$19/Month Cell Service: Unlimited Everything, No Contracts | Hacker News Reader

$19/Month Cell Service: Unlimited Everything, No Contracts

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19 pointssethbannon9 comments

This would work great for me. I am on wireless with my phone about 95% of the time, and only on 3G when in the car or shopping I guess.

If I can still use 3G when I absolutely need it, with no "real" limitations, but stay on my wifi otherwise, I'd be golden.

Now, I just have to wait 2 years so I can subscribe.

EDIT: Maybe they can add a $29 per month contract and buy me out of my old one :)

Ditto. The month-to-month service is extremely appealing for those of us dragging around the ball and chain known as AT&T. :(

Couldn't happen too soon. The cell phone industry is ripe for disruption. One of the primary offenses is making users route voice data over their expensive, slow cellular networks even when a cheap, fast physical network is also available. Or worse yet, not letting them use the cheap, fast physical network even when the cellular network is not available. The situation became genuinely absurd is when companies decided the best solution to offer to customers with poor home reception was to sell them microcell hardware.

"Here’s the catch: if you’re routinely using a lot of cellular data, then the service reserves the right to boot you."

Like every carrier, there is no such thing as "unlimited".

The big difference here though is that the "right to boot you" only applies to the cellular data.

If you stay on wifi all the time, it really is unlimited (or at least that is what their site would have you believe).

I don't think there's any such thing in the universe as "unlimited." ;)

But seriously, if you're using the phone on Wi-Fi, which is where the vast majority of people use their phones, then the only cap is the one on your broadband connection (usually at least 200 GB). I would suspect that for greater than 97% of cell phone subscribers, Republic's data limits are not going to be an issue.

And frankly, I think it's high time a new carrier disrupted the AT&T/Verizon/Sprint/T-Mobile oligarchy.

If I remember right, the way it worked out back in the days of AT&T's original unlimited iPhone service plan was that basically everyone was paying higher prices in order to subsidize a very small number of YouTube addicts whose 3G bandwidth usage was larger by an order of magnitude or two. Keeping that kind of user off the network would be a key part of making prices reasonable for everyone else.

I'd rather be "booted" than handed a $2000 cell phone bill.

How's the reception?

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