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Comment by jalami | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, it's pretty bad. American telcos operate on their own terms and most people don't seem to care. It's one of those household jokes. Everyone knows they suck but everyone needs data and coverage, no viable competition in sight. I had to root my phone and add a flag to the com.android.prodivers.settings.db file. Now all tethering packets look like mobile packets. All this to get a feature I should have in the first place. I'm also probably breaking some contractual condition.

I'm optimistic that providers are moving away from the phone with data concept to the just data, bring us a phone concept and it can't happen soon enough. Less bundling, less bloat, less control of my device a telco has the better. There are still plenty of other real barriers, but it's a start.

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In the US the argument that "consumer protection is bad for business and therefore bad for the economy" has largely won. This leaves quasi-monopoly businesses able to bilk their customers without interference.

I paid $50 for a Nokia phone from T-Mobile (bought with cash at a K-Mart! I didn't even know those were still around!) and have no contract, $40 a month, and tethering is included.

The market might be (slowly) responding...

Likewise, my contract with Verizon was up and I was going month-to-month. I was paying about $130/mo. at the time. A friend of mine had a pre-paid phone and mentioned she needed to run to Walmart to get a "refill". Turns out she was paying $45/month for unlimited calling and texts and, I think, 2 GB of data (at "unlimited" speeds; it was rate-limited after that).

I was about to get the new iPhone anyways, so I went to Verizon and paid cash for it. I drove home, got on their web site and signed up for a $60/mo. pre-paid plan (unlimited calling and texting, and 3.5 GB of data) -- and I can tether now. My service is effectively the same and it's costing me half as much (and they even have a cheaper, $45/mo. plan).

I'm a big fan of Ting, an MVNO. www.ting.com

We got our AT&T bill down from $120/mo (for two phones) to between $45 and $62/mo (for three phones). When it was just me (I was the guinea pig testing before we ported my wife's phone over), my bill would regularly be $25-30. Ting isn't "unlimited", but rather has a fairly simple "use your phone and we'll bill you fairly" mindset. They also have a calculator where you can have them login to your existing carrier, pull the billing details, and estimate your Ting bill. I was initially uncomfortable with the pay-per-use nature, but the reality has been that it's way cheaper for us. If you are a road warrior salesperson who never uses wifi, it may not be as good for you.

Naturally, since it's pay-what-you-use, tethering is perfectly fine.

Ting does offer a referral bonus where I think you get $25 and I get $25. I'm not shilling for them nor stumping for referrals, but if you do care to use the referral link, it's https://z9prmb2f3t5.ting.com/

+1 for Ting, the only US cellular provider I haven't utterly detested as a customer. (Have used all the major ones.)

I am also saving hundreds of dollars per year (especially since I spend a lot of time outside the USA... If you don't use Ting during a month, the bill is like $7 or so.

I want to add that Cricket Wireless has great plan too with unlimited talk and text with 2.5GB data at $40 per month. And it has a group plan which is very good. If you have 5 people in a group, you will effectively pay just $20 a month for the same plan.

+1 for Ting. The US provider who came closest to what I was used in The Netherlands, service wise and money wise.

Another +1 for Ting. I signed up back in February or so and they've been just brilliant across multiple phones, including one situation where, due to a replacement for bogued hardware, the IMEI changed but the ICCID didn't - their website doesn't handle that very well, but their customer support took care of it via website chat in five minutes, which certainly counts as a win. I'm paying a third what I was with Sprint, and even buying the phone up front, I come out ahead; if you're looking for a better option, and Sprint has coverage where you are, Ting is definitely worth a look.

As a former Ting customer who was happy with their service, their prices aren't really that great. It's just that most people aren't heavy users, especially on minutes and texts, so your bill looks a lot better because you only have to pay for what you use. If you do use your phone a lot, your bill can quickly become worse than Verizon, etc.

Probably Net10, they are bigtime partners with Walmart (but could also be Boost Mobile or a couple others with similar plans).

I bought an unlocked MotoG and with Net10 I pay either $40 for 3GB or $50 for 5GB depending on my expected usage for the month (you can get bigger plans if you want at $10-for-2GB increments). If you go over you are not cut off, just restricted to 2G service (latency is horrible though). Tethering is technically against the rules but they don't really care, I've never gotten in trouble. You either get carried on T-Mobile or ATT.

I do ATT and it works fine - I am up north right now in Bumfuck MI (a cabin in the middle of a National Forest) and I have 4/5 bars of 4G signal. I think coverage worries are a thing of the past unless you are using one of those carriers that is specifically city-only. I get around and it's just never been a problem for me.

I buy refills through Callingmart. They don't charge all the extra fees that Net10 does directly (typically an extra $4/mo or so), they do 1% loyalty cashback for your next order, and they constantly run 3% off coupons (check retailmenot.com). So for a $50 refill that costs $54 though Net10's store I am at $46.50 out the door. They have refills for tons of carriers, worth checking out if you're monthly.

I said it below and got down voted but if you aren't unlocked and monthly you are getting screwed hard. My phone is rooted and has an unlocked bootloader, so I can run CyanogenMod (i.e. I can get security updates instead of being tied to the carrier's firmware), use the radio, tether, or anything else I want. I have absolutely zero ties binding me to my carrier - if next month some other carrier offers a better deal (or my current one tries to screw me) I just buy a $2 SIM-kit, swap and activate, and point my Google Voice number at the new SIM. Takes five minutes of work and nobody else even needs to know I changed carriers. The only downside is that you need to pay for a phone upfront instead of on a phone plan since nobody will finance an unlocked phone (hello startup idea).

Straight Talk, another MVNO, was actually her carrier. Her "refill" was via a pre-paid card she could purchase at Walmart. You can also do it online or over-the-phone with a credit card but she preferred to just walk into Walmart and buy a card with cash (she worked right by Walmart, anyways, and often shopped there so it was convenient for her).

I've been buying my phones outside a subsidized plan for about a decade now... up until recently, was on a cutrate plan at $100 for 3 months (2gb/month unrestricted, throttled after)... Switched to Verizon, partly because I wanted a new phone (Nexus 6p) and partly because I wanted better coverage on my road trips... in large parts of the country outside the cities, Verizon is the only coverage.

I'm paying over twice as much, but have had no issues with setting up wifi tethering... though I really need to run updates on my laptop before road trips, as I killed 9gb in one day (I don't use my personal laptop much).

All said though, I'm much happier with the better coverage, but miss the frugal bills I've had the past 6 years.

By "they" do you mean Verizon prepaid?

Yes.

Prices in the US and Canada are ridiculous if you've been to Europe.

Germany is one of the worst telecom markets in Europe, but you can get 2 GB of data, unlimited calls, unlimited texts for 12.99 € without contract.

In France you pay 19.99 € without contract for unlimited calls, unlimited SMS and MMS, and 50 GB.

The main difference is how the market is regulated. Better regulation leads to lower prices for consumer.

Not to defend large telcos, god knows i hate them myself, but one of the big differences between the US and Europe (besides us being drooling, knee-biting, mollified king-and-celebrity worshiping consumers with no comprehension of the meaning of our own rights) is geography. Historically, networks of all kinds, including energy and data have a longer gradient to reach rural areas which necessarily incur larger costs and more capital to roll out. I think this should be factored into it, but accounts for less than 50% of the difference. We're friendlier to monopolies ("Hey! They earned it! dur") in the U.S., too.

Case-in-point: You can get incredibly inexpensive service if you use a provider which only serves urban areas. People will complain that they took a road trip and didn't have service for 6 hours though.

This is one of the reasons why CDMA is/was much more popular is the US than elsewhere. CDMA requires fewer towers than GSM for equivalent geographical coverage. This is what allowed Verizon (CDMA) to advertise that they covered so much more of the United States than AT&T (GSM) did.

Kazakhstan is a huge country with an extremely low population density. I'm paying $20/year for 20GB/month mobile traffic (calls are not included, there are plans for that, but I don't call much). Coverage is not perfect, but all inhabited localities are covered and major roads too.

Finland also has really low population density. Yet I'm enjoying 20€/month unlimited 50mbps data and some minutes and sms (never ran out).

I am using Project Fi. You get basic free calls and text within USA for $20. And for every GB it is $10. I set my account to $50 ( $20 + 3GB ). After every month whatever bandwidth I didn't use Google returns exact amount. So If I used only 1.2GB I will get my $18 back.

And ofcourse tethering is enabled.

Twice what you pay eg for giffgaff in the UK per month.

I only realised recently how good giffgaff's deals are. Their top package is £20 a month for unlimited everything (yes, even unlimited data, though speed is restricted after 6GB). On top of all that, you're using one of the top networks in the country (giffgaff runs on the O2 network) and all of their plans appear to be 1 month rolling contracts, so it's easy to cancel/switch plans. Wish I'd looked into them sooner.

https://www.giffgaff.com/sim-only-plans

iD-Mobile (operate on Three’s network) have some pretty good prices for data users (1GB: £5.00, 2GB: £7.50; 4GB: £10.00). All 1 month contracts.

I switched to their 2GB plan after Three announced their price increases.

https://www.idmobile.co.uk/shop/plans/sim-only

Giffgaff basically is O2. It's their budget (student?) brand.

(The registered address of both companies is the same, if you'd like a quick verification of this.)

Yes that's right. They cut costs compared to the main O2 deals by moves like not having the same type of dedicated customer service (you get support through their forums).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnol...

Three used to be better if you did any travelling, but they’ve basically doubled their prices recently. Might investigate GiffGaff again.

I love giffgaff even when travelling - 4p/min calls, not sure what data costs, but it's comin down a lot in recent months.

Data prices in Europe are ok but in the US its £5 a megabyte!

I go to Denmark and Sweden a lot: with Three I get unlimited 3G same as on my UK contract.

Gotta love giffgaff, even their phone program is very reasonably priced. I got my iPhone 6 by mail, the day after it was released. £17pm for my phone.

In the context of the top post on this thread - the reason I didn't sign up with giffgaff is because they restrict tethering.

eg not allowed at all on their unlimited data tarriff: https://www.giffgaff.com/support/calls-and-internet/unlimite...

> Everyone knows they suck but everyone needs data and coverage, no viable competition in sight

How is "lack of competition" the problem? Pretty much everywhere you can get cellular coverage from four different major carriers, plus several MVNOs. If it was so easy to offer better service than AT&T/Verizon for less money, then Sprint or T-Mobile would do it and take over the market. Nothing is stopping them.

And it's not a Pepsi/Coke situation where a small number of oligopolists have an incentive to maintain the status quo because they're all benefiting from it. Sprint and T-Mobile have every incentive to compete--Sprint is hemorrhaging money and while T-Mobile is profitable, its profits don't justify its CAPEX.

Look at T-Mobile. Last year, they made $733 million in net income on $32 billion in revenue. Google, in comparison, made 20x the profit on just 2x the revenue. So with T-Mobile, there's not a lot of fat to cut. So why isn't everyone a T-Mobile customer?

People assign different weights to different features. Big red has by far the best network, especially if you travel, which is why they're fighting tooth and nail to avoid becoming dumb pipes. Big Bell lives somewhere in the middle but they charge a premium for sub-par service which is probably why I've never met someone who uses their service. TMo offers the best coverage+performance/price ratio but entirely because their network is okay and they're cheap. Google Fi makes it a little better since Sprint has more coverage but a worse network.

Willing to pay a premium for the best: Big Red

I honestly don't know: AT&T

Value is paramount: TMo

Tech enthusiast: Google Fi

Coverage and price is more important than quality: Sprint

I think a lot of it had to do with being locked into your carrier. It was expensive to leave because you had to pay that early cancellation fee and two of the carriers are CDMA, two are GSM so you potentially had to get another phone.

With the plan thing going away, there's more mobility in the phone market. The cost of good enough phones has gone down, providers can't lock their phones to their service anymore and there aren't so many coverage hold-outs where you HAD to get Verizon because Sprint didn't operate in your location.

The barriers to entry for a new telco are staggering, not as much as landline operators of course, but it's certainly not nominal. T-Mobile has historically been a phone of the urban population because that's where they get the most bang for their buck so it was difficult to become a household name.

Americans use their phones differently and I guess I'm in the minority by tethering often. I think if there was more diversity in the phone market, I wouldn't have to play these privacy tracking games, deal with tethering locked-down, misc phone crippling etc.

It's getting better, but slowly. If you don't use your phone like 90% of Americans use their phone, there might not be an American telco that serves your interests.

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