Walmart To Roll Out New Prepaid Phone Service From Boost Founder (bloomberg.com) 16
Walmart is expanding its offerings of prepaid phone plans with MobileX, a wireless service launched earlier this year by Boost cofounder Peter Adderton. Walmart will be MobileX's first and exclusive retail partner, the companies said in an announcement Tuesday. From a report: MobileX, which uses Verizon's network through a wholesale agreement, will be available on Walmart's website and in stores starting Tuesday, the companies said. It will offer unlimited pay-as-you go plans starting at $14.88 per month, and a lower-cost plan with customizable offerings starting at $4.08 a month. An artificial intelligence-powered guide that can anticipate a customer's data needs can customize plans tailored to their usage, the company said in a statement. [...] Walmart gives MobileX, which launched online in February, more visibility as a low-cost alternative to more expensive monthly plans from the big three wireless carriers. Still, cheap mobile services have had a difficult time dislodging people from more expensive plans. Many subscribers are locked into two and three-year phone payment plans and even those that could switch say the hassle is not worth the savings.
Re:Revolutionize? (Score:4, Insightful)
T-Mobile and Mint have offered $15/mo plans for years and years.
One of the catches with Mint is that to get their best prices you have to prepay for several months in advance. The other catch (which is true of most prepaid MVNOs these days) is that you'll have deprioritized service, which can be a real pain in the ass if you live somewhere where the population density is such that you're likely to experience slow data speeds on heavily loaded towers.
I used to be a rather big proponent of ditching expensive postpaid service and going with a cheaper prepaid option because it was a great way to save money. These days though, the carriers have reworked things so you get what you pay for is a big part of that cheaper prepaid experience. It's a bit like those energy saving schemes where the power company turns off your air conditioner during the hottest parts of the day in the summer. Yeah, you're saving money, but you're also getting a sub-par experience in exchange which may not actually be worth the savings.
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Yes, pay-as-you-go prepaid mobile phones were great for saving money in the 2000s and the very early 2010s.
Not so much now. I forfeited about a hundred dollars of minutes/data when I finally number-portabilitied my mobile phone back to postpaid Verizon.
Used to be a great deal. Now, not so much.
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T-Mobile and Mint have offered $15/mo plans for years and years.
One of the catches with Mint is that to get their best prices you have to prepay for several months in advance.
My Pixel 5a is on the Ting Flex plan [tingmobile.com] -- $10/month unlimited talk/text + $5/GB LTE/5G shared data (as available, default is 5G). The monthly charge to my CC is $17.24. They have other plans that include data, but I rarely use any cell data. Ting uses several underlying networks depending on your home location and phone. Mine is T-Mobile.
The other catch (which is true of most prepaid MVNOs these days) is that you'll have deprioritized service, ...
Don't know if this is true for Ting, but I've never had any service issues.
Re:Revolutionize? (Score:4, Informative)
you'll have deprioritized service, which can be a real pain in the ass if you live somewhere where the population density is such that you're likely to experience slow data speeds on heavily loaded towers.
That matters less than you might think in the era of carrier aggregation [wikipedia.org] and widespread 5G deployments. Most of the times it will come into play are going to be scenarios where your service is going to suck regardless. Someone in a very weak signal environment (e.g., very rural and/or in a building that heavily attenuates RF) who can only "hear" low bands, which no consumer device can aggregate, so you're starting out from behind the curve, now add the deprioritization to the mix.
I map cellular networks for a hobby and have devices on all three. I frequently do side by side speed tests with one device in a deprioritizatized state and the other not. There is a difference but most of the time it's meaningless. Right now, where I'm sitting, on Verizon, 134Mbps down/19Mbps up vs. 75Mbps down/13Mbps up. That's huge on paper but means absolutely nothing for the vast majority of use cases on a cell phone. The weak signal low band only scenario, my most recent side-by-side for that, 0.3Mbps down/0.08 up vs. 0.14Mbps down/0.07 up. Both of those experiences suck ass, one just sucks a little less, but not really enough to make a difference. In that scenario all you can expect is your calls to go through and nobody that I'm aware of treats MNVO calls any differently, they always get QCI 1 [wikipedia.org]. If you have a rooted Android and don't mind a non-zero chance of Chinese spyware (do not advocate this on your daily driver) you can play around with this app [google.com], it's eye opening.
Now, there are other reasons why MVNO service sucks, no domestic (much less international) roaming is the big one for me. Customer service used to be one but all three carriers have skimped on that in recent years to appease the Wall Street Gods (thanks for that Verizon, I love paying top dollar for your "premium" service and landing off-shore with a rep who knows less than I do about your product the one time a year I need help with something)
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Another day, another MVNO (Score:2)
My crystal ball predicts deprioritized service and a crappy selection of branded phones (and let's be honest, here in the USA people still choose a carrier because they want a good deal on that shiny new iPhone even if they ultimately are paying more for it over the long term).
Seriously. Look at the comments on any of the major prepaid carriers' Facebook pages. It's primarily customers whining that they can't get a "discount" on a new phone. Major carriers are where all the action is because the razor an
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and let's be honest, here in the USA people still choose a carrier because they want a good deal on that shiny new iPhone even if they ultimately are paying more for it over the long term
That's not how it works any more. Now the best you can do is to get 0% financing over 24 or 36 months. You aren't paying "extra" unless you count the "because we can" activation/upgrade fee, which ain't nothing I suppose, but that's the price of entry if you're too cheap to eat the cost up front and too stupid to go get the 0% financing directly from Apple/Google/Samsung.
I actually think it's a downgrade over the model of yesteryear, where you actually got a nice chunk off the price of the phone. On pap
Data not deprioritized (Score:2)
My crystal ball predicts deprioritized service and a crappy selection of branded phones
You'd expect that, but it's not the case here. MobileX plans apparently have QCI8 data prioritization on Verizon’s network. And on their website, they don't offer phones at all. Get a SIM and BYOD.
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Things are changing. A lot of people are burned out with having the latest and greatest smartphone, when for most people, a 5-7 year old smartphone does the job well enough, assuming the OS and apps get bug fixes and security patches. I'm seeing people move back to basic feature/flip phones because you can't be as easily hacked/traced/tracked through them, it gives a nice pleasure to clap the phone closed to end a call, and it is one less device to upgrade every few weeks.
It would be nice if the $14.95 No
Alt Link (Score:2)
Some more info:
https://www.fiercewireless.com... [fiercewireless.com]
This has its uses... (Score:3)
Depending on how much ID info you have to cough up before you can get a working, activated SIM, having a decent burner phone and plan can be nice, especially in this day and age of number harvesting and AI-honed spear phishing attempts, not to mention SIMjacking, and tons of other scams.
It might be wise for people to have a dual SIM phone, use the second MVNO SIM until someone on your contact list gets hacked and their contact list devoured and your phone on the spam lists, then buy a new subscription and SIM card, replace it, go from there.
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