$0 Unlimited Mobile Plan📱
Since getting divorced and reading Early Retirement Extreme, I’ve been on a quest to slash my bills to the bare minimum.
If you’ve ever wanted to pay $0 - $100 a year for a mobile plan, now’s your chance.
I stumbled onto Helium, who offers an unlimited plan1 for $5 a month to Miami residents and I wanted to see if it was possible to get, regardless of location.
To get free service, you can download their app and keep location tracking on to help create their coverage map, where you’ll earn credits to cover the bill. I’m sure there’s many privacy implications with this, so either do it or pay the $5/month, instead.
Requirements & Options
Your phone must accept eSIMs.
Search your phone model here and ensure it has the word “eSIM” under the Body > SIM category. It may also say “Nano-Sim and eSIM” or something else, which still means you can use eSIMs on your phone.
Optional: Don’t port your current phone number into Helium.
Helium could go out of business2 or shut down your account and keep your number hostage. So I use the Helium plan solely for data and keep another cheap phone plan solely for minutes and texts. This decoupling of calls and texts from data provides the best value and ease of use. If your phone accepts eSIMs, it’s quick and easy to do.
Optional: Take your current number to a low-cost carrier.
If your current plan is more than $5 a month, you should consider porting it to a low-cost carrier for calls and texts. This saves money and gives you flexibility if Helium ever goes belly up.
Steps
Find a random address located in Miami to use as your billing address.
Businesses, post offices, apartment buildings, etc. should work.
Login to the website of the credit card you’ll use for Helium and change the credit card’s billing address to the Miami one. You’ll change it back after getting the plan.
If that doesn’t work or you don’t want to do it, sign up for Privacy.com because they allow creating temporary credit cards attached to any billing address you choose.
Go to the Miami Helium Mobile page and sign up using the Miami address whenever asked for a billing and/or home address.
Once signed up, follow their steps to add the eSIM to your phone.
Make the Helium eSIM the data-only sim on your phone.
Download the Helium Mobile app and sign up for the Discovery Mapping feature to start earning credits for free service.
Using A Low-Cost Carrier
As discussed above, if your current mobile plan is more than $5 a month, you should consider porting your current number to a low-cost carrier. We’re going to be decoupling calls and texts from data so you can save money and have options if Helium ever stops working.
Check your minute and text message usage by logging into your current carrier’s account.
Find a low-cost carrier that fits your phone call and text message needs. Here’s a few I’ve used and like:
Sign up for whatever plan has no or low data and the amount of minutes and texts you need and port your existing number into this new account.
Choose an eSIM for this service, if possible, and you’ll be up and running within minutes since phones can use multiple eSIMs at once.
Setup this eSIM for calls and texts only in your phone’s settings.
Cancel your old plan.
Pat yourself on the back and enjoy paying $0 - $100 a year for mobile service.
Footnotes
Unlimited talk, text and 30GB of 5G data on the T-Mobile network. After 30GB, you’ll be throttled down to 2G speeds until your next billing cycle. I’ve seen reports of users hitting 50GB of data before getting throttled, so YMMV.↩
If that were to happen, you can easily move to another low-cost provider and use them for the data portion of your setup.↩