“T‑Mobile will never change the price you pay for your T‑Mobile ONE plan.” That was the promise. The Un-contract. The whole reason millions of customers picked the magenta team over Verizon and AT&T in the first place. Now T-Mobile is retiring legacy 3G and 4G-era plans — Magenta, ONE, Simple Choice — and automatically moving customers onto “modern” 5G plans at higher monthly costs. Billing changes hit mid-July for the current wave. The company that swore it would never surprise you with a rate hike just sent the notification.
Got the text this morning. God damn scammers.
Yes, they’re a company.
This is some straight up MBA enshittificarion. I’m on the military plan with all unlimited yada yada, even then data is throttled down after a certain amount. Waiting for an email that says they’re supporting the troops by increasing the amount we can contribute to the economy or some shit.
Again? Didn’t they do this a couple years ago too?
Rinse and repeat
I got the text today… Our bill will go up an extra $18/month. Great.
per line, so if you have family its so much higher.
T-Mobile raised our rate last year which is bad enough by itself after promising not to, but they also seriously reduced the quality and availability of their customer service. Why stick around for that? We switched to a much cheaper prepaid company (~1/3rd T-Mobile’s current price) and couldn’t be happier.
Edit: Was thinking about the other problems we had with T-Mobile and forgot to mention one big problem… Incoming calls routinely would not ring and voicemails left just vanished. This happened for months. Multiple friends (and a couple of doctor’s offices) mentioned it often enough that we realized we had a problem. T-Mobile’s great customer service could find nothing wrong and refused to look at the lost calls that originated from other TMO customers.
We have been grandfathered into a Simple Choice Plan for ~13 years and just switched over to whatever their comparable current plan is, and only saved $10 (woohoo). What’d you go with? I was looking into prepaid with Tmo but they’ve been in quite the steady decline for a while now.
If you have any government assistance programs ) Medicaid, SNAP, etc.), look into the Lifeline program for potentially free cell service:
I’ve been very happy with Visible. They’re owned by Verizon and in the long term, it’s the best value I’ve been able to find. They have a 2 week free trial period and frequently have awesome deals during Black Friday and in the Spring. Even without a discount though, plans start at $25/month with a plan that is probably enough for most people. Their highest tier (of 3) is $45.
Moved off T-Mobile for Visible after getting sick of their constant data breaches and haven’t been this happy with a cell carrier since Jump On-Demand was a thing.
The only real catches are:
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Support is basically a chatbot and social media teams. However, human support reps do exist if you’re insistent enough, and I’ve only needed them maybe once in the past 3 years or so
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Plans are for smartphones (and smartwatches with an existing smartphone line) only. No tablets or other devices.
Oh neat! Can’t say I’ve heard of it, and for a while there I was very much leaning towards Mint, until they were bought by Tmo. Ryan should have fought for it, Deadpool style 😆
Really liking what I’m seeing. I’d def rather spend $70/mo than the ~$110 I am now. I personally just can’t justify it for how little I use my phone, literally Lemmy, Newpipe and Fennec, with a side of fin account apps.
Been on Visible for quite a while as well. I have never needed to contact support so can’t speak on that. The only complaint I have is the app will force you to log in and authenticate every month (or used to idk I haven’t been on it in a while)
I’ve loved visible ever since I joined like 7 years ago. Unlimited 5G, $25 a month. Works great international when I need it, but it’s an extra $5/day with my plan when I use it
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What’s the new carrier? I want to ditch T-Mobile they are ripping us off. I was thinking about switching to Mint mobile.
Edit: Thanks for the heads up and suggestions. I’ll avoid Mint and take a look into US Mobile.
US Mobile. No significant complaints after 10 months.
We switched to US Mobile last October and I’ve kind of been a bit shocked at how good and responsive their customer service is to be a MVNO prepaid utilizing Indian call centers.
Also, US Mobile partners with all three major carriers, so you can pick your network! They have to use different names because of copyrights but here is the translation: AT&T = Dark Star, Verizon = Warp, T-Mobile= Light Speed
Their unlimited plans all come with hotspot and start at $25 monthly regular price but they always have promos for new customers and you can prepay for a year of service and get unlimited for as little as around $16 a month. They ALSO always seem to have fantastic prices on the current model Google Pixel base phone and Pro XL, if you’re an Android person like me.
Dark Star… Hmm…
It was even blown up once before with the breakup of Ma Bell.
Seconding US Mobile, been with them for 2.5 years and they’re only getting better and better.
Dreading the day T-Mobile buys them…
we keep looking in their direction but the boss doesn’t really wanna change. got some small concession from vzn a little while ago but still more than double what usm would cost.
what would get her to switch would be finding a carrier that actually worked at her house. vzn doesn’t, tm doesn’t, need to find someone around here with at&t to try but there really isn’t anyone around here that does use them.
Doesn’t US Mobile offer all the of the major networks? I’ve also been looking at them recently, and my understanding is that the three networks they offer are (despite their silly codenames) in reality just verizon, t-mobile, and at&t. You can pick which one you want to use and even switch between them without too much hassle.
Phreeli https://www.phreeli.com/
“The goal of this phone company is to be more private than the three biggest phone carriers in the US. That’s the promise we’re going to massively overdeliver on.”
I thought TMobile bought Mint?
Damn everything is a monopoly here…
Anti-Trust is some bullshit invented by damn socialist commies to keep the money from trickling down. \s
They did, but even beyond that, the other alternatives mentioned in this thread are MVNOs that still use T-Mobile’s network (usually with a lower priority compared to direct customers, not usually an issue unless there’s congestion). You’re still paying T-Mobile, just indirectly. MVNOs buy in bulk and try to offer options that split that bulk usage up in ways different to the big carriers to target smaller more specific demographics.
Mint Mobile. Uses the t mobile network. 20 bucks a month unlimited text/talk 15gb data
There’s also https://www.phreeli.com/
Its almost like everyone saw this coming once Sprint was allowed to merge with them, and then US Cellular
Mergers of larger corporations shouldn’t be permitted. In fact, any attempt at initiating a merger should instead initiate a breakup.
they all pull this shit… three different providers besides tm here, just in the last 2-3 years.
and they get away with it, so it continues…
Don’t forget that part of the merger was Dish buying Boost Mobile with the supposed intent to build their own network. Which anyone actually paying attention knew would never actually happen. Dish Network says a lot of shit, and follows through with basically none of it.
On July 1, 2020, Dish Network officially purchased Boost Mobile per their agreement with the companies and the United States’ Department of Justice. The purchase was valued at $1.4B and transferred 9.3 million customers.[67] The intent of the US government was for Dish to erect a new nationwide wireless mobile network in order to compensate for reduced competition following the Sprint–T-Mobile merger.[citation needed]
However, in the years following the transaction Dish failed to sufficiently grow Boost Mobile’s subscriber base and in 2025 announced that it will decommission its 5G network infrastructure, sell most of its wireless spectrum assets to AT&T, and shift Boost Mobile’s operating model from a facilities-based network to a mobile virtual network, with its subscribers being hosted on AT&T’s wireless network.[68]
T-Mobile followed the timeframe they agreed to for the merger to be approved, which was very public.
On March 11, 2020, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced he will not appeal the judge’s decision made during the previous month to reject the state AGs’ lawsuit against the T-Mobile-Sprint merger. He, instead, struck a settlement with the defending parties. The terms of the settlement include making its low-cost T-Mobile Connect plans available in California for at least 5 years, that T-Mobile customers can keep their T-Mobile plans held in February 2019 for a total of five years …
Hmm… 2020 plus 5 years is… 2025… would you look at the calendar.
Even The Verge hasn’t mentioned Project Gene5is in forever.
I have Cape and they have been great so far. I recommend them. I’ll leave some info below that I wrote in a privacy sub. Skip the first paragraph if you want to avoid their advertising scheme, but it was the big reason I could afford to switch to them so I thought I might be helpful to others. Here is my referral code for anyone that wants to try it: 8DHE3HVV
They are currently running an early adopter promotion until the end of the year where you get an unlimited plan that is $70 per month for life, and if you use someone else’s referral Code it drops you down to $50/month for as long as that person stays on Cape. What’s crazy is that it then drops to $30 for another referral, $10 after another, and $0 after that. For as long as those other people are on. I thought that was a pretty cool deal honestly given that I was previously paying $55 a month for T Mobile.
So a quick review from my experiences so far.
Sign up was easy and basically needed no identifying information. I use Cape on Graphene OS through the stock messaging app. It allows me to send videos, images, and so on. There are some issues with group chats still I think, but I havent really experienced any issues so far. The coverage and speeds have been solid.
The IMSI rotation is automatic and a great protocol. They have a bunch of other very smart architecture choices. I used to write patents for telecomm companies like Ericsson and Qualcomm and I’m really impressed with their engineering. My friend is an independent security pentester and educator, and their company recently audited Cape. They said they did excellently and had no reservations on recommending them to me. I also watched a lot of interviews about the company and their system. After that, I felt comfortable testing Cape out. My hope was that they would be way more reliable approach than my previous set up (I followed the Bazzell set up with Mint under a pseudonym and VoIP.ms but voip.ms has been really spotty lately and I have young kids so that’s no good).
I still have VoIP.ms for my old number, but I use my main Cape cell number for close family and friends who won’t get on Signal for whatever reason. They also give you two free burner numbers for texting only, so I use those for 2FA and sign ups if needed. You can only text to those numbers and you currently can’t port them out, but I believe they are middle to end encrypted (check me on that one though).
There are many other features and caveats (like they’re working on RCS, they have different available features for iPhone users, etc.), but I recommend their interviews with channels like the hated one or techlore or elsewhere. Those helped me a lot.
I’m happy to answer any other questions. It took me a while to decide to try them out because I’m pretty tedious about my privacy set up, but I’ve honestly been pretty impressed so far and I love the idea of having a mobile core telecomm company adopt some actual privacy architecture in this middle space.
I thought Lemmy was ad-free. Guess not.
I’m just a dude who wanted to recommend a service I liked. I hope anyone else looking for something like this appreciates learning about them, but feel free to scroll past if not. I moved from T mobile to Mint and then to Cape over time as I began to tweak my own more privacy oriented set up.
Sounds slightly pyramid shaped.
It definitely is, but from their perspective I think the average price is logarithmic towards $30 or so dollars? I did the logic at some point but its 2am where I am now and my brain is mashed potatoes so I forget. Either way, yes it is pyramidical, but for a limited time and a cap on gain, which changes the overall structure slightly.
In the aughts, I had accumulated about $30 in debt, but managed it through consolidation programs, and got it down to about 3%.
Then the subprime mortgage crisis happened, and my creditors said sorry, but we’re fucking you over no matter what the contract says. Your interest rate is 12% and feel lucky we don’t raise it again.
Apparently companies will do that. I didn’t pay them at all and just waited seven years to wait out statute of limitations.
Parents suck!
For what it’s worth, y’all, Mint Mobile is pretty great. I actually got an email in December when renewal time came telling me I should downgrade my plan and save money, based on my data usage for 2025.
I also am a fan of Mint Mobile, but IIRC they were bought up by T-Mobile a few years back. I’m waiting for their inevitable enshittification, but riding the wave until it crashes.
If you get government assistance, look into free mobile options, like TAG Mobile.
I stopped using T-Mobile a few months ago. Used to need the Internet while living in a shelter, until I moved into a government funded apartment. I now have TAG Mobile for my phone (free each month w/ 10 gigs of data), and $30/month AT&T 100mb up/down fiber Internet.
Being poor sometimes has advantages.
If you have ANY government assistance program (like SNAP), you qualify for free mobile and reduced cost home Internet.
Inflation. You can be confident that these guarantees won’t last unless not only are they in writing but they are backed by independent financial insurance. Same with any life membership. It is very unlikely that they are actually charging enough to continue the service for life and so they are likely going to be forced to do something about it at some point. Often that something is bankruptcy.
Still, it sucks.
Class Action Lawsuit is going to some lucky lawyers rich.
You may be right but pretty much everyone who was on this likely just never read the contract they signed, so if they really want to fight it the lawsuit likely wouldn’t be successful.
im on tello and i like it. $25 for an unlimited data plan, and $10 for a 2g sim for my backup phone (in case i break or lose my main phone)
On the backup line you can subscribe to the cheapest data-only plan for like $5 a month and then just add $20 worth of pay-as-you-go credit, which never expires and will be used for calls, at 1 cent per minute.
It will save you $5 a month on the backup phone plan, making it even cheaper.
I’ve been on and off tello for like 10 years now, currently they hold my second line, and they are good… assuming you don’t need cs beyond ‘turn it off and back on’, and the towers you frequent aren’t overloaded. If I try and use my data on the tello sim at any time except in the dead of night (1a-4a), everything is timing out. This local tower is way oversubscribed.
Also, their unlimited isn’t true unlimited, as are all mvnos. After… 50gb (surprising, they doubled it in the last few months apparently) it’s like 64kb/s. Which is quite a lot of data, and technically it’s not a hard cap so it’s not outright lying, but it’s not really unlimited. I’ve always hated this ‘well technically’ bullshit, so I call it out every time I see it, for the people who don’t know.
Good warning here to watch MVNOs (anyone besides the largest largest carriers). Save tons of money, but deprioritized traffic.
At a World Cup match, for example, if anyone gets connected it’s probably those with higher phone bills.
Wonderful/necessary deal for many, still!
I dunno anyone still using the big 3 telcos, not much value over the MVNOs unless you’re really the type that wants to bundle Disney+ or something.
The big companies give line prio over mvno clients.
Every time I’ve tried one of MVNOs I’ve got shit service at my work. I’m affected by this new price hike from T-Mobile so I’m going to try one again but not expecting great results.
Check out US mobile… If you get their top plan, you can change to any of the 3 mobile providers for free
This. US Mobile has been great to me. I have no intention of going anywhere else in the foreseeable future.
I’m still on tracfone (cheap plan) and feel it’s also going to get axed
fyi TF got acquired by Verizon a few years ago, and thus is now a wholly-owned subsidiary, like Visible and Total Wireless
