Living off free service

A long while ago, many have suggested folks trying to leverage low cost/no cost MVNOs to sign up and xfer their number to Google Voice. This way, you have a stable entity holding your numbers and you are free to utilize any service to maintain use of your primary phone number (now GV).

I guess many have gone to low cost paid service and are doing fine. Those who continue to try and get freemium service, like CN, are a small minority, have ignored that recommendation, and are the few who are complaining now.

Yes. Not having your main number with CellNUVO would give you less to complain about.

But aren't people now losing their service unless they top up with cash?

The rest of us have Freedompop SIMs and are doing fine. CN service disruption, while inconvenient, is not a show stopper.

Yes smart move to have freedompop sims.

They've turned out to be more reliable and drama free than Ringplus and CellNUVO.

I've been pleasantly surprised.

sigh

Is "sigh" from a "sighborg" language?:unsure:

Not exactly.

Then there are those of us who've had & used GV for years & years - merely attaching & detaching cellular numbers as things come & go - as we have done here.

FP has changed things around so much as to be confusing; we have 1 or 2 of the older FP SIMs but have gotten about zero usage out of them.

Whilst thinking about this I even ran across the 'global SIM' cards we got from FP & never even used.

Which of their services are still data/VOIP/app dependent - can anyone tell me ??
(Their data/VOIP/app dependent stuff didn't work around here for us at all is why I ask.)

I find that I am reluctant to try anything new with them even to get 100% free GSM services, what with the confusion of services offered, needing to change stuff, maybe the need of signing up again - trial period - avoiding the monthly charge, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum.

Mostly what using the 'free' services has taught this user so far is that though they may use little or no $, they end up 'costing' in other ways which end up making this user rather twitchy !!

As far as I understand, you must have premium voice addon to get non data/VOIP calls. And that only works with Sprint, not the "LTE" (AT&T) or Global Sims (3G).

But they are fantastic for free data with no muss and no fuss, once you get through the initial signup. Never touch a thing after that. Been with them since almost the beginning of FP.

Thanks for the info.
No real change for us then as cellular data is pretty much non-existent here.

Looking at the very tempting sales page here:
https://www.freedompop.com/sim-card
Reveals nothing of whether it is real cellular or VOIP...kind of left that info out, yes ??
(And the title: 'SIM Card Only Service' is rather misleading IMO.)

But it becomes quite clear when looked up, here:
https://support.freedompop.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3325

Just looked up the info on the global SIM as we have one that actually has a number & is active:
https://support.freedompop.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3003/kw/global
https://support.freedompop.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3327

And if/when I have an unlocked GSM device that can use it, it may be useful over wifi only here at home, but every time I tried using it out & about the call quality was so bad as to not be worth even trying to use it.

Its too bad they don't offer real GSM (non-app & non-VOIP based) free services at some minimal level.
THAT would be very useful !!