If you want to try an alternative carrier to the Big (Evil) Four, a new emerging option is TPO, or The People’s Operator. The Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales joined this company in 2014, so that’s one plus they have over the many other alternative carriers out there.
For a limited time (they do not mention expiration date), you can get a FREE TPO SIM card. This is a 3-in-1 card, so it should fit all GSM phones. Free shipping as well. You pay nothing to get this card, you don’t give them any credit card info. You are also under no obligation to activate or use it.
You can find the free offer on their website with banners, such as the screenshot below promoting it:
Another unusual feature of TPO is that 10% off what you pay goes to a charity of your choice, from a list of 36 and growing. There are many known and unknown groups, from City Year to Special Olympics to Cancer and environmental causes.
THEIR PLANS
Their plans are no-contract, and they have no activation fees, and require no credit checks. You get the better price if you sign up for Auto PAY (usually $5/mo off per month). Most of the (lower) plan prices shown on their website is with Auto-PAY. They currently have six plans.
Also, for a limited time, they offer preset discounts on the first three months of your service. But again, this is not a contract or commitment. You are still month to month. You just pay less during the first three months.
With the Big (Evil) Four carriers now entering an all-out “Unlimited Data” (sort of) feature and price war, these plans are more of interest if you don’t use a lot of data. Voice and texting is no issue, but data can get pretty expensive on this plan compared to what you can get unlimited.
Having said that, even though they specialize in 4G LTE GSM networks, they have ONE exclusive Sprint CDMA plan that is $55 (with AutoPAY) or $60 per month (without AutoPAY) that gets you unlimited data. Throttling down to 2G happens if you use more than 50GB (twice as much of the Big Four) during a billing period. For this plan, you NEED a device that is authorized for Sprint usage.
For all the other plans, you need an unlocked GSM phone that has compatible bands for TPO. You can figure out if your phone is eligible by entering the your phone number’s IMEI or MEID in the compatibility checker box.
They also sell a few phones and one tablet, but the prices are much better if you BYOD or buy a device on your own.
I MAY REVIEW THIS
I ordered a SIM card, so depending on how much time I have and whether I can find a compatible phone, I may do a review on this. Stay tuned for that but no promises 🙂
LATEST COMMENTS