@Waiting2exhale I love it, LOL!
Well, Verizon does have some pretty cheap phones. And TW is selling iPhones and Galaxies now. 
DW’s business depends on her cell phone. If I had confidence that TW could handle switching over without bungling it, it would be tempting. If TW screws up and costs her her number, it would be a huge issue. Based on the reviews I’ve read… I don’t have a lot of confidence. Maybe in another year.
@notrichenough Funny, I just read your post and thought you were out of your mind because TW doesn’t have iPhones. So I just checked their site and sure enough, there they are! They must have just added them in the past couple days. Thanks for mentioning that.
But you’re right and I agree with you that some folks are better off with a plan through a full service carrier. Especially if you count on it to run your business, such as your wife.
@thumper1 and @Iglooo - the price drop on ATT is only on the NEXT plan. Our old plan where we had the subsidies on the phone price and a 2 yr contract didn’t drop in price after the contract was up. It penalized those of us who kept our phones for a longer period. When we replaced the last few IPhones we switched to the no contract but pay full price for the phone over a chosen amount of months. Once the phone is paid for the bill is lower. Also the per phone charge is less. Our bill goes to H office so I don’t have it in front of me. Our bill went down a bit when we got the new phones. My H did have to give up his grandfathered unlimited data but he never used much data anyway.
My oldest works with H and they use their phones for work.
I had never heard of Total Wireless before this thread - looks like it’s something I’ll have to keep an eye on since we are currently on Verizon. At least it’s another option down the road.
Do many universities provide info on cell coverage on their campuses? When I was trying to find out how good the various carriers were in the UCSB area I found a survey the school had done on how reception was throughout campus, inside buildings, etc. There were some buildings and dorms that a couple carriers did not get signals in; Verizon was received everywhere and I think T-Mobile was only an issue in a couple of places. It was useful info in deciding who to go with.
^^^I found the same issue at my son’s university with Sprint - just one building (the entire building) seemed to exist in the no-service zone. That building is right behind his dorm so I was worried, but he told me that the service has been fine, and he spends so much time away from the dorm that were it not, he could deal with it.
Hey, guys. I don’t know how everyone else does the wifi thing when you are in the air, but my daughter found out last week that by entering my prepaid T-mobile number in, she could get free wifi on American. (Whether you want to fly American is another issue.)
A timely article: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/06/22/living-with-a-teenage-data-hog/
The “Russell” plan : http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/29/submitted-teenagers-do-not-need-smartphones-so-they-should-pay-for-them-discuss/?_r=0
With my kids, I got them both Virgin Mobile smartphones with unlimited everything (though, as noted, throttled data speed after 2.5 gigs). That way, my bill was the same each month no matter what they did with their phones. I also kept a couple of flip phones around that they could use if they lost theirs (an issue my son had more than once though the phone eventually turned up most times - switching phones takes 2 minutes on the VM website). No data overage charges, and if their data slowed down because they went over, what did I care. I did this after trying Verizon and being unpleasantly surprised by a several hundred dollar overage bill one month. It worked great for us.
Now my D, then a HS senior, really wanted the latest iphone so she asked for one for graduation, and a couple of members of the extended family stepped up and got her one, with service. But they didn’t realize Verizon was going to hit them with an extra $30/mo “smartphone” plan so they asked her to come up with that herself, which hurt, but she did it. (That’s the Verizon plan I’d love to get my parents off of - she’s the third user and my mom is constantly worrying about how much data she uses).
My S, now 22, pays for his own phone and has opted to remain with Virgin Mobile.
I love my VM service but have just ordered the Project Fi phone because it’s actually a cheaper plan for me and has some benefits I’ll use (international data, tethering).
How do you guys handle your kids phones? If that’s too much of a topic hijack I will start a new thread. Maybe @waiting2exhale will speak to that
I am honestly thrilled I do not have a teenager in the house right now because of the cell phone wars.
We have consumer cellular. Works off ATT network, You can take most phones into their plan. No contract. You can change your plan as often as you want with no penalties. We bought moto g smart phones that have been just fine for $100 each at Target. You can get better phones but these are fine for us.
We pay approx. $50 month after taxes and fees.
Consumer cellular works with GSM and CDMA
D has a Samsung and uses Ting. Loves it. Pay for exactly what you use.
It does look like there are a number of competitive plans now. That’s great. Now we just need some cable TV competition and all will be well
Does this mean if you want to use your phone overseas, you should have a GSM phone?
Are you kidding, @OHMomof2 . It’s like you’re reading my mind, or bugging my house through the interwebs. This is merely extending the conversation, in my opinion.
Because I started my first kid out on a smartphone (the VM phone which was the subject of my first post) to travel to colleges by himself, and the whole deal was so pretty that we barely felt it, I thought, “Cool. We can do this.”
I should note, that was his very first phone - smart, dumb, or otherwise. It made for an interesting time in a land of inauspicious-because-it-is-everywhere-affluence (independent school).
He used the phone senior year of HS and into his sophomore year of college, when the device broke. I love plan, just not the device I bought to replace the one that broke. So that got handed over to the next kid, who happened to be a rising senior…traveling to colleges alone (she may have made one trip as a junior, and so received it a little early - in the summer after junior year but before senior year began).
All in all, with two kids now on smartphones through Sprint, I pay for them because I have come to find that assignments and notifications are most quickly received on them, though by no means is it a must-have-or-die deal. (My son did remark that for the first time in his life he was “on trend”. Said it felt pretty good.)
The just-graduated HS senior asked two nights ago how long she can expect her father and me to pay for her and her brother’s cellphone plans - could she expect it forever, or is there some cutoff point?
I told her I think they should begin to pay for it themselves at age 20. Her eyes grew wide and, I swear, she gulped.
“At 20 years old?!” She could see the calendar pages turning quickly before her eyes.
“Yes,” I told her, “20 years old. Of course, that would mean that your brother would have to start paying for his right now, but his 20 is not really 20. He’s more like 18. But your 20 will be a solid 20.”
I winked at her, though, to let her know I was just musing aloud as she’d sprung it on me so suddenly.
@Iglooo: “Does this mean if you want to use your phone overseas, you should have a GSM phone?”
I don’t know that that is an absolute, but if you do carry a GSM you will much more easily be able to use your phone abroad. I’m talking Europe, I don’t know about Asia.
You can check with your carrier about whether your phone will work abroad, and whether there is an additional service you must add before you travel in order for that to work. My flip T-Mobile needed no add-ons, and there were no additional roaming fees, as T-Mobile service apparently is one which works in cooperation, and on the signals of, other carriers in Europe.
We also discovered that an iPod4 works without a hitch abroad for texting back to the States.
Every time one of our kids breaks a phone the amount they have to pay for the next phone doubles.
First phone was on me.
Second phone they paid 50%, so they got refurbished ones because that’s all they could afford.
D17 just broke that one and I said “all you, baby.”
^^^On that note, @MotherOfDragons, my son’s phone broke and was fully refunded by the insurance company I had insured it with.
I believe I would have asked him to go to the school co-op and get a cheapo otherwise.
I like the way you apportion the responsibility for the phone fees, though. Will make a note of it. The next child is The Breaker of Things.
Son had called from college letting us know his phone no longer worked. I told him I would be glad to pay for a new phone if this loss was not alcohol related.
He said he would pay for his new phone.
You called that! 
T-Mobile is owned by Deutsche Telekom and they have extensive agreements with partner telecom providers in other countries, so that T-Mobile customers can get free text and data in those countries and pay about $0.20 a minute for calls. Most of the world uses GSM, but there are scattered countries and companies offering CDMA service. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CDMA2000_networks
My understanding is that many high-end phones such as iPhones and Galaxies have both types of receivers built in, and in theory will work anywhere on any network. Cheaper phones… you’d have to check.
Depending on the age of the phone and how you bought it, you may have to deal with getting it unlocked to take it to another network. I think at one point Verizon required you to have service for 6 months before they would unlock it for domestic service, less if you were going overseas. If you buy a phone now without being locked into a contract it is probably unlocked, but you’d have to check.
There are different frequencies of GSM used in different countries, and your phone needs to be “quad band” to insure it can be used everywhere. Pricey phones like iPhones and Galaxies have this, you would have to check your phone and the country you are going to to see if it will work.
Hey, @NoVADad99 : I feel like we need to bold that entire post.^^^
EDIT: Aargh! Regarding post #115.
A 4-band GSM phone is the best for most countries. An unlocked phone may be preferable if you want to be able to use a local SIM card instead of expensive international roaming.
But you should check into the specifics for each country that you plan to visit.
Some phones sold in the US can do both CDMA and GSM.
My oldest was anti-smartphone for a lot of years. She finally caved her 3rd year of college when she would get to a class or a study session and find that it had been cancelled and everyone else knew because they received email on their cellphone. She got a Samsung but quickly replaced it with an IPhone when she also discovered if you don’t have IMessage you sometimes don’t get the multi user group texts. Which she needed as her major had a lot of group assignments. She grumbled and still grumbles about having a Smart phone but recognizes its value in her work.
I’m probably in the minority but I pay for my kids cellphone service, unless they go over on data use. If they break a phone repair or service is on them. I also make them pay for a 2 yr insurance plan. We had our S pay us for several years but I got lazy an stopped getting a check from him. All 3 of my children only have cell phones no land line.