[PLUG-TALK] Librem phone?

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Thu Feb 28 13:48:52 UTC 2019


On Wed, 27 Feb 2019, John Jason Jordan wrote:

> It's supposedly going to be GSM, which means AT&T, T-Mobile, and their
> fellow travelers like MetroPCS. But not Sprint or Verizon. Then again, the
> current (recent) announcement of the shipping date is Q3, 2019, so there's
> still time for changes.

To add slightly off-thread comment that might be of interest to some, I
spent a lot of time the past week searching for an MVNO. My two criteria
were 1) support of the Nokia 6.1 Plus Android One and the iPhone 6 GOLD and
2) minimal cost for unlimited voice and text messages and a smidgen of data.

Two very low cost prospects were eliminated because one did not support the
Nokia (which has a huge selection of bands with which it will work) and the
other because text messages on the iPhone could be exchanged only with other
iPhones.

The MVNO I selected is Beast Mobile <https://beastmobile.net/>, so named
because one of the two initial investors is a pro-football running back
given the nickname of 'Beast Mode.' Okay by me. They access either AT&T's or
Sprint's networks. We're with AT&T. Two nano-SIMs at $10 each and a monthly
fee (per line) of $24 for unlimited voice and text with 1G data. That's
pretty darn good! (No senior discount, but that's alright.) For the socially
conscious know that Beast Mobile is providing free phones to many homeless
people in Seattle and other cities as they expand the program. I like this
effort, for many homeless need a phone to get a job and become homed.

Should you decide to investigate switching to them using your existing
phone(s) avoid the mistake I made. Their home page has links across the top,
two of which are Plans and B.Y.O.D. I kept following the latter link since
we had the phones. Don't do this! That path is for folks coming from other
networks (but not Verison for some reason) who also need a free Alcatel flip
phone. Take the Plans path instead.

Anyway, the SIMs should be here today and I'll call Beast and have them port
over out phone numbers from Verizon.

Given that my mobile phone experiences have been AirTouch Cellular ->
Verizon since ~1994 I've learned a lot over the past week.

Thanks to everyone here who offered helpful comments,

Rich



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