Best network and plan for a tween's Nokia 3310 3G?

December 28, 2017 10:37 AM

Our tween kid received an unlocked Nokia 3310 3G for Christmas, which she loves the design of and we are pretty happy about feature-wise as . However our family is on Verizon, which does not seem to support it, and a brief foray into alternative networks has only turned up very expensive plans so far. Looking for advice on the bets network and plan to get this thing on, ideally low cost and just voice and text. We are based in the US.
posted by Artw to Technology (10 answers total)

We are on StraightTalk, which piggybacks on AT&T. They offer a range of plans but ours is $50 (well, like 48.75) / mo for unlimited talk and text and which just upped data from 2gb to throttle to 10gb to throttle. We only ever hit 2gb the first month we had it when Viv was streaming audio to and from work south of Tacoma.

I do not know about parental controls available in the plans.

This was by consensus the best/cheapest full-service plan available in the US when we went on it. I would assume there are more providers offering unlimited smartphone plans at under $50/mo now than there were a couple of years ago.
posted by mwhybark at 11:00 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Did you try Ting? We've been using it for a couple of years for the 1 person in our family who just needs basic voice & text, and it's been great.
posted by BlahLaLa at 11:00 AM on December 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

Ting's rate calculator shows our old plan equivalent at ST (our estimated usage is something like 500 min, 1000 messages, and 2gb) at $23/line. Not sure if the minutes/messages/data is shared, but it surely does indicate it's probably time for me to dig into this again.
posted by mwhybark at 11:15 AM on December 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

The new 3310 works great on T-Mobile. Zero issues. And boy, is it teaching me how addicted I was to my smartphone.
posted by quarterframer at 12:00 PM on December 28, 2017

Response by poster: It's looking like a single line plan on T-Mobile is $70 a month, or is there a chepaer one?
posted by Artw at 12:10 PM on December 28, 2017

Depending on her usage, I'd also recommend Ting. They use T Mobile for their GSM service, so you should get similar coverage on either, though. It's $6 for the line, plus $3 per 100 texts, and $3 for 100 minutes of talk time on Ting (and multiple devices on the same account do share those), and you can just disable data if you like.

The one issue you might have is that, at least as of a couple of weeks ago, their CS didn't seem to be aware of the new 3g model, and told someone that it wasn't supported on their network.

I'm almost positive that answer up there is wrong, but you might want to make sure first. Maybe the best thing about Ting is that if you do need to call for customer service, the line rings and a person picks up and says Hello and stuff, all old-timey like.
posted by ernielundquist at 12:12 PM on December 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

thanks ernie, that puts it on par, roughly, with ST. ST has a couple lower tiers now and it looks like I should check those out on my line at least - Viv's been using Amazon Prime freebie access to Audible on the 10gb tier lately. Art, sounds to me like y'otta gi' Ting a ring.
posted by mwhybark at 4:12 PM on December 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

Look at Boom mobile (no, not Boost, that’s another one.). Works out cheaper than Ting for me, by a bunch, and their prices include all taxes (which are significant in my city, adding up to most of the Ting cost.)

Boom has plans that run on Verizon’s network and some that run on T-Mobile’s.

If you want to stick to T-Mobile, they do offer a no-data plan for $35 a month, but it’s not on their website, I think you have to call.
posted by wyzewoman at 6:36 PM on December 28, 2017

T-Mobile prepaid is much cheaper than postpaid. h2o is an at&t reseller that is reasonably inexpensive and works well.
posted by wierdo at 7:19 PM on December 28, 2017

Look at Cricket, if the phone is compatible with them (BestBuy says it is). They use AT&T, and their smartphone plans are pretty reasonable (I pay $35/mo for unlimited talk/text and 5GB of data; it's $5 more if you don't have the monthly payment automatically withdrawn; they have a 2GB plan for a stated $30/mo rate).
posted by lhauser at 5:39 PM on December 29, 2017