I don’t play this game. I buy my own unlocked phone and find prepaid cell service at a fraction of the cost.
This is the way
One of the three carriers in Canada is about to do away with prepaid entirely in December. That said, I have a pretty affordable monthly plan and I buy my phones outright.
Is it not normal that you can use any phone with any abonnement?
Yes, but some carriers lock the phones they sell so they only work with their subscriptions.
It just sounded like TOs only choice with a non-abo-phone was prepaid.
Why is prepaid service cheaper? I never understood why plans cost more. You would thing it would be the opposite.
Some reasons:
- prioritized traffic - if towers are congested, carrier customers get priority over prepaid customers
- name brand recognition - most have heard of Verizon, T-Mobile, or AT&T, few have heard of Tell, Ting, or RedPocket
- financing - you can get “free” upgrades from bigger carriers, whereas I pay cash w/ my prepaid service
- features - most big carriers support roaming (sometimes international roaming), whereas those tend to be ala carte w/ prepaid
In short, you get a bit more hassle w/ prepaid, but you get a lot of savings. I pay <$10/month for my service (1GB data, unlimited text, 300 minutes call), and I could get unlimited everything for $25-30 (depending on prepaid carrier). I bought my phone for <$400, whereas cost is less of a concern for big carriers since they often offer financing issues. I hate monthly payments, so I prefer to buy devices in cash and keep my monthly service payments low.
Plus the bills are paid up front. No collections department, or write-offs. Plus you get to earn interest if the customer pre pays multiple months or a year in advance.
Money up front vs people just not paying the bill at the end of the month.
Because prepaid customers get lower priority on the tower. If I’m in even a moderately crowded area, my connection speeds go to shit and nothing loads.
Basically, AT&T argues against it saying it’ll force them to innovate and be competitive with other services.
Won’t anyone think of the poor telecom shareholders??
All I see with that statement is, “Please Federal Government, hit me with your breakup hammer.”
hit me with your breakup hammer…
hard
https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/contact/phone/q19.htm
Canada:
First, locked phones are a thing of the past. Effective December 1, 2017, service providers will have to offer unlocked devices to their customers.
What are the benefits of having an unlocked device?
An unlocked device can be used on other networks, which means that you will be able to switch providers and keep the same phone. That means more flexibility for you, the consumer.
I want to reiterate this. Even second hand phones. Find the carrier and call them. They legally have to oblige.
I remember trying to do this when this first became law. Bell told me no anyways.
Same! Except it was Koodo. Told me that they were “exempt” from the ruling.
I helped someone with a second hand phone last year and I think it was Bell.
I accidentally broke my Sony after drowning it a little too hard. I remember going into a AT&T store at a mall in the us and having this literal conversation.
“Do you have the Pixel 7 Pro?”
“Yes! We do.”
“Does it come carrier unlocked?”
“No…”
“Thanks for your time”
I usually just buy my phone directly from a big box store never from a carrier
Same, and phones are good enough now that I feel perfectly comfortable buying a device that is two generations behind. I recently saved nearly $1300 by doing this ($1800 when it was new; I paid $550), and the phone feels just as fast and responsive as a brand new flagship.
I get all mine on eBay. There are some big-time sellers who are pros at reselling old phones and give an honest A-D rating. Same goes for PCs. Buy from the pros if you’re wary of the average Joe.
Exactly. I bought my Pixel 8 refurbished on eBay, and everything came as expected, and honestly in better shape than I was expecting. Find someone with good reviews, check for recent bad reviews, and then go for it. I paid <$400 and feel like I got a really good deal (I also stacked w/ an eBay discount, which rocked).
I bought my last phone new from Google Fi (fantastic deal) then transferred to a cheaper service after the required time, and the two phones I got before that (my SO’s and mine) were also from eBay. It’s a great way to go, just be careful and don’t buy something at the absolute lowest price since there’s probably a reason they’re advertised cheaper than the pack.
Got a Pixel 5 with a line in the screen for $120. The seller I’m mainly talking about, the one with grades, shows a picture of each phone and any damage.
I ended up just ordering one from a friend’s amazon account.
Out of curiosity, I would imagine that if someone goes the carrier-financing route, they’d still be on the hook for the cost of the phone even if they jumped to a different carrier? I don’t want to sound like I’m in support of at&t, but it doesn’t seem terribly unreasonable to keep a customer in place while they still have a balance on the hardware, or is there something else I’m missing?
I agree with what you’re saying. They got the phone from Carrier A with the expectation the phone plan went with it. Once the phone is paid off, they can take the phone to Carrier B. Since they phone is basically bought on an interest free loan, the interest is recouped by the plan, and the collateral for not paying is a loss of the phone plan and use of the phone. To leave the plan, payoff the phone.
That does require that, the moment the phone is paid off, it should be automatically unlocked. There shouldn’t have to be a request or additional waiting. And the customer should be notified that it’s unlocked along with an explanation that they can now use the phone with any other provider.
Automatic unlocking sounds like a pipe dream given the American business landscape, but there shouldn’t be any barriers to unlocking, even if the customer has to request it. People are likely stuck in the mindset of yesteryear where phones weren’t transferrable between carriers (especially with band compatibility of GSM vs CDMA), and I’d wager that many people don’t even realize it’s possible these days. I can’t say I blame carriers for wanting to maintain the illusion, and I don’t necessarily think they should be forced to advertise it, but the option should be plain and simple for those who want to exercise the right.
They automatically unlock it once it’s paid off. They have a disclaimer that it needs to stay on the network for 60 days after it’s paid off, but I think that’s a CYA because mine was unlocked within a day of the last payment.
I just checked and I have 6 unlocked phones on my account and never requested any of them.
I’m not from the US, but where I live it’s either (or a combination of):
- Your contract runs for two years. You can cancel it before, but still have to pay for the first two years. Often prices depend on which category of phone you want (say 20€/month for the service, 25€ with a “smart” phone, 30€ with a “premium” phone, 35€ with a “power” phone,…)
- You have two separate contracts, one for your phone, one for the mobile service. In this case you might pay for your phone 24 months, or 36, or whatever you agreed on and you can cancel the mobile service independently (assuming it’s not also locked to 2 years)
- Some carriers even allow you to only get a phone without a contract for the mobile service.
- If you finance a phone with your carrier, they’re legally bound to tell you what you pay for your phone monthly and how much for the service - there are many ways around that, unfortunately…
In any case, you get an unlocked phone.
You’re right. You still have to pay the remaining balance of the phone when you cancel early.
Like when you buy the thing sooner? Cuz we would remove all the bloatware they add. They used to do that to computers and we just stopped buying those shit things and building our own.
This is about network unlocking and not bootloader unlocking
Ah okay. I thought I was dead and went to heaven accidentally. I guess I’m back here. I’ll just place my nuts on the anvil so my new phone can be safely smashed over them. Or like how can I buy a phone that is actually truly mine and not the phone company’s?
Capitalist companies can be awfully communist when it comes to our cellphone.
That’s giving them too much credit. I think they want it to be theirs.
This literally happened to me recently. Was going to Germany for 2 weeks and wanted to use a cheap eSIM for data only. I asked them if they could unlock my phone so I could do this, and they said no since it’s not paid off. I still have a new months left to pay it off, and didn’t wanna drop $250 to do that so I just had to pay the international data plan. $12(maybe $10? Can’t remember) a day, 10 day maximum charge per cycle so I’ll pay $120 for mine and $60 for my partners. Instead of the $11 30gb data plan I wanted. I’m never buying a phone from a carrier again, I will always just buy it outright from now on. It was a stupid situation.
Also the data roaming sucked, each time we moved from one provider network to another we had to restart our phones as the data didn’t wanna work…
A burner phone with a hotspot would have been cheaper.
This is the way. Go buy a cheap phone when you get there and screw AT&FEE
Personally I always always buy phones with two sim slots. It’s super practical if you travel semi-often.
Idk about apple, but basically all of the mid-range androids have this feature. I guess this is about the US though, so it’s probably Apple.
It’ll lead to higher prices meaning they’ll charge more lol
When I bought my current phone they sent me one that was locked. I called at&t to try and get it resolved and they told me to pound sand because I’m not a customer. Huge ordeal that could have been solved in 2 minutes.
Meanwhile Australia is going to fore carriers to disconnect customers with devices that are not guaranteed to support emergency calling over volte. As there are still unsolved problems with detecting that, the providers fall back to only allowing devices they provided themselves.
god I hate how the government acts like smartphones need to call. smartphones are able to be used as computers and should be treated as such.
Yeah. I’m done with stupid phone number calling. Anybody can fake a phone number. It’s stupid as stupid can be. It’s time to stop using a phone number and personalize the phone a bit. Like 2FA for calls. If you don’t have it, send me a post card thru the USPS and I’ll let you have my 2FA access code. Meet me at the mall and I can get you my 2FA. And if I get to meet a bad guy, I’ll just change the 2FA for that one person.
