If you were told you could pay $70 a month for an unlimited data plan or $40 for virtually the same plan, which would you choose? Obviously, you’d choose the cheaper one. So why not sign up for a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) plan?
We’ll walk through the very best MVNO plans for every kind of cell phone user. But first, what the heck is an MVNO anyways?
Rather than spending a ton of money building a mobile network infrastructure (with a ton of towers, satellites, and technicians), MVNOs instead piggyback off of an existing network. The Three Big networks (AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon) basically lease their bandwidth away, with a caveat.
Oftentimes MVNO customers can have their data speeds “deprioritized” by the larger network during times of congestion. That means that customers that are actually on the parent network’s plans will get service priority, and others will see slowdowns.
MVNOs are able to offer much cheaper pricing because they don’t have to shoulder the cost of building and maintaining a cellular network.