A few weeks ago news broke that FreedomPop would be a launching a new wireless brand called Unreal Mobile. Today, Unreal Mobile's launch is official and the brand is ready to take on subscribers.
The Story Behind Unreal Mobile
Unreal Mobile is largely the product of Samantha Lewe. Lewe began working at FreedomPop in late 2012 as a social media and customer engagement specialist. About a year after hire she was promoted to the position of marketing manager and within 2 years she became FreedomPop's director of marketing operations.
During Samantha's early tenure at FreedomPop she got to know the brand and its customers fairly well. She learned what subscribers liked and did not like. Samantha and her colleagues began to think about offering a more premium product. It was during this time that the seed for Unreal Mobile was planted.
Fast forward to 2018 and FreedomPop decided the time was right to finally launch a new and more premium product, Unreal Mobile. Unreal Mobile will be managed by Samantha Lewe.
What Makes Unreal Mobile A More Premium Product?
FreedomPop is a low cost MVNO brand that relies on VoIP technology to provide voice service to its customers. To date, VoIP technology has been hit or miss for subscribers. Some say it induces voice lag, where one person speaks and the other person can't hear what has been said until half a second later. At its worst VoIP can lead to the two parties talking over one another, at its best the flaw goes relatively unnoticed.
Unreal Mobile will NOT be relying on VoIP to provide voice to its subscribers. Voice will be provided over a cellular network just like how nearly every other carrier offers it. However, during times when the cellular voice network is weak, data networks including WiFi will be used to provide VoIP voice service. So in this case, VoIP will be used as a fallback technology, not a primary technology like with FreedomPop. Unreal Mobile customers will still be able to use an app if they'd like so that they can place and answer calls and texts on any device including tablets, PCS's, second phones and iPads. However, an app won't be required for service on the primary phone.
The customer support experience should also be improved over FreedomPop's. Unreal Mobile will have a customer support phone number that is easy to find listed on its website. New and existing subscribers will be able to use it to call for help. Support will also be made available by email.
Unreal Mobile Phone Plans And Pricing
All of Unreal Mobile's phone plans will include a VPN to provide anonymity and encryption and an ad blocker at no additional cost . FreedomPop charges extra for those features. All plans will also include unlimited talk, text and data with the specified amount of data at 4G LTE data speeds. Pricing is as follows:
- $10/month - 1GB of 4G LTE data
- $15/month - 2GB of 4G LTE data
- $30/month - 5GB of 4G LTE data
- $40/month - 10GB of 4G LTE data
All Unreal Mobile plans include mobile hotspot, data carryover, and WiFi calling and texting. VoLTE is unavailable. Taxes and fees are included in the prices shown, although I'm told that may not always be the case.
Service will be provided on the Sprint network. Samantha says that at some point down the road a GSM partner will be added, but at this time there are no further details to give and partner negotiations are ongoing.
Unreal Mobile will support bring your own device, so if you have an off contract Sprint compatible phone on hand you're welcome to use it with the MVNO. Phones will also be available for purchase starting at $49 and will include offerings from Alcatel, Samsung and Apple. SIMs will be made available later this summer, although Sprint SIMs should work just fine.
How To Signup
Customers will be able to subscribe to Unreal Mobile through the company's website. The MVNO has also signed a number of deals with national distribution partners. Those partners include Amazon, Walmart, Groupon, Target and Best Buy. At the moment distribution will be online only, with brick and mortar offerings to follow later.
Editor's Take
Unreal Mobile says that when news broke of its impending launch, over 50,000 users registered for its beta program. That would seem to indicate that interest in the brand is high and it's easy to see why. Pricing is really cheap for what is being offered, particularly at the $30 and below price points. At just $15/month you can get a plan with 2GB of data. Several competing brands in the industry require you to pay for service several months in advance to get such a great rate. That won't be the case here.
While pricing overall looks good, it remains to be seen if the brand can live up to its promise of offering premium service without premium prices. On paper at least, the company is certainly off to a good start.
Unreal has now partnered with AT&T for GSM cell service. At just $10/mo for cell/text/1GB data, that’s a compelling option for inexpensive cell service. The only way they can continue at that price point will be to convince subscribers to offload as much traffic to WiFi as possible. Republic Wireless has done this successfully. They encourage their subs to use WiFi as much as possible, and their VoIP app is mature and refined. I have grave doubts about Unreal’s VoIP app, but have no experience with it. If the VoIP app is junk, no one will use it and the cost of Unreal’s cheap plans will go up, and may not be so cheap. Very tempting, though, at this price point.
Unreal Mobile does not require the use of VoIP for service. Talk and text works like it does with any other regular phone plan. VoIP is optional.
I see the new GSM plans do require VoIP which is no different than FreedomPop’s cheap VoIP plans that are also on the ATT network.
A friend decided to move his Boost Mobile number to Unreal since Boost was no longer offering Boost Dealz after July 29 and gave no indication they were replacing it. He suggested to the CSRs that CellNUVO would be a good replacement option for Dealz. Other than a rocky start with the port-in, which happens in a small percentage of ports, he was happy with the porting as it happened fast as in a few hours or less; he was able . A friend recommended Unreal as the friend recently joined with Unreal. My friend lives in Wichita and the number they gave him to start with was New Jersey. If they had given him a Kansas number, he would probably have kept it as he lost a couple of weeks of Boost Mobile service and lost the earned credits from Boost Dealz.
Assuming Sprint’s merger with T-Mobile is approved, what would happen to Unreal Mobile once the merged T-Mobile would become GSM-only? Hopefully, Unreal Mobile would have a GSM partner by then. Fortunately, my Moto G4 Play is a “universal unlocked” device, so I’d be OK regardless. I’m currently on a super-cheap Red Pocket plan with limited data — but there are some months when I could use a more generous data bucket, so $10/month for Unreal Mobile’s cheapest plan would be an improvement, even though it would be slightly more expensive.
Nothing should really happen to affect older customers as long as they have an LTE or 5G capable device. GSM and CDMA are really legacy terms and old technology. LTE is it’s own thing and is not related to GSMA or CDMA. GSMA and CDMA have been used in the past to provide voice service to customers on their respective networks, but that’s slowly being phased out in favor of VoLTE calling which is dependent on LTE.
Unreal Mobile’s network would expand in a merger and would have support for more LTE bands and devices than it does today.