anyone had luck with these fly-by night cell carriers?
I see ads all the time for shit like consumer Cellular, mint mobile, stuff that rents time on Verizon towers and sells you a plan for like half the price.
I'm trying real hard to de-Xfinity myself but the cellular plan is the cheapest of all the major companies. Yes, I know they also piggyback off the Verizon network, but at least they have 24/7 support
I was hesitant to try it, but once I ported my number over, it's the best service I've ever used.
It's $5/month, and your phone calls and texts are forwarded to an XMPP account. Voice mails are transcibed and sent as a text, with the included audiofile. It works over the internet, so you can have multiple phones with the number, and you can use your computer for the service as well.
For data, I use jmp.chats data only esim. It's $7/year + $5/gig but the data never expires.
They offer SIM cards, or you can use it with any other carrier. And for the record, I've used visible wireless, mint mobile, cricket, and boost and they all work great. They're just MVNO's that ride on the big 3 carriers networks. Whatever has good coverage in your area will be fine. I haven't used a major carrier in over 10 years.
JMP is great! I ported over my number that I've had the longest to them probably 2 years ago when it was still beta. It's so convenient having sms on multiple devices and my computer. I have all calls from jmp forwarded to my phone with service tho. And I just switched that from AT&T prepaid to US mobile.
Edit: I also like popping in to read their group chat. Lots of nerd talk in there.
Also, I'm pretty sure if you ask their support you can still get a free XMPP server with JMP service via Snikket.