Verizon And AT&T Quietly Make Wireless Plan Changes

Megalith

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To nobody’s surprise, Verizon and AT&T are raising prices again. Upgrade fees are going up by $10 at Big Red, while the latter is making another attempt at penalizing those with unlimited plans.

Verizon Wireless has confirmed that it will be raising its upgrade fees from $20 to $30 for any customers on their device payment plans or if they pay in full for their new phones. Additionally, the carrier is no longer offering 2-year contracts for its existing customers (it ditched contracts for new customers some time ago). …AT&T has a smaller change in store that just affects any of their customers that have been grandfathered into their old unlimited plans. Beginning with their March 2017 bills, they will have to pay an additional $5 a month. Those same customers had their plan prices raised by $5 about a year ago.
 
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Keep raising prices, I have no problems returning to cox phone at home for $14.99 per month.
 
If, when upgrading devices, every customer said, I'll just go to (insert other company), the upgrade fees would go away. Upgrading is occasionally time consuming (and thus costly), but it's not the norm and it should be part of the cost of business. They're already making more by not subsidizing phones (the total cost for buying outright is more than the old price - subsidy). I think T-Mobile might be the exception to that rule, but I'm not sure if they raised rates since they first started doing it.

I know when I upgrade with Sprint there's no fee, so long as I do it over the web (though if you're forced into a store, I believe they still do it for free...it was for me last year).
 
MagicJack is only $35 a year.
Yeah, if you don't need a mobile, then there are plenty of cheap home options, but I generally wouldn't consider a land line a replacement for my mobile. If I did, I definitely wouldn't be paying $55/month (with tax) for one
 
Boost Mobile: $30/mo on autopay for unlimited talk, text and 2GB of full speed data (Approx 12-20Mbps) before throttling (to 1.5Mbps), Boost has roaming now, is Sprint prepaid.

Project Fi: $40/mo for unlimited talk, text and 2GB of data, overages are $10 per additional GB, each megabyte unused is credited onto your next month's bill. Uses T-Mobile, Sprint AND US Cell.

Unless you're in the sticks with poor cell coverage, like the state of Montana, there's really no reason to bother with Verizon or AT&T... especially as there's a shitload of other MVNOs that give you Verizon and AT&T tower coverage for half the price.
 
My barber has Boost mobile and he says its great. I am a total phone noob but can you just buy a phone to work on any network?
 
Boost Mobile: $30/mo on autopay for unlimited talk, text and 2GB of full speed data (Approx 12-20Mbps) before throttling (to 1.5Mbps), Boost has roaming now, is Sprint prepaid.

Project Fi: $40/mo for unlimited talk, text and 2GB of data, overages are $10 per additional GB, each megabyte unused is credited onto your next month's bill. Uses T-Mobile, Sprint AND US Cell.

T-Mobile family plan costs me $90/mo for 3 phones (would only be $10 more for a 4th phone). Unlimited talk & text, and 2GB high speed data.
Plus I have limit (low speed) data roaming to Canada, Mexico and many other countries.
Was great when we were in Canada, we could text each other without any roaming costs.
 
Had a grandfathered AT&T plan - they started screwing me with the throttling. Moved to prepaid and haven't looked back. At least there are options unlike the cable companies.
 
Had a grandfathered AT&T plan - they started screwing me with the throttling. Moved to prepaid and haven't looked back. At least there are options unlike the cable companies.

DirecTV, dish network, sling TV (depending on what you watch). I have never had tv service from a cable company.
 
DirecTV, dish network, sling TV (depending on what you watch). I have never had tv service from a cable company.

Sorry should have specified ISP. I have no broadband option other than my cable company. For TV I have satellite or cable company (can't even get OTA here - sux)
 
Boost Mobile: $30/mo on autopay for unlimited talk, text and 2GB of full speed data (Approx 12-20Mbps) before throttling (to 1.5Mbps), Boost has roaming now, is Sprint prepaid.

Project Fi: $40/mo for unlimited talk, text and 2GB of data, overages are $10 per additional GB, each megabyte unused is credited onto your next month's bill. Uses T-Mobile, Sprint AND US Cell.

Unless you're in the sticks with poor cell coverage, like the state of Montana, there's really no reason to bother with Verizon or AT&T... especially as there's a shitload of other MVNOs that give you Verizon and AT&T tower coverage for half the price.
I'd love to switch to Project Fi but don't wanna give up my iPhone. :(
 
T-Mobile's decent, but their customer support isn't very good at resolving anything beyond the very basic issues. We talked to a lot of different reps and none of them knew their own products beyond their free phones and cheap wifi router. We had to provide them with links to support documents on their own website to inform them of the correct product pricing, and guide them through each step before we could get an escalation for advanced troubleshooting. I gave up on getting half of our issues resolved after it took them 3 weeks to mail us new sim cards, started charging us for the family plan weeks before shipping them, and then wanted to charge us $15 to port each number from prepaid to postpaid because it took so long to receive the cards. Instead, I created a google voice number and told them to delete my old number, so I only use T-Mobile's data now. I travel a lot and I'll switch to Project Fi the instant that I confirm that it removes T-Mobile's 200Mb per month domestic roaming limit.
 
My barber has Boost mobile and he says its great. I am a total phone noob but can you just buy a phone to work on any network?
I know that if you buy an iPhone outright, it'll work on virtually any network in the world. Aside from that, I think they're either CDMA or GSM (though LTE may work on both networks if it has the right bands).
 
I know that if you buy an iPhone outright, it'll work on virtually any network in the world. Aside from that, I think they're either CDMA or GSM (though LTE may work on both networks if it has the right bands).

Boost is wholly owned by Sprint. However, they do CDMA whitelisting, so you'll have to buy a phone from them if you want to use the service.
 
Boost is wholly owned by Sprint. However, they do CDMA whitelisting, so you'll have to buy a phone from them if you want to use the service.
Then i wouldn't use Boost. If I went with an MVNO, I'd probably get Cricket. It's cheap and AT&T has a better network.
 
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I'd listen to him. Hasn't steered you wrong yet.
 
I
T-Mobile's decent, but their customer support isn't very good at resolving anything beyond the very basic issues. We talked to a lot of different reps and none of them knew their own products beyond their free phones and cheap wifi router. We had to provide them with links to support documents on their own website to inform them of the correct product pricing, and guide them through each step before we could get an escalation for advanced troubleshooting. I gave up on getting half of our issues resolved after it took them 3 weeks to mail us new sim cards, started charging us for the family plan weeks before shipping them, and then wanted to charge us $15 to port each number from prepaid to postpaid because it took so long to receive the cards. Instead, I created a google voice number and told them to delete my old number, so I only use T-Mobile's data now. I travel a lot and I'll switch to Project Fi the instant that I confirm that it removes T-Mobile's 200Mb per month domestic roaming limit.

Project Fi use T-mobile, sprint, and us cellular. Their roaming limits don't apply to project Fi. $20 unlimited talk and text, $10 per GB of data. You only pay for what you used and refund what you don't use. International data is the same rate. The service uses any of the 3 companies at any given time depending which provides the best signal. Their roaming partners are also available as well.
 
Project Fi use T-mobile, sprint, and us cellular. Their roaming limits don't apply to project Fi. $20 unlimited talk and text, $10 per GB of data. You only pay for what you used and refund what you don't use. International data is the same rate. The service uses any of the 3 companies at any given time depending which provides the best signal. Their roaming partners are also available as well.
Hmm, I did more research and Fi coverage seems to be dependent on local agreements between the 3 carriers and their roaming partners. I've read multiple reports of users saying that if you roam into a Verizon area and lose signal when connected to T-Mobile, project fi won't roam on Verizon. However, if you were connected to US Cellular when you lost connection (or dial Project Fi's US Cellular code *#*#34872#*#*), you can roam on Verizon because US Cellular has a roaming agreement. That's just for roaming coverage. I imagine the monthly roaming limits might still exist depending on the local partner agreements.

With T-Mobile postpaid, I know there are a few areas where roaming on AT&T or a mvno doesn't count against their 200MB monthly quota because of the local agreements. I think the network's too complex for any carrier to give a solid answer on that.
 
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I use MetroPCS...T-Mobile network, works well. $90/mo for 3 lines, unlimited talk and text, 2GB full speed data, throttled after. No taxes, no fees.
 
Boost Mobile: $30/mo on autopay for unlimited talk, text and 2GB of full speed data (Approx 12-20Mbps) before throttling (to 1.5Mbps), Boost has roaming now, is Sprint prepaid.

Project Fi: $40/mo for unlimited talk, text and 2GB of data, overages are $10 per additional GB, each megabyte unused is credited onto your next month's bill. Uses T-Mobile, Sprint AND US Cell.

Unless you're in the sticks with poor cell coverage, like the state of Montana, there's really no reason to bother with Verizon or AT&T... especially as there's a shitload of other MVNOs that give you Verizon and AT&T tower coverage for half the price.



TMobile and Sprint have awful coverage in far more places than Montana. I tried Project Fi but I had to cancel as I would have no coverage right outside of Cincinnati.


Cricket: $45/mo on autopay. Unlmited talk, text and 8GB of data at 8-9Mbps (Seems plenty fast to me). Uses AT&T's network so you get a signal pretty much anywhere.
 
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