I use services that sell my data so that I get free cellular service. One I use is 250mb free, the other is 3GB + calls free
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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US. About $35/ month
Text calling, and unlimited data
With Smarty in the UK I pay £6 for 8GB monthly and my partner pays £7.20 for 16GB
Only issue I have is that it uses the 3 network and we both get shitty reception in the Yorkshire dales whenever we visit there
US. $1-2/month for global pay as you go data for as low as $1.15/GB (https://silent.link/ data-only esim). $5/month for my virtual https://jmp.chat/ phone number.
US, $75 per 3 months, 5GB data and unlimited talk and text. Mint Mobile. The Ryan Reynolds phone company.
USD $200 for eight lines with unlimited data, calls, text; international coverage only for texting. So it works out to $25 each but I don't think we could get that price on fewer lines. Large family.
18€, 20GB data in all of EU, unlimited voice and SMS
Edit: France
I usually buy an e-sim when I'm traveling and you can get usually get 10-20$/mo unlimited data at reasonable speeds everywhere in Asia except China which is an entire different world of its own and really not worth the hassle so you take what you can get.
One exception is Thailand where I buy 1 year prepaid sim for 40$ unlimited 100mbps which you can keep extending year after year for almost the same price.
All of these prices are irrelevant without considering local salaries but cellular data is really good in Asia. I've seen cell towers deep in Vietnams jungles and was actually texting from a cave there. This is why low orbit networks like starlink are severely overrated and will always lose to cell towers.
terrestrial towers are great where there are more people than there would need to be towers and where towers are allowed to be built, getting towers installed in national parks is hard and building them in the middle of nowhere has almost no return on investment, satelite networks could fill this niche where the only current option is wildly expensive satilite phones by Garmin and the likes.
Nah towers are incredibly cheap and can be easily maintained for decades if not centuries. Quick googling around seems like 1 modern towers costs 100k (in the west) usd compared that to entire satellite and launch overhead which seems to be at least 3.5M tho in reality much more. Thats 35 towers for 1 satellite not even considering maintenance and longevity.
Towers are also straight up superior tech that will forver be better than satellites due to simple distance physics.
Rough quick napkin math: earth's land area is 140m km² and 3g tower can cover 300km² as best - to cover THE ENTIRE EARTH we'd only need 500k towers. That's like nothing.
That's 50 Billion usd without the infrastructure and cable overhead ofc but the towers and obviously we'd want play it safer on range so 10x that and it's still only half a trillion.
Low orbit satellites are inferior tech that is only good for extreme situations like ocean coverage.
Japan.
¥968/month (around $6 USD) for up to 3GB with free calls.
If I use more, the price changes automatically — ¥2,068 for 3–20GB, and ¥3,168 if I go over 20GB.
Damn, what provider? Im paying 3000yen for 4gb with no calls included.
I'm on Rakuten Mobile. It’s cheap, but the signal isn’t great outside cities, so I wouldn’t really recommend it unless you’re in a more urban area.
It's not very reliable compared to big carriers like au or docomo — during peak times, the connection can get quite slow, though it doesn't completely stop working.
Smarty user here. Seems like there's a lot of us. UK, £14/mo for unlimited everything with no throttling (I've tried). Includes EU/EEA roaming capped at 12GB.
comcast is giving me a $45 credit each month for an line that costs ~$43, so I'm effectively paying -$2 per month. unlimited minutes/texts and 30gb before throttling
Sweden, I am on Telia, on a highly expensive unlimited plan at 580SEK/month....
I really need to get on Fello...
Net is £2 a month for 6gb data and unlimited calls and texts from O2, although I never use those really. It should be £6 a month, but I get £4 discounted as two streaming services I would buy anyway I buy via them so I get a discount for each.
Most places I use my phone I have WiFi, data is only really used for background services and maps otherwise. You can purchase data add ons from them for reasonable fees for a month if I ever did need it for travel. Although I am more likely to get a local sim as it's far far cheaper than roaming outside the EU normally.
The main reason I use O2 is that it also doubles my home broadband speed for free to 1gb up and down. That means having their phone line actually costs me -£6 a month.
I am looking to move my partners phone over later this year to O2 and thst should double the speed to 2gb up and down for the same price.
$120 for three lines with unlimited 5G internet + calls/texts (slower speeds after 50GB but still pretty fast). Also free roaming and calls/texts/internet while in Canada and Mexico.
Definitely not the best, but also not the worst.
- Japan.
- JPY 980 per month.
- Plan includes up to 3GB per month 4g/5g data, and when going over 3GB, the data cap increases to 20GB for an additional JPY 1000. Unlimited voice and text, global roaming to 90 countries included.
Still don't get bars inside some big buildings though :p
Sounds like Rakuten!
$65/month unlimited everything, Verizon, USA
66.58 CHF (80.51 USD) for Unlimited everything in Switzerland. Internet is another 66.58 CHF a month.
US currently $10/mo for unlimited phone/text, 1gb data. I can switch it to Unlimited data for $25/mo
Tello
Yeah I had tello for a while but went to usmobile to get $6/mo for 1g/mo but had to prepay for the whole year. I did 500mb/mo on tello for $8/mo.
20€/month, Germany, started the plan half a year ago, will be over in one and a half. Unlimited SMS/calls, 35GB (at least, maybe even more, I don't use nearly as much) data. Got a (carrier unlocked, because we're not in the US) Pixel 8 Pro with it.
I don't pay myself, but it's about 7€ I think. Portugal.
USA, $9/mo. ($9.36 with taxes/fees) for unlimited talk/texts and 1GB data.
Sweden. I pay 150 SEK (~16 USD) for 8GB/month.
Unused data is transferred over to the next month, so running out of data has never been a problem for me.
Canada, 33$CAD a month for unlimited calls and texts and 2gb of data
UK, £10/mo 120G data, all you can eat voice/SMS (was an offer on smarty)
Germany Fraenk.de 19 GB 10 € unlimited calls and texts D1 Network
Sign up using my referral code for an extra 3 GB per month for free. JRGB319
It’s an eSIM contract and super fast to sign up. Can be cancelled every month.