In the last few days I have noticed posts related to CN slowing down considerably. Maybe some have lost hope or maybe all that can be said has already been said. This may beg the question of who is staying with CN? Maybe the lure of paying zero dollars is too good a deal to pass up even though you spend countless minutes watching ads, completing surveys or other actions for said free service. Maybe it's just an emergency line but, what good is an emergency line that may or may not work. I know many are waiting to get back their original number that they have had for a long time. Others may not care for the number since you use a service such as Google Voice for the front end of your communication. Whatever the case may be, who is staying put and who is parting ways?
I have decided to jump ship. I am just waiting to get my number back when and if that ever happens. Although, I will use GV from now on as the number I give out.
I'm staying, but more out of fascination than for other reasons. My CN phone has been just a backup phone, which I have used little, have spent very little time swiping for, and which still has basically the same amount of gold and silver as it did the day I signed up. Even so, I do hope that this ends well for all concerned with a fruitful merger of CN with Red Pocket. If not, nothing ventured nothing lost, except a nice backup phone.
The short answer: I'm staying, at least until we see what rates are moving forward.
The long answer: I don't see CellNuvo as inherently more risky for carrier service than other similar-tier MVNOs.
The largest MVNOs have direct relationships with the mothership networks. (Whether Sprint, T-Mo, AT&T, or VZW.) The smaller MVNOs likely have another step in that relationship with the 'true' carrier: they're re-purchasing wholesale units from "primary" MVNOs, and/or they're reliant on other parts of the business being handled by 3rd parties. If any of those relationships break, the customers of those smaller MVNOs are going to have problems.
CN's 3rd-party services had been pretty good, although a little slow (prior to the current issue.) . (Ports, phone swaps, etc.). Whoever was providing those services did a decent job, j& as others have pointed out, it seems likely that those 3rd-party services will improve with the Red Pockets deal-- as will the possibility of carrier choice. Although we've been left hanging for an extensive period of time, at least CN seems to be committed to a way forward. We can fault communication, but that's probably an at-risk feature of any smaller MVNO as well. (The technical support is likely to be 'right-sized' to deal with normal day-to-day issues, not sized to deal with major disruptions.)
The bottom line: if you go with any lower-tier MVNO for primary service, you need to have a backup plan thought out in advance. This might mean using Google Voice; it might mean having an unactivated (but capable of being activated) phone ready to go, an alternative provider in mind, and a plan on how you'll deal with a number change, a device change, etc. We'd be fooling ourselves to think we can switch to another small-tier MVNO and not be subject to similar risks. If you want to minimize those risks, you move up the scale of MVNO tiers until you find a risk level that you judge acceptable.
@KentE Which other MVNOs lack a direct relationship with the Big 4 carrier they're hitched to? Even RingPlus was directly with Sprint, as are most other smaller MVNOs.
What if staying means you need to earn a certain amount of silver in order for your service to continue? As far as I am aware the cheapest plan on RP is $10 and gives 500 texts, 500 minutes and 500 MB of data. If Silver/Gold keep their value we will get more total data/text/minutes with the cheapest RP plan than we were given with CN. Will RP give CN a different set of plans or are their plans going to be used? If their plans are used will we be forced to keep a much higher minimum monthly balance to pay for their plan. Or is CN keeping the PAY structure for its customers. CN had only mentioned that with RP it's customers will have access to their plans and nothing about keeping PAYG.