US Mobile - A Fantastic Cell Phone Carrier
After 24 years with AT&T 🏁, I said goodbye 👋 and now use US Mobile 📱 for my whole family of devices and kids
Hi Readers! I hope you all had a happy New Year. I took a good long break from writing over the past few weeks but am excited to kick off the new year with this post. I’m also realizing that I’ve probably been writing on this blog for over 20 years now. A few days ago I celebrated my 25th anniversary working at Microsoft. One of the reasons I write this Newsletter is to stay connected to many of you, so thanks for reading, giving me feedback and being a part of my journey in tech!
I’ve been an AT&T customer for 24 years. Not anymore.
If you go back in time, there was a battle around cellular infrastructure. There was GSM (the standard most of the world had adopted) and then TDMA/CDMA, what the US Carriers were using. AT&T (and Cingular, before that) pioneered the transition to the GSM network. That has brought goodness to the world in general as it allowed us to send SMS messages to phones around the world and travel with our phones using them in every country on the planet. It seems quaint now since we have much better tools for communicating than 20 years ago! We have come a long way, and access to the web on planes, boats, and while traveling is more critical than ever.
The transition to 5G though has created what I see as two problems. AT&T (and Verizon for that matter) are expensive and they continue to command a high price for their services. The Unlimited packages and bundles run up to $80 a month, and the speed and coverage of AT&T has not met my expectations. In addition, since I travel a lot, roaming on AT&T is just extremely expensive ($10 a day up to 10 days per month, $5 for each additional line).
About a year ago I started an experiment using a little-known carrier called US Mobile. The reason for my experiment is that our cabin, which is 90 minutes north of Seattle only has Verizon service, and I was interested in how I could purchase service for the few weeks a year that I need it without having to change my plan.
Oh, one more thing. Our phones now support multiple lines (two at once) so this is what really allowed us to easily try service from other carriers while not impacting our primary service. In other words, you can use data from one carrier and keep your phone line as your primary. iPhones even can switch back and forth between your primary and secondary data. In addition to having two active lines, you can store a few more all through the magic of eSIM (electronic SIM).
US Mobile is an MVNO. That stands for “Mobile Virtual Network Operator”. That means that they don’t own any physical infrastructure, but rather “lease” from the big carriers (AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon).
There are many of these MVNOs out there.
Cricket Wireless: Operates on AT&T's network. Known for offering unlimited plans and family discounts.
Boost Mobile: Primarily uses T-Mobile's network. It is known for its affordable prepaid plans.
Metro by T-Mobile (formerly MetroPCS): Operates on T-Mobile's network. Offers a variety of plans with no annual contract.
Mint Mobile: Utilizes T-Mobile's network. Known for its low-cost plans and bulk pricing.
Google Fi: Uses a combination of T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, and Three's networks. Unique for its smart network switching technology.
Visible: Operates on Verizon's network. Offers simple and affordable unlimited plans.
US Mobile offers two different services
GSM 5G - this is their T-Mobile service, without priority data. It includes International Roaming up to 10GB / month in most countries.
Warp 5G - this is their Verizon service, with priority data (on 5G devices). It does not yet include International Data; however, they will issue you an International eSIM for many countries for free each month.
For 5 or so years I was a Google Fi customer. They use T-Mobile in the US and have excellent and seamless international roaming. The issue I ran into is that at $10 per GB it gets expensive on those longer international trips. But in terms of “it just works” they are excellent.
But I needed Verizon service.
I discovered US Mobile and started off with their “Pooled” plans. That is, you pay $8 per month for a line that includes 1GB of data a month, and $2 per GB over that. I added my iPad as a line and my iPhone allowing me to have Verizon on my iPhone and T-Mobile on my iPad. This was a wonderful way to “test the waters”.
When you sign up for US Mobile you must pick what network you are going to use between GSM and Warp. You can move between the two by “internal porting” so it’s not seamless, but it is possible.
My experience with them as a customer for a year has been quite good.
They are an all-digital platform, and you can do everything from their mobile app and web site.
Their chat and phone service are phenomenal
They are very innovative with pricing and products
All their prices include taxes and fees.
I got quite comfortable with their services and decided to make a bigger commitment. I’m currently paying AT&T about $70-80 a month including taxes and fees for three lines (mine and my two kids). That’s $210-240 a month. That price varies due to our international data ($20 per day for 3 lines). You can avoid some of that expensive roaming data using a provider like Airalo. You can read more about Airalo in my recent review if you like.
So, a few months ago, I ported my two kids over from AT&T to the US Mobile Unlimited Premium Plans. The cost was $45 per month each.
After traveling to a few countries and lots of local use in Seattle I was satisfied. Every few days my kids and I would do a speed tests (they were on the GSM 5G with T-Mobile) and they consistently beat my AT&T service.
During this time, I also ported my old Google Fi plan over to a US Mobile Warp 5G plan. I was also performing speed tests every few days and was blown away with how fast Verizon is.
Earlier I mentioned how AT&T was not so great on speed. Well, it turns out I am not alone.
This article covers how each carrier compares, and it matches my own experience here in Seattle.
T-Mobile is consistently faster, I get speeds up to 1 gigabit, but coverage is not as consistent.
Verizon is speedy and has coverage in places T-Mobile does not. Verizon has a large buildout of their mmWave 5G service here in Seattle.
AT&T is consistently the slowest but has the most consistently mediocre coverage. AT&T coverage is mostly LTE and rarely 5G.
So, as you can see there are tradeoffs.
Where I ended up is that my iPhone has two lines on US Mobile, GSM 5G is primary (T-Mobile) and Warp 5G (Verizon) is secondary. This is a good balance for me as I get great speed in Seattle, along with great International coverage, and when T-Mobile is not functioning my phone automatically uses Verizon’s network. I get the best of both worlds.
So far, I have not for one second regretted moving off AT&T. But you should also know that US Mobile will be adding a third network (AT&T) soon. That’s very cool as it means you can have the best of all worlds at much better costs.
The cost of my two lines is $40 a month x 2 lines or $80 which is what I currently pay AT&T and then the cost for each kid is $40 bringing my total cost to $160 a month. So, I’m still lower on my monthly outlay than I was with three lines on AT&T and I’m saving a ton on international data. Now when we travel my kids just have it and I don’t pay extra. Here are the costs for 3 lines with the two different Unlimited plans.
US Mobile has a very active Sub Reddit and the CEO is regularly active in posting there. They also have a great YouTube channel.
US Mobile boasts about 1 million subscribers currently. They are tiny compared to the big carriers but in my experience, they are very customer focused and provide an extremely competitive service.
If you are worried about switching off one of the big carriers (like I was), well you can at least trust that I have done a lot of testing. I have had numerous lines with them, on different carriers, travelled a bit around the world, and have not encountered problems with the Unlimited Premium GSM 5G product. I had some hiccups with their International eSIM products that I was testing, but they resolved them via chat in minutes.
Porting in my lines was easy and took about an hour per line to port in from AT&T. Google Fi was near instant.
One other thing I like about them is that they offer both monthly and annual plans. So you can pay for your entire mobile phone bill for a year in one payment. I’m not aware of any other carrier that does this.
If you like this review, and decide to sign up, you are welcome to use my referral link. Feel free to ask me any questions in the comments.
BTW - another thing I learned is that if you have either an Amex Platinum Card or a Capital One Venture X card (both cards I recommended in my credit card review)
They both cover insurance. You can read about the benefits for Amex and Capital One. The only caveat is you will want to ensure you stay on a monthly billing plan for US Mobile. I can now ditch Apple Care since it’s paid for by my cards (with a $50 deductible).
I used Google Fi for some time. However, the international roaming always drives me nuts, even just go to Vancouver, BC. I have to re-configure the Data Roaming setting, etc. to make it happen. And when I was in Europe, it was more insane. Different countries may require different kinds of configurations somehow. (I was using iPhone.) However, I don't have this problem when I was using T-Mobile service. It automatically connects to local mobile service seamlessly.
The premium plan is now $50 a month. Are you still happy with them? PS you mentioned the annual plans but might be good to call out they do discount for annual