TIPS Cellular.everything

[krzykat]

I'm keeping my daughter on Visible, while wife and I are on T-Mo 55+ plan. I'll wait till I'm ready to upgrade phones when they do the BOGO when adding a new line, and then pull daugther back across to T-Mo. But now I see T-Mo willing to buy back with a $99 Pixel, maybe I should move wife over to Visible also for 3 months, and then move back. These companies are willing to pay a lot to regain you as a customer, so if you're willing to bounce back and forth, I bet you can maintain free phones for a while.

 

[ericboss]

FWIW I tried Visible and found their service awful. VZW must give Visible customers their bite of the bandwidth once everyone else has already feasted. I switched away in less than a week. I am in NYC if that matters to anyone who is consider switching. Maybe our density here makes low priority access a bigger issue than elsewhere.

 

[Brianmac]

I live in Central New Jersey and service has been great! Not only that, in one town over i get 5g and can get a speed test close to 200mbps...download... I went from Verizon, to cricket(which I had for 7 years and loved it), then when visible came out with free hotspot and unlimited data - I was sold...

remember YMMV....

 

[JFrost]

FWIW I tried Visible and found their service awful. VZW must give Visible customers their bite of the bandwidth once everyone else has already feasted. I switched away in less than a week. I am in NYC if that matters to anyone who is consider switching. Maybe our density here makes low priority access a bigger issue than elsewhere.

Might depend where in NYC. Manhattan? Sure. VZ seems to never have enough spectrum for themselves never mind sharing. I imagine life on their 2nd class network would be tough in many places if you're a resident.
But then ATT I think is also usually shit in Manhattan too.

I'm just a touch east and really haven't had any issues. Also been good in the places I tend to go. Incl. UWS a couple times now that I think about it. Was good up there if I remember. Norht and Central NJ tends to be pretty decent, even good, for the most part.

 

[TeeDog]

Update: Time and time again I worked with agents via chat and Twitter to see if they could fix the plan issue. I was changing fro Party to Vis+ with no luck, when one agent suggested going to the $30 plan instead. I did this while still in Canada and the app finally showed a change from Party. My billing cycle was a day or two after I was stateside again, and when I checked I was charged $45 for the $30 plan. More waiting in line for chat and they now claim it is fixed. I won't know for a few more weeks when I get to the end of my billing cycle again. If it is fixed, the plan is for me to wait another month and move up to Vis+ near the end of the cycle in Nov and see if I can migrate down again with out needing an agent. One agent was convinced I would get a new sim EVERY time I moved between the new plans, thankfully that was misinformation. I'll keep replying here month to month as I find results, until then, Happy Fall!

 

[krzykat]

Why do you want the Vis+ over the normal plan?

 

[TeeDog]

So I can make calls etc when I'm visiting family in Canada.

 

[krzykat]

So I can make calls etc when I'm visiting family in Canada.

gotcha, that was about the only thing I saw that made it the more viable option. Canada and Mexico I believe.

 

[krzykat]

I just bought a SimpliSafe system for a rental property that I'm going to have Rehab done. I'm toying with either using a spare phone laying around (Galaxy S7) or a Mofi 4500 .... that or should I get T-Mobile's business internet at $50 / month.

 

[KNERD]

As she sang:

Let's get Visible, Visible.
Let me hear your mouth talk, your mouth talk

 

[wardmundy]

Latest Visible deals are worth a careful look:

Visible Prepaid Wireless Plans by Verizon: Get 12 Months of Unlimited Service from $15/mo. (New Customers / BYOD Only)

Update: This popular deal is still available. Visible offers their Visible Unlimited Prepaid Service Plans on sale at $15 Off per month for 12 Months with plan prices starting as low as $15/m ...

slickdeals.net

 

[kenn10]

It is a good deal but a lot of Visible customers have jumped ship over performance. Just remember that Visible has low priority data access. I dumped them after taking a trip from North Carolina to Vermont and had virtually no data access along the interstates. Android auto could barely get enough bandwidth to update the navigation map. I'd have 5 bars of service but poor data. If you're mostly interested in voice and SMS, Visible is fine but don't expect speed or reliability on the data side.

 

[Prits]

FYI, my experience has been bad too, I’m already a Verizon customer and decided to try out Visible and left after a month of disappointment. Visible has high latency coupled with lowest data priority that when I would compare two same iPhones side by side, one on Verizon and the other on visible, I would be surfing several pages deep on the iPhone on Verizon well before the first page would even load up on the iPhone running on visible.

i also did run speedtest on both phones in the same location and was very disappointed with the results, unfortunately just didn’t save the screenshots I took back then to show the speedtest results.

I live in Phoenix, AZ, but my results were just the same as I’m an airline professional traveling most days all over the country each week and I would test it out wherever I would land.

 

[krzykat]

Interesting, I'm in S. Florida, and my daughter has no issue with her visible account. My uncle however in Ohio had a very strange issue in that whenever the phone would die from lack of battery, the phone wouldn't register properly and necessitated a call to Visible to resolve. ... strange (he left after a month of that issue)

 

[JFrost]

Has anyone used a visible sim as a data sim for a router? (or do they have a data sim plan I couldn't find?)
What equip did you use and how was your experience with it?
I need internet hotspot for a backyard for the summer via cellular.
Thx.

 

[dicko]

Consider

Unlimited, Flexible & Group Phone Plans & Rates - Google Fi Wireless

Discover Google Fi Wireless phone plans that work best for you and your family including unlimited data, group, flexible, international and more.

fi.google.com

with 4 folks @ $40/month you get 50GB/month data each, 4 global phone numbers and 5g data/voice/sms (e)sims add up to 16 data only sim cards which work fine in most routers including

WG1608 4G LTE Router 1200Mbps Dual Band WiFi Wireless Modem SIM Card Unlocked US 782517185486 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for WG1608 4G LTE Router 1200Mbps Dual Band WiFi Wireless Modem SIM Card Unlocked US at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

and

ZTE Falcon Z-917 T-Mobile 4G LTE Hotspot for sale online | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for ZTE Falcon Z-917 T-Mobile 4G LTE Hotspot at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

 

[JFrost]

Consider

Unlimited, Flexible & Group Phone Plans & Rates - Google Fi Wireless

Discover Google Fi Wireless phone plans that work best for you and your family including unlimited data, group, flexible, international and more.

fi.google.com

with 4 folks @ $40/month you get 50GB/month data each, 4 global phone numbers and 5g data/voice/sms (e)sims add up to 16 data only sim cards which work fine in most routers including

WG1608 4G LTE Router 1200Mbps Dual Band WiFi Wireless Modem SIM Card Unlocked US 782517185486 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for WG1608 4G LTE Router 1200Mbps Dual Band WiFi Wireless Modem SIM Card Unlocked US at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

and

ZTE Falcon Z-917 T-Mobile 4G LTE Hotspot for sale online | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for ZTE Falcon Z-917 T-Mobile 4G LTE Hotspot at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

I thought abotu Fi but for 1 line it's $50/mo vs. Visible only costs $25.

I expect it shouldn't be a problem but I've heard some phone sims won't work in data only devices (like an mFi, etc.)

Thanks for teh rec on the ZTE. Smth like that would work great. As this is for a client tho, I probably want smth I can buy new but that's the right track.

 

[dicko]

But fi allows 4 data sims as well as a phone sim if your usage fits within 50GB for $40, 35GB for $20 but not so global.

The ZBT's are very economical and well built routers running OpenWRT or Rooter project (a fork) you can even install asterisk on the 32gb versions if you want.

IMHO very good value when compared to Mikrotik's or CLiNet's as multi WAN routers.

 

[wardmundy]

And then there's our latest favorite, Tello: $10 a month plan offers unlimited calling to 60+ countries, plus unlimited texting, and a gigabyte of high speed data every month. Also a $10 signup bonus through our referral link.

Free calling map:

 

[dicko]

Caveate is "Free calls to Landlines only"
(1G might barely get me through a week on my phone.)

Unlimited Plan with Fi - Google Fi Wireless

On the Google Fi Unlimited plan, you can make unlimited calls for free from the US to 50+ destinations. Learn more about the Google Fi Unlimited plan.

fi.google.com

So unfortunately, no Lithuania.