ROK Mobile, the MVNO that was co-founded by John Paul Dejoria who also co-founded the Paul Mitchell salon product line, has now partnered with "the nation's largest 4G LTE network" which seems to imply Verizon as one of it's MVNO partners. The company still maintains partnerships with Sprint and T-Mobile offering service via those networks as well.
For those of you who aren't yet familiar with the prepaid wireless provider they are able to differentiate themselves quite a bit from other prepaid wireless providers by bundling their music streaming service, ROK Music, with their mobile phone plan offering. ROK Music includes a library of over 20 million songs and is available on both iOS and Android devices.
Now that the MVNO has partnered with Verizon, at $49.99/month they can boast of being one of the cheapest Verizon MVNOs to offer at least 5 GB of LTE data.
With the bundled music service included, subscribers save an additional $9.99 a month by not having to subscribe to competing streaming music services such as Spotify or Google Play Music.
Bring your own device (BYOD) is supported. For those of you who don't yet have a device, ROK Mobile is also selling Verizon compatible phones in the ROK Mobile phone store. As with all Verizon MVNOs download speeds are capped at 5 Mbps while upload is at 2 Mbps.
The company has also announced plans to expand their retail presence through independently owned mobile phone stores nationwide with a goal of being in 10,000 stores by the end of 2015.
Jonathan Kendrick, Chairman and co-founder of ROK Mobile had this to say about the companies new initiatives:
"We want everyone to have access to ROK Mobile and ROK Music, and now they can." "We want to grow our customer base and give them premium mobile and streaming music services. Apple Music, Spotify and Tidal constructs barriers to access their premium services and ROK is all about breaking those walls down to really give consumers what they want and truly deserve."
So what do you think of ROK Mobile's new offering? Are any of you Verizon customers out there going to make the switch? What about you Verizon MVNO customers?
For more information visit the ROK Mobile homepage or check out their official press release.
Hummm… Cant seem to find any mention of Verizon nor coverage.
Depending on what network the parent provider is, MVNOs aren’t always allowed to make mention of which network they are using. I work to try and uncover that.
If you do a Google search for Rok Mobile phone store, you’ll find their online store for phone purchases. It will be pretty clear on that site about what the network is. I will later on update this article with a link to the phone store.
Well going by the phone store I see your point is correct, but the coverage map “GSM/SPRINT” selection and the LTE coverage map looks like Sprint. Sure confuses me, leery on switching as I need Verizon coverage where I live. So Ill email them…
I don’t think they’ve updated their coverage map yet.
It will be a crapshoot as to if they’ll answer you directly. I know as a matter of fact they cannot divulge what the network is as per agreement with that network.
You can try asking directly though, but it would be better to ask if they can activate any Verizon phone. They should be able to answer yes to that one, and as you know, Verizon phones typically don’t work on Sprint with full functionality so that should answer it for you.
Well they got back to me with the following:
ROK Mobile Support (ROK Mobile)
Jul 11, 10:21
Hello Steve,
Thank you for reaching out to us today. ROK Mobile offers service utilizing multiple mobile networks. For CDMA devices we use the Sprint and Verizon Network, for GSM devices we use the T-Mobile Network. We don’t use multiple networks at the same time
Resolved. Thanks!
That’s great that they answered it like that for you. I am surprised at how direct they answered.
I live in Charleston WV My coverage is supposed to be 4G but I only have 3G
What phone with model number?