Originally Published: Jan 11, 2015
Updated: May 1, 2017 with New US Mobile Pricing
A few months ago we reported on the inception of a new MVNO, US Mobile. US Mobile seems to be T-Mobile's answer to Ting Wireless, a provider of prepaid wireless plans on the Sprint Network. Both providers operate with build your own plan functionality through a la carte pricing for data, text and voice, and both offer 4 G LTE data. This is a great idea for those who don't want to have to pay for more than what they need in any one area of service. However, with a brief look around BestMVNO you can see that sometimes paying for what you may not need is cheaper than paying for exactly what you need.
Nonetheless, Ting is a service beloved by many for their strategy and pricing scheme in offering mobile phone service. They also have a reputation for offering excellent customer service.
Ting has been very successful since its launch in early 2012, and has in fact grown and expanded rapidly since then. Ting has grown so well that they recently have expanded and diversified their business through the acquisition of an Internet Service Provider. Early next month they are set to expand their prepaid plan offerings by launching service on a GSM network which appears to be T-Mobile's. Ting now also offers GSM service courtesy of T-Mobile.
Aside from its a la carte pricing, Ting also offers voice roaming, which is something not every MVNO offers, however they do not offer roaming for data. While on Sprints network, 4G LTE data speeds offered by the service provider average 6-8 Mbps download and 2-3 Mbps up, with a maximum throughput of 25 Mbps. If you signup for Ting GSM you should have access to T-Mobile's full speed 4G LTE network if it is available in your area.
All of Ting's prepaid wireless plans have an additional $6 line access fee per device on top of their service rates. They also allow you to top up mid month or at any point if you were to run out of minutes, voice or data before your monthly service is up. Your monthly plans minutes, data, etc, can be shared among all of your devices. So, the question now is, how does this new Ting competitor US Mobile stack up against Ting at their own game?
US Mobile
US Mobile has only been around for a few short months not been around as long as Ting has, so long term viability is may still be an unknown for the MVNO at this point. What they do offer though is cheaper plans for a single line than their competitor with the exact same amount of a la carte pricing options. Their monthly service charge is also cheaper at $2 as opposed to Ting's which is $6. A "top up" or refill feature is available if you were to run low on minutes, text or data before your month of service is up.
US Mobile is allowing you to try their service virtually risk free for up to 30 days under the following terms, "if, within 1 month of service, 100 minutes, 100 texts, or 100 mb of data consumption, whichever comes first, you are not completely satisfied with our service and wish to cancel, we will refund your money (excluding sim card and shipping costs)." Unlike Ting, US Mobile does not offer any sort of domestic roaming and 4G LTE data speeds though not specified, are likely the same or up to two times faster than Ting's. US Mobile does not allow you to share your minutes, texts and data among all your devices like you can with Ting, but you can add separate lines to your account.
Below you will find a summary of each MVNO's service rates.
Ting Wireless Pricing Summary
| Allotment Size | Device Access Charge* | Minutes | Text Messages | Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| XS | $6 (1 device) | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| S | $12 (2 devices) | 100 $3 | 100 $3 | 100MB $3 |
| M | $18 (3 devices) | 500 $9 | 1000 $5 | 500MB $10 |
| L | $24 (4 devices) | 1000 $18 | 2000 $8 | 1GB $16 |
| XL | $30 (5 devices) | 2100 $35 | 4800 $11 | 2GB $20 |
| XL+ (each additional) | $6 | more, 1.9¢/min | more 1/4¢ | $10/GB |
*The device access charge is the price Ting Charges for each device to access its network.
US Mobile Pricing Summary
Having now compared both, which do you think offers the better option? I live in an area where both Sprint and T-Mobile have good coverage, and voice roaming, long term viability and device sharing are not a concern to me, so if I had to choose, the better option for me would be US Mobile just to save a few dollars.
After getting stung by most of our group getting migrated to Ting from RingPlus and RingPlus being less than forthcoming on certain things, I would never recommend Ting to anybody. The $6/line is outrageous. Better they do like some of their competition and require a minimum $ amount. Disagree on how great Ting CS is. In our experiences, it was anything but great and we had a dozen experiences with different CSRs at Ting.
I don’t mind the $2 charge for US Mobile as that’s more reasonable and in line with some of its competition. I may give it a try and see how it compares to Tello, CellNUVO, and a few of the others since some people are preferring one company over another and the pricing between Tello, CellNUVO are comparable and with TPO and SpeedTalk offering Flash sales on RingPlus, those two may make the list as well.
I’ve been using US Mobile for over a year and they’re great. I have an older non-LTE phone so I haven’t tested their LTE speeds. Customer service is very responsive. Ting is more expensive but their interface is fun and service is great.
Are you using both providers or just US Mobile now? Do you feel Ting’s interface is much better or similar?
I just switched to US Mobile, super quick and easy, same coverage. Took just a few minutes, number ported and all. Then a text to call 611, a real tech just checking I had no issues, I did not 🙂 I can now pay for what I use at the best rates around, and if I go over, a small top-up is easy and inexpensive. A fantastic service offering, simple web interface, quick courteous support, I’m a fan.
I was looking for the cheapest pay-as-you-go plan, full stop, for my younger siblings. An emergency phone of sorts. Ting’s $6 service fee is nothing short of a money grab. US Mobile’s $2 one is more tolerable. For the price of 100 T&T&MB ($9/mo) on US Mo., you can only choose ONE of those on Ting. Guess who wins out.
Ting has gotten complacent; I applaud their expansion into GSM but that service fee is driving away serious budget users. The only advantage I see is the Sprint network which gives me much better coverage.
I went with H20Wireless’s easGo PayGO $5/mo plan. They rip you the hell off on activation ($10 shipping & $10 SIM) but if it works it will be almost twice as cheap per month as US Mobile.
Why would you pay for their SIM when you can get it from Amazon for free, or $.01 to be precise?
And have you considered $10 pay as you go that is good for 90 days? This comes to $3.33 per month for occasional or emergency use.
I was considering Ting myself, but just like in your case can not justify their $6 month service fee and steep brackets where once you go above 100/100/100, you can get a pretty high bill.
On the H20 mothership, MB’s and MMS’s are 10 cents each. With EasyGO, they’re 2x as cheap at 5 cents. The SIM is going to a teenage sibling, so they’ll probably be spending $6-7 a month anyways.
Facepalm on the $10 SIM. I shoulda checked Amazon. Oh well. A $20 lesson for me :-(.
I’m also waiting for ECO mobile to activate my PAYG SIM, where texts are 2 cents each (ghost of Ptel, is that you?). Their MB’s are 10 cents but having 50 texts for a dollar (plus a free SIM unlike SOME MVNOs COUGH COUGH) is nice.
Yeah, I honestly do not understand why Ting is so hot right now. If you want to park your number for emergency use, you can do that on Tmo’s $3/mo PAYG plan. If you want the same brackets (FOR CHEAPER) you go with US Mobile and their $2 service fee. I foresee them bleeding some customers in the future.
I decided to switch from PagePlusCellular to US Mobile as I am getting a new phone and going GSM. I tried us mobile SIM on an older Nokia 620, and was getting 4G speed. Once my LTE capable Nokia 1020 phone showed up I could not get LTE working. Out of curiosity I plugged in my wifes iPhone SIM (Tmobile) into my Nokia and LTE lit up! I emailed US Mobile who replied that “we operate on T-Mobile towers so coverage should be the same”, yet it is not. I wonder if US Mobile does not have full access to the frequencies of T-Mobile towers? I am in L.A. area.
Did you set the correct apn on the 1020 and chose the correct network mode? You may need to change the settings manually whereas with the t-mobile sim it may be automatic. On the old Nokia, by 4g you mean hspa ?
Instructions on how to change network mode (change to lte) and set apn can be found here.
https://www.windowsphone.com/is-is/how-to/wp8/connectivity/cellular-and-sim-settings
Apn settings are here, but if you are having issue, you may want to try some other t-mobile mvno apn settings (from other mvnos) that I have listed
https://help.gousmobile.com/474056-Apple-iPhone-Windows-Phone-and-Android-APN-Settings-
https://bestmvno.com/apn-settings/us-mobile-apn-settings/
There must be something I am missing. I changed APN to “pwg” but still only hspa – “4G” in Nokia nomenclature. I also only get “3G” on iPhone 6s with suggested APN settings, so I am at a loss here. I wonder if the SIM was used first on a device that did not support LTE would be locked not to enable LTE in the future devices even if they support it? Just a thought…
Maybe apn should be different. I’ll get back to you on that. Also, by what you’re saying, it sounds like you’ve properly selected 4g for network mode? I know latter link is different device but setup guide should be pretty similar
https://deviceguides.vodafone.ie/web/nokia-lumia-1020/basic-use/network/select-network-mode/
https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/knowledge-base-95893/
Still no LTE love from US Mobile.
I spend half a day tearing up the phone – upgraded to win 10 beta – same, downgraded back to win 8 – still no LTE with US Mobile SIM. But if I plug in T-Mobile SIM, LTE is on. US Mobile SIM also gives me no LTE confirmation on iPhone 6s where I can change highest connection speed setting to LTE in software. On Win 8.1 I could not find the “highest connect speed” settings anymore – I went through all the menus and the only thing I found was when I manually select the network, it shows what speeds it supports (I get Home for network with US Mobile SIM, “LTE 4G G” are the listed modes).
Its good I didn’t port over my number yet, just using it as a test. And test it was…
As much as I like US Mobile pricing plan – my needs are met at under $15 a month level, having LTE upload speed would be nice, especially as they are advertising as one of their features.
Hello, I’m now working with someone from US Mobile about your issue. Can you contact me via my contact us website form link? In doing so, please include and use the email address associated with your Disqus account. Once you do, I will share the information with a particular individual from US Mobile who can help you. The person has already reviewed your comments here and needs to respond offline.
Wow, later same day I had US Mobile contacting me and instructing to reboot the phone. After couple reboots, my phone LTE symbol lit up, and speed test confirmed faster transfer rates. I was not explained where the hick up was, but it surely was resolved fast – there are real people behind US Mobile. So when there are problems, they will help! Also, the sysop of Bestmvno.com was super – he (or she) helped to facilitate the resolution on the issue. Could not be happier!
That’s great news! I’m glad the situation was able to be resolved.
I just ported over from Ultra Mobile to US Mobile and am having a similar experience. Entered the pwg info as is on the website with a Nexus 4 (with LTE enabled) phone running an Android 6 ROM (had used it just an hour earlier on Ultra for a speedtest and was 20 mbit on LTE) and it’s defaulting to UMTS.
Hi ChefJoe,
Did you try contacting support for US Mobile? I think they had to do something on their end to get it working with Agnius if I remember correctly.
I’ll be contacting US Mobile support soon. This is in the first few hours after my port over. I found this discussion by trying to google for anyone else in this situation and wanted to add my data point, particularly since I’m using a more mainstream OS and I’ve been using LTE (and doing Sensorly mapping of the LTE coverage in my neighborhood) for months on my prior TMobile MVNO and didn’t change anything but the SIM and APN settings.
I was able to find an old email about the situation and US Mobile did in fact have to change something on their end for Agnius. They didn’t specify exactly what though.
An e-mail to help at usmobile.com responding to the port completion email seems to have been sufficient. I emailed, waited an hour, then rebooted my phone (which I’d been doing at least half a dozen times since the port) and it’s now connecting to band 4 lte like it was with Ultra mobile. I’m not sure if it was random or profiling based on subscribed (250mb) data bucket or device IDs, but it feels like this is something an MVNO might be able to save money with (paying TMobile for LTE data vs 3G)
That’s good. Sounds exactly like Agnius.
I’m not sure how that works either.
Functionally, the download speed is only a bit slower but the upload speed went from 20 to 2 mbps by being limited to HSPA . The network authenticates as “Home” instead of something more descriptive (like “Ultra.me” was).
Also, US Mobile seems to be using generic apn, so does ptel and giv Mobile, as well as ultra Mobile but their APNs are slightly different. Basically they replace “pwg” with “wholesale” so you may want to try that. Take a look at settings I have for those MVNOs and see if they work for you