How to get your wireless carrier’s network for less – if you can live with these trade-offs
phone’s mobile hot spot feature.
► Talking Tech newsletter: Sign up for our guide to the week’s biggest tech news
Verizon
Verizon Wireless’ Do More and Play More unlimited plans, each $80 a month on one line, cover 50GB of priority data (meaning your connection shouldn’t slow to ease network congestion until you exceed that threshold), 15GB of mobile hot spot, and access to Verizon’s fast but scarce millimeter-wave 5G.
Verizon’s prepaid plans offer rates that drop after three and then nine months: Unlimited Plus, with “mm-wave” 5G but no priority data and only 10GB of hot spot, begin at $75 and descends to $60.
Visible, a Verizon subsidiary, offers unlimited data for just $40 monthly. Its trade-offs: no priority data, mobile hot spot limited to 5Mbps on one device at a time, a 200Mbps speed limit – even on mm-wave 5G – and no in-store support.
U.S.’s two biggest cable operators may find they offer better deals than Verizon’s network, mm-wave 5G included. Comcast Xfinity Mobile’s $45 Unlimited plan has 20GB of priority data but a woeful 600Kbps hot-spot speed limit; its $60 “By the Gig” $60-per-month 10GB plan, however, covers full-speed hot-spot use. Charter’s Spectrum Mobile, meanwhile, has a $45 Unlimited plan with 5GB of hot spot – but breaks downloads to 1Mbps after 20GB.NFTs, metaverse top topics as trade show embraces virtuality
ATT
ATT customers have similar alternatives to its $75 Unlimited Extra (50GB of priority data, 15GB hot spot). ATT Prepaid’s Unlimited Plus runs $50 on a new line for 22GB of priority data and 10GB of mobile hot spot – if you sign up for auto-pay.
Alternatives to ATT: Cricket Wireless, an ATT subsidiary, beats that via a $55 unlimited prepaid plan with unlimited priority data and 15GB of mobile hot spot.
Or consider Consumer Cellular, a third-party service that also resells T-Mobile’s network: Its $55 unlimited plan gives 50 GB priority status. It has mobile hot spot turned off by default, but customer service will activate it for free.
The FAA says 5G could interfere with planes: Is its concern actually warranted?
T-Mobile
At T-Mobile, its Magenta plan’s $70 taxes-and-fees-included rate – with 100 GB of priority data and 5 GB of mobile hot spot – leaves little to save with its prepaid Unlimited Plus, at $60 before taxes for 50 GB of priority data and 10 GB of mobile hot spot.
Alternative to T-Mobile: Its Metro by T-Mobile prepaid service charges $50 a month for unlimited data with 35 GB of it priority (although T-Mobile subscriber traffic takes precedence) and 5 GB of mobile hot spot, plus 100 GB of Google One storage.
Mint Mobile
And Mint Mobile, a third-party reseller, charges as little as $30 a month for unlimited service with 35 GB of priority data (also ranked below T-Mobile traffic) and 5 GB of mobile hot spot. That discount, however, requires paying for at least three months’ service. Mint has no in-store help.
skip the pricey flagship phones and buy a $400-ish device like Apple’s iPhone SE or Google’s new Pixel 5a direct from the manufacturer and unlocked, freeing you to use cheap prepaid SIMs whenever you do travel internationally.