Four months with cheap cellphone service

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How it’s going with US Mobile
Plus: TikTok drama summarized, avoiding mandatory AI, and an awesome free software list

The best thing I can say about US Mobile is that I haven’t spent too much time thinking about it.
Since switching to this budget wireless carrier last fall, my experience has been mostly painless. My coverage is better than it was with AT&T (especially here in Cincinnati) at a fraction of the price, customer service has been excellent, and my plan comes with some nice perks such as free international roaming.
Still, a lot of folks have asked me how it’s been going since I first wrote about the switch in September, so allow me to elaborate further and point out a handful of caveats.
What is US Mobile?
US Mobile is what the industry refers to as a Mobile Virtual Network Operator, or MVNO, though I like to just call it a budget or alternative carrier. These companies lease access from the big three networks—AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon—and sell their own plans at lower prices. This allows the major carriers to make extra money from their leftover network capacity while reserving higher-priority connections for their own customers in most cases. (More on that shortly.)
Why I chose US Mobile over other alternative carriers:
- It’s cheap: US Mobile has a bunch of plans, but the top-tier unlimited option costs $44 per month or $390 per year (averaging out to $32.50 per month). It includes unlimited talk, text, and 100 GB of high-speed data, of which 50 GB supports mobile hotspot use. That’s plenty for me.
- You can choose any carrier: I’ve mostly been using T-Mobile’s network, which US Mobile refers to as “Light Speed,” but you can also opt for Verizon (“Warp”) or AT&T (“Dark Star”). The Unlimited Premium plan lets you switch whenever you want, and I liked the idea of not being tied to a single network going in.
- The perks: The plan I picked offers 5 GB of monthly international roaming, or 10 GB in Canada and Mexico, plus free outbound international calls. After I signed up, US Mobile added free cellular Apple Watch connectivity as well.
- Company and community: It’s a small thing, but US Mobile has a pretty active Reddit community, in which CEO Ahmed Khattak regularly responds to questions and criticism.
The coverage
While I haven’t been running speed tests around town, I’ve done a fair amount of travel since September, including a drive to Maryland, another drive from there to New York, a weekend in Louisville, and my usual trip to Las Vegas for CES earlier this month. Outside of a few random dead zones, I haven’t experienced any memorable coverage problems.
More importantly, I’m actually getting service in the places where AT&T would fail, such as my nearest Kroger and a couple of notoriously-unreliable main streets in the suburbs. Here at home, I’m seeing download speeds of around 60 Mbps on T-Mobile’s network—more than enough for video streaming—and an astounding 300 Mbps on Verizon’s network.

While the major carriers usually give their own customers top priority when their networks are busy, US Mobile’s Verizon connection sits on the same “QCI 8” tier as Verizon proper. Your mileage may vary on other networks, but I haven’t noticed any ill-effects from de-prioritization while using US Mobile’s T-Mobile connection. (Also, kudos to US Mobile for specifying QCI levels on its plan details page, so you can research accordingly.)
The perks
While US Mobile doesn’t have physical stores you can visit for help, its customer service has been exceptional, offering live chat, a phone number, and email support. I’ve reached out for a few little things and have never waited more than a minute for a response.
I also got to try out US Mobile’s free overseas coverage over winter break. It kicked in automatically when my plane landed, and provided free talk, text, and data (at least until I rather stupidly burned through it all due to some misconfigured music download settings in Plexamp). I only encountered one issue: At one point, service completely disconnected, and I had to toggle Airplane mode to get it working again.
As for US Mobile’s ability to switch between AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon connections, it’s more laborious than I’d hoped. While I’d envisioned bouncing between networks to avoid congestion issues or dead zones, the switching process involves activating a new eSIM card and discarding your old one. Each switch requires a separate Wi-Fi connection and takes several minutes to complete, so it only makes sense if you have a weak connection in a place you’ll be staying for a while.
The downsides
Shortly after switching to US Mobile, I noticed an uptick in spam phone calls. I seldom got them before, but now they come in about once per day, almost always asking me to sell my house for some reason.
US Mobile may not be entirely to blame, as the switch coincided with my occasional hop between Android and iPhone. The latter lacks the built-in spam detection that Google’s Phone app offers on Android.
But the major carriers also have their own spam filtering apps—AT&T has Call Protect, Verizon has Call Filter, and T-Mobile has Scam Shield—all of which block suspected spam automatically for free. (They also have some premium features, which I’ve never paid for.) US Mobile offers nothing similar, and I’d rather not pay a third-party service to just to block the occasional nuisance.

Customer service at least offered a partial solution: They switched me over to Verizon’s network and enabled a network-level feature that detects spam calls. Now, my iPhone’s caller ID at least identifies suspected spammers so I can ignore them, but it’s a shame this isn’t turned on by default and only works with a single network.
A few other nitpicks:
- No family plans: US Mobile lets you pick a free streaming service when you have three or more lines, but only on monthly plans. If you’re not solo, the potential savings are diminished.
- Video throttling: While streaming video, US Mobile limits the connection speed to only support standard definition, ostensibly to keep you from exceeding your limit. A hidden “Data Waster Mode” lets you override this behavior, but you have to enable it every month.
- Slow meter: While US Mobile’s app offers detailed usage statistics, it seems to lag behind by about a day, which isn’t useful if you’re coming up against a plan limit.
US Mobile won’t be the best fit for everyone, and ultimately it’s just one MVNO among many, but I’ll be sticking with it for the foreseeable future and can’t fathom going back to a major carrier—especially one that doesn’t work at the grocery store.
More tech tips await
There’s a bunch more to this week’s newsletter, which you can unlock with a paid subscription:
- How to avoid mandatory AI features from Microsoft and Google.
- Awesome free software for diagrams, audio editing, and more.
- A killer OLED TV deal, plus savings on soundbars and power banks.
- My best attempt to summarize the TikTok drama in a few short paragraphs.
The Advisorator New Year’s sale ends this week. Sign up now to get one month for $1 (instead of $5) or an entire year for $40 (instead of $50).
Thanks for reading!
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Until next week,
Jared
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