Comcast - Free 4G Phone Talk and Text

[Paul F]

The competition in mobile continues.

I just saw an add for Comcast's new mobile service which went nationwide last month. The website, if I have this correct, offers free talk and text; no big deal. But it also offers no monthly per line fee. On top of that, it has 16 million wi-fi hot spots that you can use for free for data. What is clever about this is that it looks like they are using selected customer modems as wi-fi hot spots. So in their territory, they have very good coverage. I inquired about a plan, and as long as I have their internet service, my phone talk, text, and data are free (with wi-fi). Then they sell additional data @$12/gig or $45 for unlimited.

For me and my wife then, my total mobile talk, text, and data bill would be $12 for two phones (we rarely exceed 1G and that would improve with their wi-fi coverage). The data is shared over all the phones in the family.

 

[OldCorpse]

I went for this:

https://www.virginmobileusa.com/

Inner Circle Plan - Unlimited talk, text, and data - for $1 for 12 months (about $0.08 a month) with a purchase of a phone from them - I bought an iPhone 6S 64GB and together with taxes and everything it came to $305 for the year, or about $25 a month for unlimited talk, text, data for a year and a paid off iPhone 6S 64GB. After that, you can either quit, or go on their regular $50 a month. Now, they use the Sprint network, so depending on where you are, you might be happy with that or not, but I suppose that's still not worse than the Comcast coverage. I'm in LA, CA, but I've only had it for about a week, so I can't speak to the overall experience, but it doesn't seem any worse than what I had before, which was T-Mobile, at least in the LA area (in fact, surprisingly, I'd say it's slightly better).

I'm not saying it's the best out there, but an example of how slowly, slowly, the costs are becoming slightly more affordable for the average joe. YMMV.