Originally Posted by actinic Originally Posted by Talking about tightly packed! PureTalk is hard capped, Cricket throttles to 8 Mb/s, H2O has iPhone MMS issues.



Rates assume autopay.



$24 ... PureTalk ... 1GB

$27 ... H20 ... 2GB

$29 ... PureTalk ... 3GB

$30 ... Cricket ... 1GB

$31.50 ... H2O ... 3GB

$35 ... Cricket ... 4GB

$35 ... PureTalk ... 5GB

$36 ... H2O ... 6GB



The only one that stands out for not being competitive is Cricket's $30 plan. No surprise.

Indeed Cricket is the key as they are owned by AT&T, the carrier. Their rates will determine the floor over the long run.Also, no surprise from H2Owireless, they needed a price increase.PureTalk is another mom&pop outfit, probably a 2-6 employee operation that contracts or outsources everything--probably to the same companies that all the other small MVNOs are using. Their business plan is likely to grow the business as fast as they can (on price) and ultimately sell out (when the owner wants to retire) to a larger company (think: PagePlus). There is some critical number of customers that this kind of company can scrape off before they get on the radar of American Movil. They might be able to survive pricing at the bottom of the market, but any sizeable operation can't, especially one with shareholders (lots of them...).I would love to see the data from the carriers that shows how much of the monthly data allotment is used by all their customers--including the mvno customers. (I won't be holding my breath while I wait. LOL) My guess is that the majority do not exceed their allotment and a sizeable fraction don't come anywhere close--especially so with the <5-6GB/mo and below plans. Of course there are big time users, the gamers and streamers, but I suspect that they get a disproportionate share of the publicity. In other words, the monthly rates, especially on the low end, are being priced only the fixed costs--which means AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile ultimately determine the market.