Advertisement
If you open up your MobileX app like I recently did, you'll notice that MobileX has removed its $24.88/month unlimited plan, which offered 199GB of high-speed data before full throttling, and reverted the plan back to 30GB. Current customers on the plan will not be grandfathered into the 199GB allotment. The plan was first upgraded from 30GB to 199GB in October 2024 as a limited time promo. In February 2025, the plan was said to have been made permanent.
The change is a big negative in that it impairs MobileX's ability to compete in the market at that price point given many carrier owned prepaid brands continue to sell truly unlimited data plans for around $25/month, including several owned by Verizon. Verizon's digital only brand, Visible, is currently offering its unlimited plans at a $6/month discount to new customers for one year. That drops Visible's base plan to just $19/month and its step up plan with unlimited priority data to $29/month with all taxes and fees included in the price. Pricing like this leaves independent MVNOs with little room to maneuver. When unlimited plans are cheap, and especially when they’re feature-rich, the case for choosing an independent MVNO over a carrier-owned prepaid brand can be greatly diminished.
The rollback of MobileX’s 199GB ‘unlimited’ plan in under a year feels like a rug pull, but the cause, and whether it was MobileX or its network partner, Verizon, cannot be independently verified.
Several weeks ago, Fierce Network reported that EchoStar was considering acquiring MobileX, a move that could potentially put MobileX's founder and CEO, Peter Adderton, back in charge of another brand he created, Boost Mobile. Verizon, may have seen the Fierce article and viewed it as a threat. That could have led to a behind-the-scenes rate hike or restriction, effectively kneecapping MobileX’s ability to compete with Verizon’s and other carrier-owned prepaid brands at the $25/month price point.
Two other Verizon MVNOs, US Mobile, and Xfinity Mobile have recently begun to market truly unlimited data plans. It's unclear if both brands are simply using breakage, and hoping the customers they have on those plans don't use enough data to make them unprofitable, or if Verizon is simply offering them great rates to allow those plans to happen that MobileX no longer has access to. I reached out to Peter Adderton for comment who indicated this change was out of his hands. He stated:
"As an MVNO you don't own the network nor do you get to set the wholesale price. We were given pricing that allowed us to match these offers (from other providers) in the market place and that was not extended. Now this change does not effect the majority of our Unlimited customers as they use less than 30GB but it does affect our ability to offer like other brands full unlimited at the $25 dollar price point without losing money." -Peter Adderton, MobileX Founder and CEO
Either way, no matter which party is ultimately responsible for the change, I'll continue to beat the drum that carriers must let their MVNOs be allowed to profitably sell truly unlimited data plans to compete and survive in the market, especially if the carriers themselves are going to have their prepaid brands offer truly unlimited data plans at price points that MVNOs typically thrive at.