nate's musings

Republic Wireless Officially Unveils $19/Month Mobile VoIP/Cell Phone Service: Unlimited Everything, No Contracts

loganabbott:

This is going to shake things up in the mobile phone sector with the major carriers. This is how phone service should be.

Over the last week I’ve been following the emergence of a previously-stealthy mobile carrier called Republic Wireless very closely. The story so far: Bandwidth.com, which provides the VoIP backbone for services including Google Voice and Twilio, is launching an alternative mobile carrier called Republic Wireless. It will cost only $19 a month for unlimited text, data, and voice. It can offer these low rates because its phones use a special ‘Hybrid Calling’ system that relies on Wifi whenever possible, falling back to cellular connections when Wifi isn’t available.

Now the company has officially announced additional details about the service, which is launching November 8 (i.e., later today).

The key new details:

The first phone being offered by Republic Wireless — which users will need to buy in order to use the service — is a modified version of The LG Optimus, running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). This phone is offered by other carriers and is generally regarded as a solid low-end device (it’s not going to look great next to a Galaxy S II, but it’ll more than suffice for a lot of people). The device will be sold for $199 with no contract, and it will be available at a discounted rate of $99 through November 27. Again, that’s with no contract — there are no termination fees.