BestMVNO Website Update and News
Recently I've been making changes to the site in hopes of better serving you the readers, as well as those of you in need of a new cell phone plan. As such, you may have noticed some new pages added to the site as well as some new features. I plan on adding even more down the road, but first less discuss the recent site additions.
I've always considered the main purpose of this site to be to help people find a cheaper cell phone plan by providing the means to more easily compare plans among all the different providers out there. This is still the main purpose and goal. To do this, not only must I offer tables comparing the different plans out there, but I must also report any news in regards to new providers coming to the market as well as any changes in plans and pricing a current provider might have. Recently I've decided to expand on this purpose just a bit as I've noticed an industry problem that I'd like to help provide a solution for. That problem is that for whatever reason, many MVNOs and prepaid providers do not post their APN settings (Access Point Names, IE gateway to the internet settings). On top of that, some providers who do post theirs, haven't updated them in years. For those of you who don't know, without the proper configuration of your APN settings you're stuck with a phone that has no access to the internet or ability to send and receive MMS picture messages. Others who aren't configured properly may find that they do have access to the internet, but not at the speeds they are paying for. There's nothing more frustrating for a consumer to have paid for something, only to find out it does not work the way its supposed to. To make matters worse, a lot of MVNOs have very small support teams that aren't always helpful or are very slow to respond. So for that reason, I spent several weeks compiling a database of APN settings to try and help out those of you who recently switched to a new provider but are experiencing some of these problems. I have searched through every prepaid providers website to locate their APN settings and I have read through many different forums to try and make my APN list as complete and up to date as possible. Even with all the work put in, there is still more to be done. There will still be some inaccuracies, for some of the reasons already mentioned, namely providers don't always keep their APN settings pages up to date. Of course, posting settings found in a forum aren't always the correct ones for everyone either. Consequently, if you browse through my new APN pages, you'll often find anywhere between one to several different possible APN configurations representing settings and suggested settings I have found from various websites including the MVNOs very own. At this point of the project I also have to rely on you, you the readers and those of you who have signed up for service with a particular prepaid provider, for help. If you find settings that are different than what I have posted, please feel free to leave a comment on that APN settings page or send me an email with the settings that you have found to work that differ from what I have listed.
Support and Discussion Forums
The second thing I have done to help try and address the previously mentioned industry problems is to have opened up a forum. While there are many good and very popular forums out there such as https://www.howardforums.com, none of the websites hosting these forums have the narrow focus and scope that I hope BestMVNO can have. Currently the BestMVNO forum is up and running as a trial. My hope is that it becomes a destination that users can go to, to seek help with a particular carrier, as well as to discuss the pros and cons of a particular carrier through a users personal experiences. While I do not know how this will ultimately turn out, I am eager to see where it goes and I expect it to take quite some time before it gets there. In the meantime, if you feel there's a way to improve on the current forum set up, or if its not meeting your needs, please feel free to drop a line and let me know how you think it can be improved and I'll do what I can to accommodate.