Ting Mobile In 2021: What You Need To Know

Ting Mobile was founded in 2012. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of publicly traded Tucows INC.  At launch, service was provided exclusively on the Sprint network. Since 2015 it has also partnered with T-Mobile.  In February of 2020, the company officially added Verizon as a 3rd network partner.  Customers with multiple devices can use them on either of the networks within the same account, however each device can only be exclusively used on one network or the other.

Plans

Just one year after launch, Ting Mobile got rid of monthly prepaid plans in favor of what it calls “rates.” It has remained that way ever since.

Through the rate model, Ting has effectively become a postpaid provider with a big twist. Customers don’t actually choose a phone plan.

Prior to the rate model, customers built their own phone plans and effectively got a refund at the end of the month for any unused talk, text or data that they had in their account. Now customers pay at the end of the month for what they actually used during their billing cycle.

A few sample plans were listed in the table above.  A full breakdown of Ting’s “rates” is below.

Another example of how Ting’s rates work is like this:

If at the end of your billing cycle you only used 57 minutes, 700 texts, and 350 MB of data, your phone bill would cost you $3 for the minutes, $5 for the text messages and $10 for the data plus a $6 line charge.  The next month you may pay something different depending on how much of each service feature that you use.

Update: Ting has for the most part gotten rid of its pay per use plans and now operates more like a traditional provider. You can read all about how Ting’s new plans work here.