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Comment by kcb | Hacker News Reader

My monthly plan payment would not go down if I brought my own phone.

You sure about that? Look up Visible, Mint Mobile, Total Wireless, US Mobile, Tello... Same carrier networks, same quality of service. You can even pay a bit extra for prioritized data and other fancy features. You can get basic unlimited plans for $15-30 and premium plans in the $30-50 range vs $100+ at the big carriers. The only difference is that you aren't paying for your "free" phone.

Yeah, I got screwed by both Sprint and Verizon in turn back in the day, so for ages I've just done T Mobile's prepaid plan with an unlocked phone.

Works great, no particular coverage issues, never used enough data to hit any notable throttling.

In this case you’ve switched providers, though. Might be a good idea but doesn’t say anything about whether, e.g., ATT will lower your price if you bring your own phone.

I’ve read that these virtual networks also get lower prioritization so you can get low bandwidth when the higher tier users are active. Not sure how accurate that is.

That’s the whole point of buying your phone unlocked: to allow competition between carriers. Growing up in Europe we had very cheap prepaid plans but you still paid more for out of network than in-network, so lots of budget conscious people had two or more prepaid sims and swapped between them. No monthly bill and you add money to whichever number is low. It helped that receiving calls or sms was free, so you could ring someone and have them call you back if you were a bit low on funds.

Man thinking back, I probably got away with less than 2 dollars a month back in 2006-2010 era.

Broadband Map tracks priority levels for the big three US carriers' plans and the MVNOs they support. I paid $225 promo pricing for one year of Visible+ Pro with unlimited priority Verizon data and all taxes and fees included ($18.75/mo), so I can pay full price for a flagship phone and end up ahead of any carrier phone deal.

https://broadbandmap.com/priority

That’s a useful resource. Thanks.

And if you don’t use a lot of data, at least US Mobile has a by the gig plan. My family has three phones on it for a total $30 per month. Those months that we go over, it automatically charges $2 for each extra GB, with data pooled between the lines.

It is easy to switch between Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile as well. This was helpful for me as all three of the networks normally have one bar or less at my house. T-mobile WiFi calling works more reliably than Verizon.

Your particular plan might not but there are BYOD plans that are significantly cheaper than anything you'll get on contract

There are plans available where that is the case. So the solution would be to switch plans or carriers to one that doesn't bundle the phone price in.

HN apparently can't fathom that people pay for Verizon because the service is good. I get Verizon free through work and sorry it's noticeably faster than Visible. The discount plans aren't actually the same but cheaper. If you were going to be a Verizon customer anyway then the free phone is actually free. You don't get a discount for BYOD and the service is the same price whether you take the phone or not.

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