Mint Mobile uses only T-mobile’s network.
BTW am using AT&T prepaid plan and data and voice work just fine.
A couple of observations:
- as usual to activate you have to use an AT&T trusted device, i have an iphone laying around so i always use the IMEI of the iphone to register the device then switch sim cards- easy,
- problem with AT&T data and voice on L5 with open VPN it does not work- not sure why does anybody know the proper VPN settings to make it work on an AT&T mobile network?
- AT&T collects all your data and stores your IMEI connections and IPs used for 5 years so obviously thats a gross data privacy violation, T-Mobile only stores the dafa for < one year
- Due to any outage of the AWESIM service for any reason, even if it is less than a month, say >1week it would be good to offer discount code for these customers $100 to buy Purism gear as a thank you for sticking with them (just a suggestion, that mollifies people that may otherwise get a little bent).
Oh? I could have sworn that I had a choice between AT&T and Mint Mobile when I got my SIM a couple of years ago. No matter… I expect my L5 by Christmas (really, this time!), I’ll not likely slide into dementia before I move my SIM to it. 
So as of the last update this morning, there are two options for us to move to:
1. “SIMple-PLUS” for $59.95/mo for 3 GB
2. AweSIM for $99.95/mo for unlimited
A ~$21 increase per line for SIMple - originally $39/mo - is really hard to swallow. $60 for 3 gigs is really the best Purism could do? Puretalk has 4 GB for less than half of that. For two lines, Purism is $70/month more for less data. I’m just not sure that the privacy benefit offered by SIMple is worth that much.
Edit: see Kyle’s clarification below. Apparently SIMple Plus is actually a different plan and not a re-branded version of SIMple.
That last email had some errors and omissions in the form. The plan you are referencing is SIMple Plus not SIMple. We will be sending out an updated and corrected form later today.
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That’s great to hear, I thought all SIMple customers were being given no choice to remain on SIMple. I’ll edit the post.
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Chalk it up to a lot of folks on the team working a lot of overtime on this trying to get things up and running.
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Exactly what is Purism with respect to the actual phone service? If Purism is not an MVNO, they should be. Otherwise, Purism is just a reseller for an MVNO. There are plenty of MVNO resellers who just sign up on the MVNO’s website to be dealers and they are good to go. No capital investment is required. No licenses are required. You can even assign yourself the title of CEO if you want to, and you’re suddenly a big businessman in the telecommunications industry. Please don’t tell me that this is all that Purism did to get in to the cellphone carrier business. I mean, I can keep your name and identity information a secret too, and could sell you the same thing that Purism sells, but for a lesser price.
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FWIW I’ve not seen Purism advertise itself as an MVNO, just not correct when people made the assumption. The way I’ve read it is that Purism is basically a business customer that then instead of providing only employees service allows anyone to pay to be a part of their business plan thus obfuscation from the carrier your personal information.
This would explain why during this outage they’ve shared about the same level of detail I’ve seen business customers (in similar situations) able to get from service providers and in about the same timeframe.
It would be nice to see a full writeup of the outage including timeline and mitigation(s) to prevent future recurrences of the same issue. It’s been difficult for me to piece together from this thread a reasonable idea of what happened and a timeline of when what information was known.
Unfortunately I think there’s too much incentive not to publish this (at the level of detail that I would personally consider most useful) as that invites criticism from people that have both the benefit of hindsight and aren’t under pressure in the moment. These type of critics tend to be quite loud and looking to ascribe blame instead of looking for ways to be constructive.
I suspect that at most we get a high level synopsis that won’t shed any more light onto whether or not Purism is an MVNO or a reseller. For most people I doubt the distinction matters.
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The distinction between MVNO and being just a business customer is significant, as this current outage shows. An MVNO never has outages and can expect more reliable service from the actual network provider. There are many issues that diminish the value to the customer of a non-MVNO. It’s like the difference between taking your Ford vehicle in to a Ford dealer for engine repair work, vs going to the no-name corner mechanic for the same service. You may or may not be happy, and even if you get good service, your risk is higher with Purism just being a customer of the product they sell. So the cost should drop significantly because you’re not getting premium service, even though the anonymity feature is available. What future is there in selling someone else’s product? Purism needs to learn how to be a real telecommunications provider as opposed to being a customer themselves of some unknown reseller. This corner cutting is disappointing at best.
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That is an oversimplification and technically inaccurate. All providers have had outages and will have outages in the future.
Lots, resellers aren’t going away anytime soon including cloud resellers that put their logo and customizations on and sell it as their own.
This jumps the gun and assumes the assumptions made by others are in fact true.
It’s equally possible they’re are an MVNO (though aren’t those all reselling someone else’s product?)
Also if they stood up their own network it would be too small to compete with the very few existing networks and wouldn’t be a good business decision.
This kind of jumping to the negative that isn’t constructive.
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In one of the emails posted here they say their “supplier” had a dispute with att and are now out of business as a result. While I guess its possible to be a MVNO’s MVNO, I wouldn’t think that to be the case.
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Yeah, I don’t know enough about the different types of MVNO’s to rule it out, I just know there’s many types. It would be nice if Purism could elaborate in some official capacity what they are and how that affected the outage.
Funny boy.
When you charge $100/month for a single line, you’re getting what Verizon charges. Verizon is by far the most expensive mainstream network to use. By contrast, you can get a line from T-Mobile for $20/month (one fifth the cost). The thing about an MVNO is that you can offer nationwide service, no matter how small your MVNO is. You don’t even have to put up a network to compete as a nationwide provider. If Purism doesn’t want to be an MVNO, so be it. Just don’t be fooled by who your provider really is. In the case of AwSim and SIMple, you’ll never really know who it is… at premium pricing. If you want to pay five star hotel prices to stay at a no-name motel, you’re free to do it.
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At $100/month for a single line, you’re paying more than Verizon prices. Granted, I now have a family plan with four lines, but each line is $35+surcharges+taxes (which comes to just over $40/month/line), and this plan has unlimited 5G data for the phone itself with 5 GB of hotspot data per month.
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I’d rather pay Purism $100/mo than any of the big tech corps. I’m not paying &100/mo because I expect the service to be equal to Verizon/ATT. I’m paying for the fact that my phone is guaranteed to work without being whitelisted, for the increased privacy of not having my name registered to the number, and for the fact that I’m supporting a company who’s mission I genuinely support.
Prior to this outage, I found my phone/data service to be comparable to using both ATT and Puretalk. The outage sucks, and if the L5 was my daily driver I’m sure I’d be a lot more upset than I am. But for now, I’m willing to give AweSIM another shot.
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Until it doesn’t. 
I say this from personal experience back in July when my SIMple service stopped working for 6 days and Purism initially said my number was lost but then was able to recover it somehow, after which I lost any remaining faith that Purism could do legitimate business.
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Has anyone had their service restored yet? Last update was two weeks ago and we’re a month into the outage.
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