I just saw an ad for Noble Mobile on TYT. On the face of it, this was pretty good, but I became concerned to check who is providing the carrier services (if that’s the right wording). It appears to be T-Mobile. Ok, pretty good. I mention this because years ago, AT&T appeared to have a hand in starting the “OAN” network (which is far right if I recall), and within a day I switched from AT&T to T-Mobile. AT&T did a decent job of trying to obscure their role in this network start, but it was there, and I had enough.
This consumer cancel culture inclination of mine can be taken too far and so I do not mean to imply that all potential advertisers on TYT should to the “nth degree” be squeaky clean in all of their associations, but I was glad to see this new carrier avoided association with AT&T.
Ok, I have gone with Noble Mobile for a few weeks now, and it is going “ok”. However, I think it will be a few months before I am able to really say.
One concerning point:
My main concern, in switching from a major carrier to a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) that pays a major carrier, is whether the major carrier will consistently treat the MVNO with respect, or whether my calls, sms and/or data are somehow de-prioritized by the major carrier in favor of their own customers. I am very bad with some aspects of tech, and it could take me awhile to figure this out. And I haven’t gone to try and research whether it’s a thing any more (or ever) for an MVNO customer to get de-prioritized by a major carrier? But for now I’m going with the hypothesis that it is. This is complicated by the carrier (T-Mobile) being generally inconsistent or bad in parts of my hilly rural county.
Yesterday, I was in town, away from my house (in my house the phone is set to using the wifi data from my internet, since T-Mobile is so bad here) and I found that one of my attempts to browse the web using Noble Mobile was so slow as to be useless. At the same time, I did manage somehow to pull in a youtube podcast, though only after waiting for a very long time for the thing to start up.
Again, I’m not sure, but it’s possible this is just plain poor T-Mobile service to that area, and may not be about Noble Mobile getting the short end of the stick.
Things going ok, I appeared to save much of the money that goes with not using your phone much. They give plenty of information about my savings both in email and on the website. Oddly, so far, the one thing I can’t find is an actual bill or payment history.
Ok, I found where they have the billing invoices, I was just spacing on their location, it’s right there.
So far, for the first month, I think my net bill is down to about $35 per month, though it’s a little complicated to calculate because there is the bill and then there is the separate credit back calculation. If so, then I have managed to reduce my monthly cell phone bill by about $20 per month (ironically from T-Mobile, who ware still providing the bandwidth I believe) with no apparent loss in quality of service. Pretty pleased. Will keep an eye out for future issues, particularly occasional travel in Mexico and whether the service performs properly.
Ideally, in the very long run, I’d still prefer some sort of strict pay-as-you-go service, and this could reduce my bill by another $10-$20 per month, but my impression is that the pay-as-you-go services do not presently offer the quality and robustness that I need.