{"id":6643,"date":"2014-02-03T10:04:23","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T18:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/?p=6643"},"modified":"2014-02-03T10:22:07","modified_gmt":"2014-02-03T18:22:07","slug":"about-cell-phone-providers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/2014\/02\/03\/about-cell-phone-providers\/","title":{"rendered":"About Cell Phone Providers"},"content":{"rendered":"

So you are wondering if a cell phone network might have good service in your area. Here’s a hint: There are just a couple big companies (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile) that have cell phone towers but there are many resellers. For example, the Sprint network is resold by several “mobile virtual network operators” like \u00a0Credo, Virgin, Boost, etc. Here’s a list of what cell phone companies use what networks<\/a>. All the secondary companies (like Virgin Mobile selling the Sprint network) are reselling a wholesale product at wholesale prices. That means they cost less and, like when you walk into a rug remnant store, sometimes parts are missing. What will work for you? I have no idea. Shopping for a new phone has been a big PITA for me. \u00a0Caveat emptor!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the US we’ve been doing the “2 year contract” thing with cell phones for a long time. There is a switch going on. Now the thing to do is:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. spend $10-$500 on a smart phone that is unlocked<\/li>\n
  2. buy prepaid monthly service from your favorite provider<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    For example: instead of going to the AT&T store and getting a $100 Android phone and spending $100\/month on a 2 year contract, you go to the Google Play Store and get a $400 Android phone and spend $50\/month with Straight Talk. Note that over the course of 2 years, the second option costs $1600 instead of $2500. The downside is that most of the resellers have less friendly customer service than the “full service” providers.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So you are wondering if a cell phone network might have good service in your area. Here’s a hint: There are just a couple big companies (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile) that have cell phone towers but there are many resellers. For example, the Sprint network is resold by several “mobile virtual network operators” like \u00a0Credo, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6644,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6643\/revisions\/6644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lee.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}