GoKawiilI know that I am paying too much for my phone plan. I have known this for years. Like about two-thirds of America, I use a postpaid unlimited phone plan from one of the big three cell phone carriers. In my case, it's T-Mobile, which has the best 5G coverage and speeds, according to analysis from OpenSignal and Ookla, not to mention a whole bunch of perks I forget to use, like free AAA membership. Some part of me just wants “the best” phone service.
And so here I am, paying $75 a month as a baseline cost on a grandfathered unlimited plan—and that's before I factor in loss insurance or phone payments. But I have long known that I could get access to those same T-Mobile cell phone towers, and ostensibly the same 5G service, for a fraction of the price by using any number of prepaid mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) phone plans that use T-Mobile's network.
Am I just a sucker, I wondered? With my budget cinching tighter each month, I decided to test this hypothesis—the one about me being a sucker. So I tried a budget phone plan from Tello Mobile. Tello is a no-frills, no-commitment phone carrier that ranks among the lowest-cost unlimited phone plans in the US. Tello rents bandwidth on T-Mobile's network and costs as little as $10 a month for a plan with starkly limited cell data but unlimited texts and calls.
My assumption was that Tello's service would be notably worse than T-Mobile's, or that its limitations would be more … limiting. But a couple of weeks later, I have not found this to be the case. After roaming the earth (OK, mostly just Oregon) while running data-speed tests on both T-Mobile and Tello, I can attest that Tello's reception was reliable and that the data speeds were comparable (though not quite equal) to T-Mobile’s.
The reason, most likely, is that T-Mobile’s vast investment in 5G service has left lots of bandwidth to spare—removing the technical limitations that previously made budget prepaid phone plans a much dodgier choice. With Tello, I still risk that my data might be deprioritized during moments of extreme congestion, though I didn’t witness this even when sidling up to a sports stadium. There also are no discount phone upgrades, no protection plans, no free international roaming, and no particular perks.