Unified Signal, Inc. has announced the launch of a new MVNO that claims to be aimed at the ‘underserved youth market’ which includes children ages 5 – 18. This MVNO, TEQfon Wireless, offers prepaid low-price plans starting at $10 and has options through Verizon, AT&T and Sprint. In my opinion, the website is pretty awful and doesn’t look like anything that I would associate with a children’s phone group, but most of their plans are ok, with the notable exception of the AT&T plans. What on earth are they thinking?
Anyway, here’s what the plan lineup on the website looks like, although it should be noted that this is a soft launch, and changes are likely to be made. All plans include features like three-way calling, caller ID, in-network roaming and long distance.
CDMA-S Plans
- $10 – 250 minutes, unlimited text
- $15 – 500 minutes, unlimited text
- $25 – unlimited talk and text
- $35 – unlimited talk and text, 500 MB data
- $40 – unlimited talk and text, 1 GB data
- $45 – unlimited talk, text and data
CDMA-V Plans
- $15 – 300 minutes, 100 texts, 25 MB data
- $25 – 750 minutes, 250 texts, 100 MB data
- $30 – unlimited talk and text
- $40 – unlimited talk and text, 500 MB data
- $50 – unlimited talk, text and data
GSM-A Plans
It’s worth noting that all of these plans state that you can go over data (which sort of defeats the point of prepaid plans) and that data overages are $0.05/MB.
- $35 – unlimited talk, pay-per-use text ($0.05/text)
- $40 – unlimited talk and text, 250 MB data
- $45 – unlimited talk and text, 500 MB data
- $50 – unlimited talk and text, 750 MB data
- $55 – unlimited talk and text, 1 GB data
While the press release from the company stated that TEQfon does not allow consumers to bring their own devices, the website has a place where you can bring your own device. But, everything is still in beta as of writing this, so hard to say.
If you decide to purchase a phone from the company, be prepared to spend more than you should. While there is a decent lineup of phones available, most of them are grossly overpriced. For example, via TEQfon, you can purchase the three-year-old Galaxy S3 for a whopping $724. That’s about the same price as an iPhone 6. There is also what looks like a flip phone on sale for $130. They do have some reasonable priced devices, but I’d strongly caution to make sure you pay attention to market price vs TEQfon prices.
For more information, or to check out TEQfon’s options yourself, visit the TEQfon website, then let me know what you think!]]>
