Republic Wireless or Ting? (I went with Ting)

[f22luke]

To start things off let me just say that I have been on the Verizon network on a dumb phone for the past 5 years.  Recently that dumb phone started to act up prompting me to start looking in to other options.  I wanted an android device with data and I needed it on the cheap. 

 

My brother recently switched over to Republic Wireless and got a Moto G from them.  They are a really neat idea and have some good rates but there are some problems.  Republic Wireless (RW) only offers two phones atm the Moto X and the Moto G.  It is not possible to bring any other phone over on to their plans as it takes a special ROM that they maintain.  I can live with that but heres the kicker for me: they do not allow tethering.  The reasoning behind this policy is that people who tether use the most amount of data.  This would be a bad thing given their current business plan.  That said I don't think I would be one of those people as all I really want tethering for is to connect my first gen Nexus 7 to the Internet when I'm out and about for navigational purposes.  It really is a shame that Google has yet to allow off-line navigation.

 

Right about the time I was about to cave and go with RW despite the cons previously listed Linus gets on the WAN show and mentions Ting.  Now I don't know why I had not heard of Ting before hand given all the searching that I had been doing on this subject but I hadn't so I went and checked them out.

They are on the sprint network just like RW but are just using normal phones so the selection is better.  They can sell a new phone but can not activate Sprint phones that have been out less than a year (the Nexus 5 from the play store bing an exception).  They don't separate 4g and 3g data in different plans and you only pay for what you use.  Granted RW does allow you to switch plans twice in a given billing period but Ting is more automated.  As long as you keep an eye on the data usages there really wont be any surprises come billing time.  Ting also allowed tethering no if and or buts.  

 

So here is what I did.  I went on ebay and bought a Samsung Galaxy Nexus for $80 which is cheaper than the Moto G from RW but with similar specs.  It was simple to activate on Ting and now I am a happy customer of Ting and a new smart phone user.

 

It is still early for me to recommend Ting to every one but I would say look in to it, especially if Sprint has a strong presence in your area. 

[JustTooDank]

I just got Ting on my Nexus 5. 8 days left in my first billing cycle and it's looking like my bill is gonna be 15 bucks. Pretty much anyone who uses Wi-Fi primarily for data will save a ton of money with Ting.