All of the major Cell providers in the US (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint) do this sort of crap to different degrees.
AT&T and Verizon have the most money so they do it the most.
If you want to use something a little less ... tainted, you can look into MVNOs. They buy bulk service from the major carriers and sell it to you at a reduced cost (with usually fewer "benefits").
Be sure to look to who actually owns the MVNO though. I know, for example, that AT&T owns Cricket and T-Mobile owns MetroPCS.
> Fight Trump and get unlimited data on the nation’s largest and most dependable 4G LTE network[0]
I hate donald and everything he 'stands' for, but don't lower yourself to his level just to sell your service.
One other bit, it's really not clear anywhere on their site if you can bring your own device to use with their service... They really want you to buy one of their devices. That's too bad.
I could have sworn that Credo supports BYOD, but now I see sources saying that it doesn't.
Credo's whole sales pitch is that they're connected to liberal causes, and they donate money to those causes. Of course they're going to take jabs at Trump.
Ting also happens to have some of the best customer service of any consumer facing company today. When you call them, you immediately get a human being that is intelligent and (every time I have dealt with them) able to solve your problem.
Yep I usually mention that as well as justinpombrio's comment, I just hate sounding like a shill. I'm simply an extremely satisfied customer from way back at launch.
One more thing: They are very friendly towards oddball devices. I had a Nokia 900 that they happily sent me a SIM card to fit, and helped me with APN settings (the defaults almost worked but needed to be tweaked a bit). They also more recently helped me get an iPad mini set up on the Sprint side. It took some finagling by the support person since they don't officially support that device, but they got me up and going. Their support staff is alway super friendly, I've never met a grumpy one even back when I was beta testing GSM on Windows Phone devices for them and had to call in several times a week.
Ting also has fantastic plans: you pay for what you use; if you use more you pay less per unit; all prices are clearly listed on their website; roaming charges are reasonable; there are no surprises.
I use Teltik, which resells T-Mobile Business services starting with plans at $20/mo. It has been an amazing experience so far. I used to be on AT&T MVNOs previously (Red Pocket) and while those are fine, the Teltik experience is way better for a very important reason: T-Mobile lets you use your data and voice plan in Canada and Mexico for no extra charge. Customer service has been superb as well.
In my area Sonic uses AT&T pipes and accepts an AT&T requirement that they charge the customer a high monthly fee for the rental of a modem, imposed as a policy even if the customer owns and uses their own modem. Not to mention that they bundle service with extra charges for an unwanted land line. So Sonic isn’t looking so great from here. Were they bought up by someone?
I loved the idea of grand central / google voice. IIRC I got my number right after google acquired grand central.
I have stopped giving out my google voice number because I have less confidence in anybody being able to reach me at my GV number ten years from now (vs what is currently my t-mobile number).
People have been worrying that Google would shut down GrandCentral/Voice for years, though, ever since Google acquired it nearly a decade ago. So far those worries haven't been realized. Google Voice has even received major mobile and browser upgrades last year, with regular updates since then: https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/01/23/google-resurrects-v...
So it appears Project Fi doesn't work with Google Voice not because the latter is being abandoned, but because Project Fi is based in part on Google Voice so you can't use both at the same time. Google Fiber home phone service also appears to leverage Google Voice infrastructure: https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/03/29/google-fiber-rolls-...
I would probably suggest porting your Google Voice number to a secondary Google account if you don't want to make your Google Voice number your Project Fi number instead.
Fi is largely predicated on saving you money as long as you're near accessible wifi, right? I have concerns about switching it and using it when I'm away from a connection.
Same, and even when I travel without wifi the data expenses are pretty marginal. If you download your podcasts, maps, and translation dictionaries before you leave, and you don't have to have youtube or netflix constantly playing when not around wifi, it's pretty ideal.
You're trading one telecom for another, all of which will be doing this. In the end you'll be wasting your time moving from one carrier to the next, while they sleep just fine at night.
I did the same thing this week actually. I called because I stopped getting cell service at my house. Then they told me I couldn't connect to WIFI calling because I have a Pixel. Then tried to sell me DirectTV while not resolving my cell service issue.
I switched to ProjectFI. Works great so far because I am basically always on WIFI, I realize this solution wont work for everyone.
Wife is on ProjectFI and I'm on Ting. I may switch over to FI when the Pixel 3 is launched but I'll miss Ting. Ting could teach customer service, it is a pleasure to call them, plus they play the theme to Buckaroo Banzai if there is a queue.
I'm on Ting
I think the GSM they resell is T-Mobile but I think it's nice to have that abstraction because I would imagine if T-Mobile suddenly tanked or something they would figure out something else on the backend
if you're in the US, give https://www.twilio.com/wireless a try. You're still using the same carriers under the hood but at the very least you're giving money to their business/enterprise side instead of the shitty customer side.
I tried using Twilio Wireless, but note it is NOT a good replacement for cellular service.
You can't receive texts from other Twilio numbers, which doesn't sound that bad, until you realize that virtually every verification SMS from most services also use Twilio. I wouldn't get 90% of my 2FA SMS codes anymore after trying to use it.
Also, data is super expensive on Twilio Wireless. After one day of just background data (no browsing or streaming) I was charged ~$15 (for the 100MBish of data I used off of Wi-Fi).
There are all kinds of other problems with it too as a cell service.
There are some really good reasons to use Twilio Wireless though, but not for mobile phone service. It's great for IoT hobby projects.
Been a bit since I last looked into the problem, but I was mistaken. You can't receive texts from shortcode numbers (though the majority of those use twilio), but that has the same effect - no 2FA codes many places.
I think it's intentional. I use Google Voice as my primary phone number, and there are various services that won't let me use it for 2FA, etc. I opened a support ticket with Discord to ask why, and after many emails back in forth they told me they have a database of what type of phone number every phone number is, and mine is "VoIP" which they claim cannot receive SMSes. (Everyone else, including my bank, has no trouble, of course... because they check by sending the SMS, not asking some outdated database if it's possible to send the SMS.)
What they didn't tell me, but I assume, is that some popular discord servers require phone verification to limit spam... and if anyone could just use a VoIP number as that phone verification, then that wouldn't work. (It still doesn't work, of course, but they think it does.) I, of course, just want to have an account recovery phone number, but they conflate the two uses of the phone number (person identifier, versus arbitrary second factor).
TL;DR, a lot of places are dumb and intentionally prevent you from using any sort of "recyclable" phone number. It helps them keep up the illusion that a phone number uniquely identifies exactly one person. Maybe that's true in South Korea, but it isn't here. So it just screws legitimate users for no reason.
You absolutely can receive texts from other Twilio numbers. It's shortcodes you can't receive from (which is definitely a problem).
Your data would be cheaper if you set the billing mode to "individual" (and not "pooled"), which will charge you for blocks of 1GB at a time. Having said that, data will still probably not be cheaper than a normal retail cell plan.
Aside from that, another issue is lack of MMS support. Twilio Wireless is designed for IoT use cases, so general cell phone use isn't something it's optimized for.
(Source/Disclosure: I'm the engineer who built the first version of Twilio Wireless.)
MMS is useless anyway so I see that as a non-issue, if anything it removes useless complexity. Social networks, email and WhatsApp/Telegram replaced MMS long ago, and as a bonus they don’t re-compress your images to make them look even more awful.
#BoycottATT