There's the old adage - "if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is".
Well, I was recently shopping for a new cell phone provider and took a good look at Virgin Mobile, which is owned by Sprint and thus has coverage just as good, if not better than AT&T here in the Bay Area. Best of all, they offer unlimited data and texting for $35 / month on a 300 minute talk plan or $45 / month for 1200 minutes.
They do not offer 4G and only have a limited phone selection, but still this is a pretty sweet deal. Unlimited data on a good 3G network for $35 / month? Whoot! However, today I stumbled across this blog highlighting Virgin's announcement that starting this month, they will throttle down customers going over 2.5 GB per month.
I've never gone for 1 GB / month in data usage so I'm not too concerned about this policy affecting me. However, it may indicate that between Virgin Mobile and new iPhone users, Sprint's 3G network could be having the same problem AT&T's did starting in July of 2008 when the iPhone 3G was released.
Hi John --
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your linking to my story about Virgin Mobile's plans to start capping its subscribers' data usage at 2.5GB per month. Thank you.
I wanted to mention, though, that VM's rates are actually $35/month for 300 voice minutes and $45/month for 1,200 voice minutes. (Unlimited calling is $55/month.)
Lastly, I've been using a very handy Android app called Onavo to monitor my data usage before the 2.5GB/month cap kicks in later this month. So far it suggests that as long as you've got Wi-Fi at home (as I do) and aren't pulling down data perpetually via a cell tower it doesn't seem that hard to stay under the cap.
You're correct, Virgin starts at $35. I was confusing it with NET10, which goes either $25 or $50 on their monthly plans.
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