Best Phone Carriers for Students in the US
If you are coming from France:
Just as a heads up, before looking into local (US) phone carrier plans, make sure you really need the added benefit of having an American phone number, because most plans are more expensive than in France or Europe in general. Especially if you are familiar with the French Free Mobile international plan (€20/month) which works perfectly fine if you’re staying less than 1 year in the United-States. The 5G network coverage from Free Mobile is enough to not get stranded and you get 35GB of data per month. Therefore if you are fine to deal with the inconvenience of not having an American phone number, which can be very useful for subscriptions, then you can skip the rest of this article and stick with the French carrier.
On the other hand, if you want to have peace of mind, travel around the country, go on road trips or maybe buy a car, it is essential to have an American phone carrier, with your own local phone number.
1. Mint Mobile (first 3-months offer)
At the time of this writing, Mint Mobile offers new customers with the first 3 months at a discount ($15/month), which provides unlimited data usage and a cancel anytime policy. At the end of this trial period, I recommend switching to another plan as this one bumps up to $30 a month.
Please be aware that this plan does require an upfront payment of the full 3 months of the offer, meaning you have to pay $45 as a prepayment before the plan starts.
2. Visible (by Verizon)
The second phone carrier I recommend after using up the Mint mobile welcome offer is from Visible. They have the cheapest plan per data use and a decent coverage. The reason it has good coverage is due to the fact that Visible is owned by Verizon, and they share the same network infrastructure across the United-States.
For the first 24 months, Visible offers their unlimited data plan at $20 per month, which is the best deal I could find for my own personal use. Otherwise, they have other limited data options that are slightly cheaper. The only down side is that their app and website are slow and a pain to navigate.
Keep the same phone number
To switch from one deal to another, make sure to keep the same number to make your life easier and not have to change all previous subscription setups and contact lists.
The way you do this is to follow the steps that the website and Chat GPT gives you, because each phone carrier is different. From my personal experience, Mint Mobile will give you the information and identification codes that link your number through the ChatBot on their Website (green looking fox). Visible will link to your Mint Mobile account and transfer your number to the other plan.
Easy! 📞