Our early retirement was only made possible by embracing smart frugal living. We pushed against our frugality threshold without breaking it so we never feel like we are living a deprived life. Part of that was avoiding to pay a lot for our cell phone service. We made a purposeful frugal wireless choice to meet our mobile needs and put more of our money to work for us. After over a decade on the same plan we switched to Tello Mobile.
Tello is one of the newer players in the quality low cost cell service sector. It’s the real deal and rides on the reliable T-Mobile network. Here’s why we made the change, the things we considered before making the move, and how easy it is to save a bundle of cash every month.
Disclaimer: Not only am I a happy Tello Mobile customer. Tello has not paid me for this article nor given any editorial control or influence regarding its content.
Highlights to keep in mind when looking at and considering Tello Mobile As your frugal wireless choice-
- Super affordable rates starting from $5/mo for a basic line to $39/mo for unlimited everything
- Full flexibility to build your own plan and bring your phone
- Reliable 4G LTE/5G nationwide network
- Free international calls to 60+ countries included in any phone plan
- Family plans – up to 10 lines per one account
- 7k+ reviews on Trustpilot
Why Tello Mobile Is Our Frugal Wireless Choice
Cutting wasteful spending is key when it comes to budgeting
Why spend too much money on cell service when our money could be used to increase our savings, clear debt, or be rerouted to more worthy needs? I shudder when I hear of some people’s monthly wireless expenses. Some may actually need unlimited access to voice, text, and data. But many people I know just opt in for that level of service at a high cost from a tier-one wireless carrier because it is a quick and easy decision. But taking the time to really see what we need in mobile service can save thousands of dollars that’s better used elsewhere.
Our wireless choice has always been budget friendly
My wife and I both chose to use prepaid flip phones until our Tello Mobile move in the summer of 2019. I pay $100 a year for a Verizon plan (grandfathered, no longer offered) that charged me $0.25 a minute talk and $0.20 per text. I have never used up my yearly prepaid $100 each year and the reserve balance keeps growing. My wife had Virgin Mobile prepaid with $20 every three months at a similar talk and text cost. Our Virgin wireless service rode on the Sprint network. Something that Tello Mobile also did until its 2021 migration to T-Mobile’s GSM network. We have over a decade of low cost cell service experience under this kind of wireless service provider arrangement running on another wireless company’s network.
I was a telecom engineer who did technical testing on wireless service in its early creation days before it was widely developed, sold, and accepted by the world. I know how it works. My attitude towards mobile service is it’s only a tool of convenience. But as more and more of life in this fast paced world is being pushed towards the use of apps, we decided it was time to go to a smartphone. Fortunately we found Tello Mobile where costs for talk, text, and data can be found at a low budget friendly price. Not already owning a smartphone, we even picked up a refurbished iPhone from Tello in their easy online process.
Tello Mobile delivers and costs less
I am not doing a full Tello Mobile review. There are plenty of places to find that and frankly I find all reviews sound similar regardless of who the review topic is. I do want to show how we came to our frugal wireless choice of Tello Mobile and our experience with them.
Check Tello Mobile Coverage First
Obviously it can be the lowest cost cell service on the planet but if they don’t serve your geographic area it’s meaningless. We had a good idea what the coverage area was because of our past Sprint shared network wireless experience. Most prepaid carriers have a no-roaming limitation. For us coverage was excellent in 99% of the places we go. However, I did go through the online Tello coverage page putting in all the places we live and play across many states and cities. The same dead locations we had before were still there. Primarily north of I-80 into WY and SD where we occasionally travel through and vacation. But for everywhere else coverage was golden.
Update July 2021: I mention Tello’s migration from Sprint to T-Mobile’s GSM network. I am happy to report that our recent travel to the Black Hills SD, a region that had no Tello service before did have service now. There were still occasional dead spots in SD, but the previous no service issue in WY that we previously experienced was no longer found either.
Tello’s Activation Process
Tello is an online only cell service provider. I assume that is part of the reason that their costs are so low. I signed up at Tello.com, first looking through all of their service offerings, checking their network coverage, and then selected my plan. We also created our Tello account to have secure login access to our customer account portal. I then ordered our phone.
They also have a place where you can select to bring your phone along. If that’s the case then it appears that you can provide the details to activate your phone or if required order a Sprint enabled SIM card from Tello. I found the process to be easy to understand. Our new iPhone shipped to our home within a few days. We followed the instructions to activate it without trouble.
Tello Mobile’s Plans and Pricing
Tello’s cell phone plans are the lowest around. They allow you to mix and match different talk, text, and data packages to meet your needs at surprisingly cheap prices. For example, if you can live with your WiFi access everywhere and are a heavy text user, then their no data, 100 minute talk, unlimited text plan is $5 a month. On the upper end, their Data Plan that comes with unlimited talk and text with 12GB data is $39 a month.
(Note: These monthly amounts are subject to local taxes and fees.)
Tello Plan Examples
With the availability of WiFi we made our frugal wireless choice their Economy Plan: Unlimited talk and text with 1GB data for $10 a month. We have yet to hit our monthly data threshold. If you ever use more than your allotted data for the month your data speed will be reduced to 64 kbps with tethering disabled. But what we saw as a major selling point is that Tello allows you to add data at any time at pay-as-you-go rates.
This enables us to prepay and utilize their pay as you go for more data in months we may be traveling with unknown WiFi availability and need more than our monthly allotment. We can also at any time increase our monthly data allotment plan for a small monthly increase. For instance, doubling our monthly data from 1GB at $10 a month to 2GB is only $4 more at $14 a month. Then return to the lower data allotment when our needs return to normal data use. Tello Mobile offers flexible options to align service needs when they are needed without having to sign up for a maximum plan and overpay every month.
The Tello plans renew automatically every 30 days. We have it charge our credit card. Another selling point for us is that there’s no contract so you can cancel your service whenever you want at no extra charge.
Use Your Own Phone Or Buy One From Tello
Tello allows you to activate your own GSM capable phone or purchase one from them. Phone prices are reasonable and they offer many types of both new and refurbished phones from iPhones to Android based models. Since we didn’t have a smartphone, we selected one of their offered refurbished iPhones. You do fully pay for the phone as it’s not included in any monthly service payment bump.
New Tello Phone Number or Keep (Port) Your Old Number
Like all telephone companies, Tello allows us to keep our old telephone number if we prefer to. The process to move our number from one company to another is called number porting. There are well defined industry processes to easily do this. We knew we wanted to keep our old Virgin Wireless number but because of the time it takes to receive our new phone we initially elected for a new Tello number. This way we could use our soon to be ended service until we were ready to go.
Once we had the new iPhone in hand and set up we initiated the number port through our Tello customer online dashboard. They have a simple process. I received instructions in my email. Tello number porting instructions emailed to us
The information we will require is:
Device & History Details (all required).
-Current Phone Number
-Landline or Mobile
-If the number to port is a landline, last 4 digits of Social Security Number
-Current USA Provider
-The number must be still active with current provider
-Account Number from Current Provider
-Pin/Password with Current Provider
Account Holder Details (all required).
-Name that account is under with current provider
-House Number and Street Name, City, State, ZIP
Once we contacted our old service provider for the info the old service disconnected. It did take some hours for the port-in to Tello to complete so for that time the original Tello number was active.
Port-In number phone activation instructions emailed to us
Your porting request has been submitted and we are awaiting updates from your previous provider. Your order will show as “Porting In” while the process is completed. Check your online account dashboard for confirmation that the porting has been completed. You will see the newly ported number in the “My Number” field once it has been transferred successfully.
When you see the number, you then need to update the network on your phone. To do this, your phone simply needs to be restarted so that on the restart, hands-free activation mode kicks in and once this is complete you are good to go.
If this hands-free activation does not work for you and you require help manually activating your device, then click on the “Device Info” button on your online account Dashboard. There you will find the step-by-step instructions on how to manually activate your particular device.
In our case the port-in hands-free update did not work. I then went to the manual instructions provided on my customer account dashboard and was able to get the number updated on the Tello iPhone. After some testing everything worked except for Voicemail. I then contacted their customer service. They emailed me a trouble ticket number and resolved the issue within an hour.
Our Overall Impression About Tello Mobile
We have found our frugal wireless choice of Tello Mobile service to be reliable and meet all of our needs.
My wife can now take advantage of the shift to App based grocery reward discounts to save even more money. Now we can pull google maps up when we need to go beyond what we loaded into our Garmin. We also now have access to Uber and Lyft options, being able to look for and reserve hotel rooms while on the road, etc. All things that our flip phones couldn’t accommodate.
Network coverage.
Although we have 100% Tello Mobile coverage were we live and are 99% of the time, we did have a few no coverage area shortfalls with Tello initially before it migrated from Sprint to T-Mobile’s GSM Network when we traveled to some other states. Just as we did when we were with Virgin. While my wife is the primary user of the Tello Mobile phone, I carry my Verizon prepaid flip phone to allow for talk and text when we travel through Tello no- coverage spots. Tello Mobile service had big 2021 changes and improvements over our earlier 2019-2020 service experience. They have fully transitioned to Tello’s new GSM Network. What was already a great and low cost wireless choice will now only get better.
Update July 2021: I’m happy to report that our recent travel through WY to the Black Hills SD, a region that had no Tello service before, we found that we had service. The T-Mobile migration appears to be bringing even better service coverage with its great price.
Tello Mobile is an online only wireless carrier.
Since we are comfortable working with companies online or over the phone this hasn’t been a negative issue for us. We are happy with their online customer account dashboard and their quick response to customer service requests. One call went to an agent where the other rang through to voicemail. I was contacted within a couple of hours by email, then later a phone call. They meet our expectations in this area.
Service plan flexibility at a low cost.
We love how we can change our service plan or add prepaid dollars to meet our mobile needs and not spend a dime more than we need to. That said, I have no idea how Tello’s data speeds compared to tier-one wireless carriers in the area nor do we care. We simply get what we need at a low price. There are no feelings of living a deprived life in our frugal wireless choice of Tello Mobile.