Crunching the Numbers On Shared Cellphone Contracts

itwbennett writes "The Wall Street Journal has a handy online calculator to help you sort out which phone plan is best for you. But one thing you'll notice is that shared or 'family' plans rarely offer any real savings, or benefits beyond the convenience of having a single bill, says blogger Kevin Purdy, who is bracing himself to propose a phone plan separation with his wife."

What About the MVNOs?

[Anonymous Coward]

That calculator leaves out the MVNOs which are decidedly cheaper. The one that comes to mind is Bandwidth.com's Republic Wireless which offers unlimited data, texting and voice No Contract for either $19/month or $29 month, depending on how you purchase their phone. (Using the WSJ calculator, the next closest price I could find for unlimited data was T-Mobile at $70/month) The main catch is that you have to buy a specific phone--the Motorola DEFY XT, which again, depending on the plan you choose is going to be either $199 or $99. They have a special feature that I think is quite interesting--probably all of the carriers should allow this--you can connect to a WiFi and use that to make or receive calls--this is a good idea for bad reception areas and basements. The phone itself seems to be okay. Its reviewed well, but it is a bit outdated. At least it is a durable, waterproof phone though. Reviews for the phone and for Republic Wireless seem to be quite good over all. Here are a couple of the best ones that I have seen: A customer review http://longmeadcrossing.com/republicWireless.htm [longmeadcrossing.com] Time Magazine Review: http://business.time.com/2013/02/22/the-19-per-month-smartphone-is-actually-getting-decent-reviews/ [time.com]

Re:What About the MVNOs?

[Phreakiture]

The calculator is also wrong.

According to this calculator, I should be paying $210/month before any taxes and fees, with my particular carrier and profile. I am, in fact, paying $140 after all taxes and fees. Given that it provides incorrect information for what I know, I don't feel I can trust it to provide me correct information for comparison purposes.

Re:What About the MVNOs?

[Seumas]

I dunno, I would call a couple thousand text messages and at least a couple thousand minutes of voice per month for around $50 to be pretty damn decent. My Sprint plan was more than $50/mo and I only got something like 1,000 minutes and zero texts. And if I didn't use all of those minutes, it was just tough shit. The MVNO I have been with the last two years can give me 2,000 texts and 2,000 minutes for cheaper than the Sprint plan and if I use less than that, I just don't have to pay for it. The months where I use 0 everything, I pay $6. The months where I use 3,000 minutes, I pay about $52 or so. The months where I use a couple thousand minutes and a couple thousand text messages, I pay about $50.

The only way it would probably become a bad deal is if I used gigabytes of data per month (compared to an unlimited plan somewhere) . . . but since I use a phone as (gasp!) a phone, I would use data for jack shit.