I’ve been eyeing US Mobile for a while now. I’ve had AT&T, Verizon, Consumer Cellular, Cricket Wireless, and I’ve also wondered about Visible. However, US Mobile stands out at the top of my list for mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) in the United States. They have a deal for lines with their annual plan for $235/year that includes unlimited hotspot using tethering with very, very generous caps. The only catch is, be careful for being flagged for abuse on their network, especially with speed tests. However, if you use their service respectfully, for the price, it simply can’t be beat. You won’t find a referral code here from me, I’m not interested in that.
If you do sign up for their free trial and port a number, be careful that it may cancel your phone’s financing and your phone’s entire balance and line on your carrier will be cancelled, however if you can swing it, I highly encourage you to switch.
Speeds on the hotspot with the Warp network maxed out Wifi to my iPhone on the speed test. They also offer multi-network, which uses multiple sims. I was going to downgrade my phone to a Samsung Galaxy A36, but I’ve decided to keep my iPhone 15 Pro Max 1TB. US Mobile offers insurance for a few dollars per month which protects against theft too, which is currently a new program and on sale.
The dashboard and website is awesome, and the only marketing lingo not transparent are the network names. Warp is Verizon, Dark Star is AT&T, and Light Speed is T-Mobile, which means you can pick the network for your Sim which best covers your target area. They offer international data too, and if your phone supports eSim, there is a good chance you will have no trouble when travelling with US Mobile anywhere you go provided you setup before you leave.
For the price, I finally switched, and I got the multi-network add-on for both Dark Star and Warp. For less than $30/month, it’s a pretty good deal. While I can’t use a fixed hotspot with them, I can tether, and for my needs, that works just fine. Performance with the hotspot was stallar, the only thing I didn’t like was the apparent QoS on my Tailscale VPN, but, that can be worked around by not using the exit-node. I’d say this is a sure win, and now I don’t have to carry a separate hotspot either, which is nice actually, because it’s one less thing to worry about. IPv6 support was fine on the iPhone with a hotspot.