Mobile Carrier To Sell Service for $19/mo; Android Handsets For $99 Until Nov 27

> if you're using a disproportionate amount of cell data compared to the rest of the community, they can boot you.

Sounds like a simple prisoner's dilemma, with the "selfish" incentive driving people to lower the total consumption. Of course, the prisoner's dilemma only has the optima it does because of a lack of shared information; people can cooperate when they can strategize in some out-of-band way.

For this service, the "cooperation" strategy would entail everyone conspiring to drive the average up, so that the service provides more to everyone without anyone in particular having a "disproportionate" usage.

> At $19/month for unlimited, they're probably operating at a loss unless they can build up a significant customer base.

that's a pretty bold statement. Care to elaborate?

Seems pretty expensive when i pay exactly that to AT&T to have 6mbps at my home. we're talking about 1mbps maximum here right?

You are dead on about Facebook. Imagine if the conversation shifts from whats your phone number to whats your identity. A persons phone number is becoming increasingly less important.

Is your $25/mo plan unlimited? Is Virgin Mobile's coverage as good as Sprint's (the network this will fall back to)?

What's amazing here is they are offering a Voip phone with a $19/mo plan (cheaper than, say Vonage at $25) plus fallback to a large mobile network. That is a pretty good price point.

I have the same $25/month plan, but they upped it to $30/month ($35?) for new subscribers. Still best deal on a smartphone/data plan.

If this uses Sprint's network as well, then I suppose it comes down to minutes/MBs. I don't use enough of either so for me the math is simple: $19 < $25.

I have that too. The speed sucks dick but it's cheap.

Thoughts:

  1. I really hope it knows to just use cell while driving instead of trying to connect to random passing APs.
  2. Am I the only person in America constantly surrounded by secured/non-free Wifi?
  3. Why wouldn't I just pay less for my phone and $10 more a month for Virgin Mobile?

same here and my speeds are excellent. I rarely have any complaints. I use GrooveIP for free GV voip, and the phones have great dev communities around them. I'm running cm 7.1 on my phone and for $100 phone it performs better than my old 3GS.

my biggest concerns would be-

Would loading custom roms effect their application/script?

Is it compatible with google voice?

Just to capitalize on some of the VM love: if you have an android phone, you should give my Minutes Checker app a whirl! (It is free. And open source too. And very very useful.) https://market.android.com/details?id=com.jaygoel.virginminu...

They'll probably try to make it so that WiFi must always be on. Then again, it'll have to be locked on the device, so it wouldn't be very hard to get pass it once the phone was rooted (the devices will run Android [according to the article]).

Then, they would probably check to see who was using the majority of minutes/data on Sprint, and then have a talk with them (or throttle their data).

I'm curious as to what they would do with people who sign up and don't live in cities. If you live in rural areas, it's doubtful you'll have WiFi the majority of places you go. They would probably end up losing money on rural subscribers, then try to make profits from urban subscribers.

There might be a problem with a strategy like that though, because it doesn't seem their profit margins would be too high. I'm not sure how much it costs them to buy data in bulk from Sprint, but doing unlimited data for $19 isn't going to result in amazing profit margins. I'm also assuming that they won't be buying voice minutes, because if these devices can use multiple networks, the only way to keep a single phone number would be using VoIP. Of course, there's no way they would be buying text messages, because text messages can easily be sent over e-mail.

From their "What's the Catch" Page 550 minutes, 150 texts, and 300 MB of data using the cell (non wifi) network is what they refer to as their "fair use threshold" and they say that you will get a few warnings to use less cell data and more wifi. If you continue to go over, your plan will be cancelled. Or in their more polite phrasing "they'll help you find a traditional cell provider that is better suited for your needs"

In the US, Virgin Mobile (Sprint MVNO) offers 300 minutes/2.5gb/unlimited for $35 (used to be $25) and T-mobile offers 100 minutes/5gb/unlimited for $30.

Well they're not really disrupting anything, they're reselling Sprint, so they're actually helping Big Carrier.

The idea I had originally went out the door when I read about their "Cellular Usage Index" aka "their solution to their freeloader problem".

Basically if you use more than "$19 worth" of cellular service per month... they boot you off of their networks.

From http://republicwireless.com/how:

  I have DSL at home.  Will it work on that or will I have to upgrade to
  something faster?

  You need about 80kbps both ways to hold a call. The more bandwidth the better
  for improved call quality. Don’t forget that streaming video or downloading
  large files all use bandwidth, so your mileage may vary if you are trying to
  make or receive calls and watch Netflix at the same time.

Sounds like it's more likely that your gaming or Netflix would adversely affect the phone than the other way around, though a router with QoS should fix that easily enough.