I received a question from our reader, Marie about mobile phone service:
I was just wondering if you had any advice about cell phones and service on a budget. My husband and I have had Virgin Mobile flip phones forever and now need to get something with GPS and a phone for our 10 year old. She is just to many places at once and we need to get a hold of her. What do you recommend?
Our family is in the same boat — we’ve recently reached the golden age of parenting: Our oldest can stay home alone WITH HER SIBLINGS. Hallelujah and praise be to Dutch Bros. coffee huts. The only problem? We don’t have a home phone. Seeing as we don’t want to be total delinquents, we need to find a way to facilitate communication while we are out partying like 40-year old rock stars. (Also known as “going to Home Depot at 4:00 in the afternoon without kids for 23 minutes.” Seriously? It’s not 1986.)
So, I tasked my husband, Will with finding us and Marie’s family an affordable, basic mobile plan that will act as an old-school home phone and possibly a way for our older kids to go somewhere and still communicate with us. As always, Will delivered with a bit-o-tech education along with his recommendations:
Our family’s goal is to add a single line with BASIC service to include phone calls and texts. Data is not a concern because the kid can connect to WiFi. We can already add a line to our existing AT&T Family Share Plan for $15 per month so the goal is to find a plan cheaper than that.
My target price is $10 or less per month with the maximum awesome available. We will also be looking for a smartphone in hopes that it will play Dora the Explorer and the Asian woman who reviews Play-Doh products with the YouTube app at least seven hours per day while connected to WiFi.
Gone are the days of free phone with two year contract, so I’m looking at buying a phone and activating it on a service. I need to know which service we are going to use before I buy the phone because it must be built for the particular kind of cell service. There are two kinds:
GSM (AT&T/T-Mobile) where phones are easily unlocked and used on each other’s networks
CDMA (Sprint/Verizon) where phones are custom built for their network and are not easily used on any other service
There are a ton of small wireless companies, and they all use the networks of one of the four big companies noted. Most or all of these little services sell phones, and phones are also available on eBay and Amazon, Best Buy, Fry’s, etc. If you are going to use a GSM network, you can buy any “unlocked” phone and get it to work. However, your safest bet is always to buy a phone that is made for the specific network you will be using.
Companies to consider:
Virgin Mobile (uses Sprint network) — $6.98 for 20 minutes talk and 20 texts per month
This is through Virgin’s “Custom” plans available only at WalMart with three available phones priced at $59.99 to $129.99. With this service you choose your plan first and then use it. If you use more talk and/or text, there is a pre-assigned rate if enabled.
Ting (uses Sprint network) — $6 for an active phone with $0 charges until you use it. Then the charges are graduated based on how much of each service you use.
This is a service that you pay after you use. Whatever level you reached with your use, that is what you are charged for the pay period. Ting uses Sprint phones, and you can bring your own or shop for a Ting phone on their website. Prices for smartphones start under $50 and go all the way to the moon.
Republic Wireless (uses ALL WiFi networks and Sprint network) — $5 for unlimited talk, text, and data through WiFi only; $10 for unlimited talk, text (WiFi and cell), and data through WiFi.
Republic has special phones that seamlessly swap between WiFi and cell networks during calls. They have several options starting at $99 (get more info about the available phones here).
Our family’s experience:
Last fall I bought a brand new unlocked GSM smart phone off Amazon (made out of the lowest quality Chinese garbage) and activated it on our AT&T network. The phone cost $49 on Amazon and is worth about $2. You can download apps to it, but you can’t actually run the app because it cripples the frail phone. So the only thing the phone is good for is calls. It’s not even fast at texting. My $49 purchase from Amazon has value in that I can confidently recommend against you doing the same. See? I just saved you $50.
We ended up buying the $149 phone from Republic because it is twice as fast and twice as much of every technical feature. It is a Motorola Android smart phone, and it does everything fast. It does not freeze up or slow down. I LOVE it (read: Lucy (age 2) can watch a lady peel play dough off of miniature horses for four hours at a time on YouTube).
We bought the $5 per month WiFi-only service plan from Republic Wireless because we learned that 911 can be called from anywhere (with or without WiFi) so the kids don’t really need the ability to call outside of WiFi. The talk and text service through WiFi is perfect — no echo or delay like how Vonage used to be. I am now seriously considering getting rid of our AT&T service completely. I don’t think we need to be connected to the internet all day.
What tips do you have for finding an affordable cell plane for kids?
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Our daughter was entering middle school and was going to start walking home on her own, so we thought it was time for a cellphone, but didn’t want her on a contract and wanted to the cellphone for emergency uses only. At the same time, she has been really, really wanting an iPhone. My sister upgraded her phone and gave us her old iPhone 4S. We activated it on PagePlus, put a cute/protective cover on it and gave it to our daughter as a birthday gift. We put $10 every 3 months on it, so she has minutes for emergencies, and the balance rolls over every time we put $ in the account before the 3 months is up. It works out great because our daughter mostly uses wifi for everything she does, including chat with friends. So basically, it’s a glorified iPod with the ability to make calls in emergencies and since PagePlus uses the Verizon network it’s very, very reliable. It’s worked out fantastic all the way around. And it does have the ability to call 911 (from home and away from home).
By the way, before my sister so generously donated her old cellphone to us, we searched for iPhones on eBay and you can easily score a 4/4S for $150 or less. As for GPS, there are map apps that you can download and use offline/without data.
I have Republic and it honestly is my first smartphone because it was too expensive on ATT to get one. I have the $10 month plan and it is fine. There are times I wish I had 3G or 4G but it is rare enough not to bother with. The nice thing about them is that you can switch to the 3G for $25 if you want and then switch back. So if I am going to be traveling, I would probably do that. I was glad to be done with ATT. We will be using this plan for my son when I can talk my husband into letting him have a phone.
Have you considered a pay-as-you-go plan? I had a contract with AT&T for about 10 years, and switched to their pay-as-you-go service 4 years ago. I buy a $25 card, which lasts 90 days. I buy a $4.99 texting plan for 200 texts each month, and never use more than 30 minutes of talk time, so it works out to be about $8 per month.
Jessica I do the same thing with the $25/3 months. Works out great for us! There are 3 of us so I have it works out to be $25/month for 3 of us to have a cell phone. Is the $4.99 texting for 3 months or 1 month?
If you don’t have a home phone and are concerned about kids at home like I am, we got the ooma box for Internet home phone. It’s about 80 to get the box one time fee, and I pay 4.58 a month for home phone service. What I like about ooma and why I went with it was I can register my home address with 911. Cell phones don’t do this. Also, my kids tend to change the ringer or silence it and forgot to change back when I need them too. I also like having the home number because sometimes I forgot to change my ringer from office to home and when my friend need to reach me in emergency they call the house. I never get solicitation calls either. It’s super easy to hook up.
For cell phone we have t-mobile. I have friends with cricket who is now att and also sprint and they have bad reception in alot of areas. I would say verizon or t-mobile. Also t-mobile had a family plan for 4 phones for 100.
I do like that option for 911 registration! Thanks for the suggestion!
Ting rocks. You can get used Sprint phones from Ting or EBay etc. You only pay for what you use.
If you use my link you will get $25 off to join!
My two kids cost me an average $28 a month.
I don’t get involved in this stuff, because all I use is an old flip-phone, and pay $3/month for 30 minutes + $.10 for each additional minute (T-mobile), and I never ever text. But Consumer Cellular, available at Sears, is supposed to be a very good service. They have plans as low as $10 a month, I think. I recall a 200-minute, $15 plan from their brochure. The clerk at Sears said you can usually use your own phone and get a free SIM card (with rebate) from them, or buy one of theirs.
We use puretalk. The first phone is 10/mo and the rest are 5/mo. You get 60 minutes per phone to share among everyone. The best news is we can use our unlocked iPhones so we can do wifi etc. so for 15/mo we have two iPhones and we don’t seem to need moe minutes yet.
I’m curious what kind of internet speed these have – 3G or 4G? Because where we live, very few businesses have unlocked wifi, so a person would need 3G or 4G to find directions or do most anything besides texts and phone calls. And 3G is soooooo slow, as slow as dial-up internet used to be. 🙁
We use Page Plus Cellular and its cheapest plan is $10 for 3 months. We have found it to be perfect for us since we only use wireless and not data. We use an Android phone that is compatible. It’s only 3G (just FYI in case that’s important to you)