It had been obvious to me that Republic Wireless was a sinking ship, so the day after @southpaw left I abandoned them. Since I am well into AARP age territory, I moved to Consumer Cellular. For me it was a good choice; for service on two phones I am paying $38 per month plus taxes and fees - for this 5 Gig of data is included.
Visual Voicemail just works without a problem.
WiFi calling works perfectly.
Phone support is always answered by a knowledgeable cheery helpful person that is located here in the USA.
They use both AT&T and T-Mobile networks; whichever is most appropriate for one’s location.
The SIM cards were free and, of course, since Apple recently released their new SIM-less iPhone, they now also offer eSIMs.
It has been totally painless, everything just works without any fuss.
Is this for Android phones using Google’s Phone app? Or, do you know if this is also true of Samsung phones using CC?
CC has historically done a great job of supporting its customers (particularly its target demographic). The how to videos on their website are generally top notch.
Just to confirm my understanding, this is a static either or choice, correct? In other words, there is no Google Fi like dynamic switching among cellular networks, yes?
Yup, Apple pretty much forced everyone’s hand on eSIM, which will ultimately be a good thing. To my surprise, even RW by DISH, is on board: https://rwusers.com/discussion/28/using-esim-with-iphone. Does CC support eSIM on Android as well as iPhone?
Hi @rolandh it’s good to see you in this new venue!!! In answer to your questions I offer the following:
Visual Voicemail certainly works with Google’s phone app on my Pixel phone. I chatted with CC and received the following response: “Visual voicemail works with some Android phones, but not all of them. Generally, the top-end Samsung phones like the S22 can enable visual voicemail.”
CC will assign either AT&T or T-Mobile, or the customer can request one or the other and they will comply with the request. If, later, the customer wants to change to the other carrier, CC would need to send a different SIM (or eSIM).
In my chat with CC I received the following: “Yes, we support eSIM on androids that are eSIM compatible.”
Looks like CC has streamlined its plans. Any thoughts, @Totoro?
Hi, @rolandh, I would say that I am still quite satisfied with Consumer Cellular’s service. With taxes, fees, and EVERYTHING added in, I’m paying a grand total of $48.68 per month for two phones. Last October they increased the amount of data on my plan from 3 Gig to 5 Gig per month for the same price, which is plenty of data for us. Visual Voicemail has worked without any problems whatsoever, and we really like the automatic speech-to-text feature.
One feature that I like but haven’t had to use yet is that if I ever go over on my allotment of data, they will automatically increase me to the next higher data plan without interruption. Then, I can choose to either keep on the new amount of data, or go to my account on the website, and change the data back.
Overall, Consumer Cellular just works without any fuss or hassles. I haven’t had to call for support, but if I did, the call would go to someone in the US.
There has been a change at Consumer Cellular, they are exclusively AT&T now. I am paying a grand total of $51.87 per month for two phones and 5 Gig of data.
For what it’s worth, CC is the first independent MVNO I’ve seen reported as having support for RCS on iOS 18 (Apple’s forthcoming new version of iOS currently in beta). Previously, only the MNOs themselves and some of their flanker brands offered RCS support on iOS in the U.S.
I’m running iOS Developer Beta 5 on an old iPhone but none of the providers I currently use yet have support.