Cheaper Phone Bill

Research for a Cheaper Phone Bill

All bills were paid monthly unless otherwise stated.

This guy had a dream. He wanted to make his cellphone plan cheaper. The plan was to dismiss the worries of limited texts and minutes while creating a phone/service package that will be $32 or less every month without any issues with the phone, data amount, cell-phone number, and coverage.

As a baseline, he was using an HTC One SV with Boost Mobile. The HTC One SV has 8 GB of storage, NFC, and uses a CDMA modem. He was paying approximately $35 for 1 GB of 4G LTE data and unlimited throttled data afterwards. His service had given him unlimited calls and texts. It is important to know that Boost Mobile operates solely on Sprint’s cellular towers. After researching, he made a confident statement that he was able to deal with a maximum of 1 GB of data per month.

To eliminate the paying for minutes and calls, an VOIP solution was ideal. At the time of writing, the only known solutions were Ring.to and Google Voice. VOIP solutions always use data as they operate over the internet. Both services are free to use while providing unlimited calling and texting. But, Google Voice charges a fee to port a number into their service. Google Voice charges $20 to port a number into their service. To take a number out of Google Voice, customers must pay $3. Ring.to was the cheaper solution, as their service does not appear to make money.

Around August 15th, this guy started the process of testing Ring.to. He created a Ring.to account and ported his Google Voice number to Ring.to. Google charged $3 with the transfer process taking around 24 and a half hours. Afterwards, the new number was transferred. He referred to this number as his backup number. For the next few days, WiFi was being used. He noted that the Ring.to service worked as expected.

Around August 20th, he ported his personal number from Boost Mobile to Ring.to. The process took nearly 25 hours. The service with Boost Mobile was canceled, and the associated phone ceased to have a cellular connection. The phone could still be used on WiFi. He used his backup phone number for calls until he received his new phone.

Which phone was the best while staying under $250? This guy required that this phone needed to have an NFC chip, 16 GB of storage, Android Lolipop operating system, and a GSM modem. Your requirements will not be the same as his. The GSM modem was to take advantage of the GSM networks. The two biggest cooperations who run GSM networks are AT&T and T-Mobile. AT&T and T-Mobile both allow people to use sim cards as users can switch between different services quicker than CDMA users. For example, if a person was traveling to Australia, that person can buy a sim card in Australia and make calls shortly after the purchase.

The cheapest unused phone that met this guy’s requirements was priced at $199 without tax. This phone was the Asus Zenfone 2. The link to the product page is viewable on Amazon. He shipped it with Amazon Prime for free 2-day shipping.

Afterwards, he researched the cheapest carrier that will offer one GB of data. US Mobile met the requirements. They use the T-Mobile’s networks. Their website shows that they have a flexible pricing table. The base fee is $2.70. For only one GB with neither minutes nor texts costs $15. He paid $17.70! He also paid $3.99 for a sim card and $5 to have it shipped with USPS Priority.

The service was not great in his home town (in York County, PA.) His school’s location also had adequate service. When visiting family on the Eastern Shore on labor day weekend, the service was terrible. The signal was either low or non-existent while traveling down. While he was at a few yard sales south of Berlin, the towers were using a network labeled “E” (a variant of 2G that supports data). When his car malfunctioned down near Chestertown in Maryland, He was only using 2G and couldn’t use his VOIP app to call anyone. As a result, he was dependent on text messages.

Several days after labor day weekend, this guy decided that he needed to research the differences between AT&T’s and T-Mobile’s networks. He used Sensorly; a website that provides unbiased information about different networks. By looking at their maps, he observed that both T-Mobile and AT&T provide the same 4G LTE coverage. But AT&T provides more 3G coverage. T-Mobile relied more on 2G towers. He favored AT&T’s network and did research on the AT&T mobile virtual network operators (MVNO’s). He looked for services that offered one GB of data for less than $30 per month. Tracfone was the best choice, as the company allows you to pay for service days, minutes, texts, and megabytes separately. For $6 with the Service Protection Plan, Tracfone will give you 30 service days. For $15, customers may use 750 MB of 4G data. The data connection is halted when you exceed your data allotment. This convinced him to buy a Tracfone plan.

Tracfone has provided its customers with excellent service all along interstate 83. Despite having troubles with starting the service, the customer support agent was very friendly while being able to solve the issues.

Both the author and publisher of this research paper are not affiliated with any outside institution. Any content and views expressed in this research paper solely expresses the views of the author.

Phone Research

The phones that this guy found are listed below.

Requirements

  • Android 4.4 or higher
  • 3G
  • Camera with 1 MP
  • 16 GB of space (at least 8GB internal memory)

Phones

  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/#/sort_data-price_asc/filter_android/filter_wifi/filter_bluetooth/filter_camera/filter_gps/
  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/alcatel-onetouch-conquest/
  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/zte-warp-sync/
  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/samsung-galaxy-prevail-lte/
  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/lg-volt-2/
  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/sharp-aquos-crystal/
  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/samsung-galaxy-s3-preowned/
  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/lg-g-stylo/
  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/boost-max-plus/ (liked the most)
  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/moto-g/
  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/moto-g-preowned/
  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/lg-tribute-2/
  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/kyocera-hydro-icon/
  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/lg-volt/
  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/zte-speed/
  • http://www.boostmobile.com/shop/phones/moto-e-lte/