll notice that I'm such a fan of Ting that I never post a referral link when I recommend their service -- it's so cheap that I don't need $25 for referring a customer and I'd rather people check it out without feeling slimy about it).
Oh, and if you want to save $25 on your phone or service at Ting, use the link below. This has NOTHING to do with me. This is a link from This Week In Computer Hardware with Ryan Shrout on the TWiT network which I also have nothing to do with (other than I subscribe to the podcast).
http://twich.ting.com
That's what I used, ages ago, and I applied it to my cheap little feature-phone (I think I wound up paying $35 for the phone).
Ting's the cheapest for the lightest usage for 1-2 smartphones as well, thanks to their lack of bundling. I researched the different price plans of every MVNO & carrier available in my area -- nobody rivaled them for 2+ users, and while T-Mobile's $30/"unlimited" (texts/min *or* data, not both) was close for a single user, it left no margin for changes or error.
It should also be mentioned that Ting has extremely good prices on refurbished phones, and...well, I've been tempted to ask on their blog whether they spike their service reps' food with MDMA, because they're so friendly and eager to please that it's kind of creepy.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
Unless the other family members are part of the business, if that person ever gets audited they're going to get dinged. You're only supposed to include actual business costs...in the case where something is shared between personal and business use you're supposed to pro-rate the amount you use it for business.
It's hard to go wrong with Ting. Just with the month-to-month billing, one month might be high, next month could be low. It's much better than every other plan's high rates every month. With a little modification to my behavior (not downloading 100MB podcasts on the cell network), I had gotten my plan down to around $20 a month.
Another weird thing, apparently Sprint was slowing down old phones in my area. My EVO 4G was ok, getting 300-500 kbps when I first got it. A few years down the road, it's pulling 50-150kbps. I had been waiting 4 years for WiMAX 4G to come to my area with no luck. Why upgrade to a better phone, when the network is so sucky and moving to LTE means it'll be another 10-20 years for it to come to my area?
I bail on Sprint, and go to Ting. After a year there, I noticed the Galaxy S3's prices on eBay are reasonable now. I make the upgrade. The first thing I did was a speed test. It's doing 1500kbps. WTF? The old EVO was barely chugging along mere seconds ago. If Sprint wasn't so stupid, I guess throttling old phones to entice me to upgrade, I wouldn't have bailed on them. In the end, I win.
will be cheaper for many people who are not heavy cell users. T-Mo has a plan 1000 minutes for $100+sales tax good for a year. Even if you use 400 mins a month it still ends up cheaper as you dont have all the fcc crapola charges tacked on. Not good if you text a ton as those are 10c each way.
I listen to This Week in Google on the TWiT network, that's how I heard of ting.com. I don't regret it. I bought a refurbished Samsung phone for $90 and have averaged $25 per month since then.