Everyone wants a cheaper phone plan!

September 9 2020

Are your cellphone plans a rip-off? If you live in the U.S. or Canada, the answer is probably yes.

Most phone plans come with data caps—and anytime you check Twitter or download a photo when not connected to a Wi-Fi network, that spends some of your allotted data and as a result has a cost.

In the U.S., the most common data plans fall between the 2GB and 5GB range—and are some of the most expensive in the world, resulting in an incredibly high price per GB.

Some countries are able to make phone plans fast and affordable. In Australia, however, most phones are bought outright (not paid for through a contract) and use prepaid SIMs—resulting in a market that just gets cheaper and cheaper.

The phenomenon is especially prominent on prepaid plans although all non-contract agreements with your phone company benefit. And The rationale is simple- the reason it’s these plans more than any others that benefit is not hard to see: They are month to month agreements. Users are free to move from them to a better deal (with more data) whenever they want to. They can even change phone service providers if they need to, in order to secure the deal.

Separating phone and phone plans dramatically brought down the cost of data. Many startups are taking inspiration from Australia and are launching similar services in the US.

If there is one thing you should take away from reading this article it is that you should never again buy a phone under contract from a phone company.

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Wiresless Companies:

Mint Mobile is a discount mobile carrier that operates on the T-Mobile network and lets you bring your own phone. This company offers plans that start at just $15 per month with a three-month commitment. The big difference in how it operates is the fact that Mint Mobile sends you a SIM card in the mail so you can set up your new phone service yourself. While Mint Mobile has a super low starting price point, you get quite a bit for $15 per month. This basic plan includes unlimited talk, text, and data delivered on T-Mobile’s 4G LTE network, 3GB of 4G LTE data per month and unlimited data thereafter, a prepaid SIM card in standard, micro, and nano sizes, and a smartphone Mobile HotSpot (SMHS) that allows you to turn your device into a WiFi hotspot.

G oogle FI offers no-contract plans by the month. Designed to be flexible to customer's data usage offers full-speed tethering for your other devices, and affordable international calls from the U.S. Meanwhile, their cellular access plan lets you pay just $20/month + $10/GB.

Republic Wireless harnesses the power of Wi-Fi and two of America’s largest 4G LTE networks to offer inexpensive phone plans for its users. Launched in 2012, Republic Wireless has consistently been making the headlines for its award-winning support and affordable plans. Base plans start at $15 per month, which includes unlimited talk & text. For only $5/GB add as much data as you need. You can do this directly from your phone – so no need to talk to any support reps. Currently, the Republic is only compatible with specific Android devices – including phones like Samsung Galaxy S9, Moto Z3, & Google Pixel 3. You can either buy your phone from RepublicWireless or bring your own phone and simply purchase a Republic Wireless SIM card.

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Since last week, PrivCo has added:
634 Companies | 74 M&A Deals | 289 Funding Activities

Funding & Deal Highlights:

Indian food delivery startup Zomato has raised $62 million from Temasek, resuming a financing round that it originally expected to close in January this year.

Demodesk announced an $8 million Series A led by Balderton Capital with participation from Target Global. The company has now raised a total of $10.3 million, including its seed round announced last year. Demodesk has built a platform to deliver online sales demos remotely with a dash of intelligence to help busy salespeople set up the meetings in a more automated fashion.

Avo, a startup that helps businesses better manage their data quality across teams, today announced that it has raised a $3 million seed round led by GGV Capital, with participation from Heavybit, Y Combinator, and others.

Justpoint, an NYC-based startup that uses artificial intelligence for analysis of individual medical malpractice claims, raised $1m in seed funding.

PhotoniCare, Inc., a Champaign, Ill.-based company dedicated to providing physicians with innovative diagnostic tools, raised $7.1m in funding.

Anvilogic raised $4.4 million in seed funding to further build out its collaborative security operations center (SOC) content platform that targets those experts—instead of developers. The platform provides information, such as detection rules and algorithms, via a specialized framework, a codeless content builder, and a sharing environment meant to accelerate the time to detect and triage threats in an enterprise.

Myst AI secured a $6 million Series A financing round to continue developing an artificial intelligence platform for time series forecasting in electricity. Valo Ventures led the investment with participation from Gradient Ventures, which led Myst AI’s $2 million seed round in 2018, Pieter Verhoeven, co-founder, and CEO, told Crunchbase News. With the new funding, the company has raised a total of $8 million to date.

Conversica, Inc., a Foster City, Calif.-based leader in Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) enabling organizations to attract, acquire, and grow customers at scale, raised $20m in Series D funding.

Cloudentity, a cloud-based provider of application security and identity-aware authorization solutions, announced today that it has raised $13M in Series A funding led by ForgePoint Capital, with participation from WestWave Capital. This round brings the company's total funding to $15 million. Coming off a record year of customer adoption and expansion, the new funds will be used to accelerate the company's growth and go-to-market efforts. Sean Cunningham, Managing Director at ForgePoint Capital, will join Cloudentity's board of directors.

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