The makers of the minimalist Light Phone, Light, have launched mvno plans using AT&T's network. Pricing is rather steep, with plans starting at $30/month for 1GB of data. Light launched its MVNO plans through Gigs, which calls itself the world's first telecom-as-a-service platform. Gigs's website states that it can allow businesses to launch their own white label MVNO plans in a matter of days.
Light Phone Plan Offerings
Light is offering just 3 phone plans. The plans are described in the list below.
- $30/mo - 1GB data
- $45/mo - 5GB data
- $70/mo - unlimited everything, including hotspot**
**The $70 plan includes 22GB of data at up to 5G data speeds. After 22GB, subscribers are throttled to a maximum speed of 3Mbps. And after 50GB, data speeds are further throttled to a maximum of 128Kbps for the remainder of the customer's billing cycle. The other plans appear to have a hard data cap.
Light is charging an additional 10% more than what they list their prices at to cover additional taxes and fees.
The company states that its plans are designed for use with its $299 Light Phone 2.
Unfortunately, Light's plan pricing, like their phone, is expensive and a better fit to days gone by, as evidenced by the pricing of these H2O Wireless plans from 6 years ago.
The idea of the Light Phone and Light plans are welcomed, but to my eyes the execution falls flat. The company markets its phone as "designed to be used as little as possible," as you can observe from their promotional video shown below.
A $299 price tag for a phone that isn't a smartphone, has a black and white screen with big bezels and isn't meant to be used much, to me, sounds pretty expensive. And then factor in their expensive plans and I'm really not sure who their demographic is. Light wants customers to pay premium pricing for its phone and plans, but then to use each as little as possible. This seems to present a bit of a contradiction.
Persons that really desire a phone and plan to use as little as possible may be better off grabbing an unlocked feature phone from Amazon for under $100. The phone could then be paired with providers like MobileX or US Mobile or any other of the numerous MVNOs on the market that offer phone plans for $10/month or less.
Light isn't the only recently launched wireless provider powered by Gigs. In August, BestMVNO reported that Zolve launched its own wireless plans. Zolve is a Neobank targeting immigrants. Even though their phone plans are also powered by Gigs, their pricing, although not great, is still *light* years ahead of what Light offers. Zolve's plans start at $30/month for a plan with 4GB of high-speed data, as opposed to the 1GB you get with Light for the same price. Cable operator Omnipoint, also launched plans in August powered by Gigs. Their plans start at $15/month for 1GB of data on the AT&T network.