I feel like every two years I need to call my carrier and complain if I want a decent deal. They will do things like upgrade my plan on their website to have 10 extra gigabytes of data but won’t upgrade me to it until I contact them. There’s also all the new member exclusive deals that I feel make it impractical to just sit on one plan for an extended period of time.
Never.
Ok almost never. By staying on the older plan I get a lower rate. I think I changed four years ago because the cost was basically the same but got more data. Before that… It was a long time ago
Every other year I will review my phone plan. I use Sim only plans because phones provided by carriers are generally awful in my opinion.
You don’t like bloatware and having to ask if they can unlock your phone for you so you can leave their business? Psshhh
Network locking isn’t a thing in any place I have lived. But I know some uncivilized north American countries do it.
I just switch providers, it’s easier to get a good deal than by staying and nagging customer support. Though I currently pay €10,- with my current provider because I also have fibre with them, so I’ll probably stay with them for the foreseeable future.
I switched ever couple of years.
After using some grandfathered T-Mobile family plan for over a decade I moved us to Tello. Still the same towers, but with our usage it’s half the price.
Whenever I change employer and they get used to my habits. My employers have paid my phone bill since 2012, so they pick whatever is cheapest for them.
Fun fact: Largest bill (so far) was ~4000 USD equivalent for one month
$4000 in a month?! I assume that was mostly data/hotspotting? And I’m assuming that was for work purposes, right?
What are you doing on a cell phone for that cost? There are international phone plans that would be so much cheaper.
I was over in TX for work, and we had a production system there that was needed online ASAP. So I grabbed a 4G router to allow the VPNs to connect and used one of my spare SIMs (associatedwith my cell phone plan). In 99% of the cases this would not have been an issue, as it’s mostly telemetry and the occasional SSH session. Until a geophysicist noticed that it was online and spent the next few weeks pulling down terrabytes of raw seismic data for testing.
LOL, whoops!
Been with the same carrier 18 years now, same unlimited plan for at least the last 8.
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Once a decade or so. Basically when they say “haha, your unlimited 3G plan won’t support 4G speeds, upgrade to this more expensive plan that supports modern transfer rates”.
I’ve had the same plan for past 4 years. It’s also my first plan I had.
Originally €12/month, but the price increased to €13/month. If I was to get it now, it would be €15/month. It’s a data-only plan, but it gets me 300GB/month.
Unfortunately, my speeds are heavily crippled after shutdown of 3G. My carrier (Swan) only has 2G and 4G, but they had a contract with Orange for national roaming in their 2G and 3G networks. The FUP here was limited to 20GB, however in reality they allowed 40GB, as confirmed by the carrier (language: Slovak). The 3G offered far superior speeds during the day (30Mbps down as opposed to 1Mbps on 4G).Last month however, Orange shut down 3G. There’s now a new contract in place, allowing use of Orange’s 4G network except the 800MHz band. So… what’s the problem? It’s not done in the way of “national roaming” anymore. Instead the phone signs into Orange’s towers like native network. This also means I cannot explicitly use Orange’s network anymore by selecting it in “Mobile networks” setting.
Apparently, this was done to allow for “smoother experience while switching networks”.
I know a lot of people, including me, were using Orange’s network for faster speeds like this.But all hope is not lost, if you have MediaTek SoC, or a rooted Qualcomm device. For the latter, you should be able to use network signal guru.
For the former,*#*#3646633#*#*and head into band mode.
Here’s the trick: The network is clearly set up to prefer cell towers owned by Swan, unless it is absolutely necessary to use Orange. But Swan only has towers in 1800MHz (B3) band. If you disallow that band, it is suddenly absolutely necessary to use one of the Orange’s towers. Tada! Faster network speeds.
And also a warning: The carrier may not like you doing stuff like this. In fact, they may hate it, and ban you from using the network. There’s not enough info whether that actually happens or not.This kind of reminds me of an old PRL hacking article I’ve seen.
But anyway, it seems like these Orange towers may be doing some slight load balancing, as the speeds are now around 4-6Mbps during the day on home network. Still… 50Mbps on Orange towers.
Anyway, sorry, I got kind of off topic.
TL;DR: Never. My plan is cheap though slow. [Bunch of text] But it got a bit better.Often, once a year or so. It’s the only reliable way to get a lower price plan where I live. If I were to stay on the same plan I was on a couple years ago I would be paying an extra 20-30$ a month in fees for less data.
It’s the only reliable way to get a lower price plan where I live.
That’s what I thought, too. But nonetheless, I stayed with the budget provider who was trying to shake up the market. I chose them solely because they were cheap.
When mobile plans started getting really competitive, they quadrupled my data (to over 10gb/mo) for free, no questions asked. So now I’m probably going to be a customer of theirs for life unless they start raising the price on my grandfathered plan.
Every other year or so, but only because there somehow keep being better deals. Over the last 8 years mint mobile has been consistently good pricing even for returning customers provided you’re willing to pay for the whole year up front. That’s my baseline. From there other small carriers come along offering unlimited for less and you join for a year or two until they go bust. Right now I’m on Spectrum mobile since it’s free with even the cheapest home internet available to my address (for 12 months).
It’s paid for by my job
Unlimited calls and SMS/MMS, 200GB data, lots of long distance calls covered: 16€EUR/mo. Why would I change ?
If you were being overcharged for that
I’ve got the same prepaid plan for over a decade, just sometimes buy more data.
I literally never have. Same prepaid thing for like 15-20 years. The terms have changed a fair bit over the years but I still only dump the bare minimum for long/no-expiry from the same provider. Averaged out it’s only a few dollars a month.
It has some data now but I still just Wi-Fi hop in the rare situations I need internet.
