NOTE: Ringplus is no longer offering service as of 2/11/2017. As such, this post is left as just a FYI. I have since moved on to FreedomPop mainly for my daily data use. You may find this post helpful.
I confess that I do not like to spend much on cell phone usage every month. After all, I don’t even talk much on the cell phone! I recently have found Ringplus mobile, and I like the FREE monthly service. I used BYOD, and checked around compatible phones and recent plans. Read on to find out how to get the latest FREE cell phone service!
Disclaimer: As of 11/15/2016, I am aware Ringplus has plans to discontinue most free plans. I am also affected. As such, please do your own research for getting an appropriate Ringplus plan if you decide to go with Ringplus.
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What is Ringplus mobile?
Ringplus mobile or R+ for short is a Sprint MVNO that has become very popular in the last 6+ months. The main reason is that they advertised for FREE monthly plans where you only pay the initial deposit (which can be used for overage, phone swap, new phone number, etc.) and the monthly service fee will be FREE for voice/text/data as long as you are under the plan’s limit.
Pretty cool, right??
I talked about I started to switch my and my family members’ cell phone plans to Ringplus 7 months ago, and here’s what I had to say at that time. You can check it here.
The good news is that I am still with Ringplus today, and we have been fairly happy with Ringplus considering what it costs on a monthly basis. (-> Basically FREE!).
I thought I would give you some updates as I have become more familiar with the service.
What is Ringplus mobile BYOD?
Ringplus mobile BYOD is the Ringplus’ way of letting end users bring in their own Sprint based phones. BYOD stands for Bring Your Own Device, thus BYOD, get it?!?
This provides a few advantages:
- You can possibly use your current Sprint based phone.
- This means you may NOT have to buy a new phone which can be costly.
- It uses local Sprint towers for voice/txt/data. For voice, it works much better than some VoIP (Voice over IP) services.
- It runs on blazing fast Sprting’s 4G LTE data. (assuming you are in good Sprint coverage area.)
Cell phones can be expensive if you like to go with the higher and newer end of latest ones, and as such, I am really looking into either purchasing more reasonably priced unlocked cell phones or use the existing one.
Warning! This is rather a bad news for all of us, but Sprint enforced FED/FEC (Financial Eligibility Check) on 04/17/2016 this past Spring. The basic of FED is that you can’t bring in a new Sprint based MVNO phones to Ringplus as BYOD after 04/17/2016 unless the phone was used in the original targeted carrier for 6-12 months. Prior to this date, we could have just bought a Virgin Mobile cell phone (this is a Sprint MVNO) at a local Best Buy, and activated it on Ringplus without any issues. If you do it now, you will most likely get a denial message about FED.
This site has all the details you need to know:
https://discourse.ringplus.net/t/byosd-new-activation-criteria-what-you-need-to-know/3484
What are Ringplus BYOD compatible phones?
Ringplus BYOD compatible phones have become a bit more limited after the FED/FEC, but that doesn’t mean we are out of luck. There are still ways to get phones activated on Ringplus today.
Here are some ways:
- Buy the phone from Ringplus. => Duh… This is not really a BYOD, but this method surely works. If you are willing to buy a phone from Ringplus directly, you can certainly do so and the phone will work with Ringplus 100%!
- Use your old Sprint based phones. => You may actually have an older Sprint cell phone in your shelf or you may be currently using it. If you want to reduce your monthly charge you currently pay for your service provider, you may want to try Ringplus and see if it works well for you.
- Buy old Sprint based phones. => You may be able to get a clean ESN Sprint phones on eBay, Amazon, Groupon, Newegg or any other online stores. Just make sure it has a clean ESN meaning the previous owner fully paid off what was owed.
- Get unlocked cell phones. => Unlocked phones are ones that are not tied to a particular service provider. These are also not affected by the FED restriction and as such, they can be activated for Ringplus without waiting for 6-12 months. 5 or so years ago, many cell phones were locked to AT&T for instance. Many of them today are also locked to AT&T. However, companies started to treat unlocked phones equally these days, and if the phones are fully paid off, you can ask them to unlock the phone for you. Some provide the unlocking for free or some may charge to unlock. It may all depend on which phone and which phone provider the phone was originally attached. Anyhow, these days companies are selling unlocked phones from the beginning. Famous ones are iPhones.
If you go to Apple’s iPhone site, you can certainly find the unlocked phones. Latest iPhones can work on Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile. There are others as well. I have been looking at this one for instance. This is much more reasonably priced, well known manufacturer, and the current promotion pricing is quite attractive. I think I will get this one. Moto G (4th Gen.) Unlocked – Black – 16GB
What are Ringplus plans?
Ringplus offers a variety of plans and there are some free ones and monthly fee plans. From time to time, Ringplus offers special plans you can sign up. I recently signed up for this one. It required the initial $25 deposit, and I get this much per month, 3000 minutes, 3000 texts and 3GB data! I swapped a phone once before for $1.99. Either way, I haven’t paid since and this is quite adequate for my usage.
If you get a similar plan from other major cell phone companies, I can guarantee you it will cost MORE!
Ringplus mobile byod, compatible phones and plans! Summary
Ringplus mobile BYOD can be a great option for you if you are in well Sprint covered area and you are willing to try something new.
There are more and more compatible phones available and activation is easy through Ringplus’ web site. Plans are attractive, and they frequently offer promotion plans that you can sign up to.
Consider how much money you will save after 2 years (since many contract phones are usually 2 years). You may save easily over $500 per line. If you use this for your whole family, your savings may be much more.
I hope this information is helpful for somebody! There are good deals like this available. You just have to look for it!!
Thanks for reading “Ringplus mobile BYOD, compatible phones and plans!” until the end!
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