If you’re the type of person who consumes as little data as possible (although how you do that is probably a mystery), then you will probably be looking for the most minimal mobile plan that you can get, which offers the barest features as well. Wireless internet and mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) FreedomPop is now introducing just that with their $5 a month prepaid family plan which you can get for up to 10 lines. The “catch” is that you only get 1GB of data to be shared with all of the lines you add to your plan.
The $5 is technically not a monthly fee but rather a line access that you have to pay for each phone on the account. With that you will get unlimited talk and text, as well as the aforementioned 1GB of shareable data. Nowadays, that 1GB a month is pretty small fry given that we are heavy social media and messaging apps users. But if you’re able to always connect to WiFi when you do these things, then you will just have to pay a minimum of $5 and a maximum of $50 every month, the latter if you have up to 10 lines in your account.
But just in case you need more data, FreedomPop actually has more plans that can give you that, but of course you will have to pay a little more. $14.99 will get you 2GB, $34.99 will be for 4GB, $74.99 has 10GB, and if you really are a heavy data user, then you have to get the 25GB plan but also pay a huge $159.99 fee per month.
If you sign up during this initial period, you will get 500MB of extra data per line. It might not seem like a lot of course but if you’re only dealing with 1GB per month, that extra will still come in handy.
VIA: SlashGear
There are two big warnings I would give anyone considering FreedomPop: reliability and cost. 1st, reliability. FreedomPop uses ONLY VoIP; no cellular voice minutes are included. My experience is that the VoIP app is significantly less reliable than cellular minutes. I’m a light user, and in one week I experienced dropped calls and two complete service outages. The loss of ability to make voice calls is a big deal. 2nd, beware the low cost– FreedomPop charges extra for services we all expect are included, like voicemail, group messaging and picture messaging. Voicemail will cost you an extra $2.49 per line and MMS (group text and pic messaging) will cost you $1.99 per line. Again I’m a light user, maybe 500 voice mins and 500mb , and after using FreedomPop LTE GSM for a week I couldn’t stand the lack of reliability. The problem is not the data connection; it’s very strong and reliable. The main problem is the hit-and-miss reliability of voice calls.
Been using freedom pop over a year now. Three lines. Unlimited unlimited 1GB. Buy the $8 premium pro add on. For the lines we pay $30 total. It runs on Sprint towers locally but last year we drove cross country the times and it was reliable everywhere except the boonies of Montana.
I probably underrated the voice call performance. A few more weeks on the LTE GSM plan has been very reliable. I have not experienced a single service outage nor have I had dropped calls. Since I live in the boonies of Montana, the Sprint plan is not the best choice. But the GSM plan (AT&T) is good.
Remember that this includes all premium services and premium voice, so many of these things should be addressed. Just the fact that you cannot BYOP Sprint and the Sprint coverage and speed vs other carriers are some of the problems for me. Also, the customer service isn’t as good as regular carriers.