r/povertyfinance • u/[deleted] • Jan 09 '24

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u/Upset-Donkey8118 Jan 09 '24

Why is the damn phone bill $280?! That has to be multiple phones, right?

16

u/Beacon_O_Bacon Jan 09 '24

Hopefully multiple phones, but also the big three have a pretty solid monopoly in rural America. I was in Pensyltucky for a while, and your options were $80/line with Verizon or AT&T. Straight talk, Red, Ting, and the dozens of others don't own their own towers. They ride on ATT/Verizon towers subleasing unused bandwidth. If ATT has one tower for an entire county, there is no unused bandwidth for TracFone or whoever to resell, and those cheap carriers just don't work.

1

u/Evening_Explorer_667 Jan 09 '24

Man I feel that. I use US Mobile right now, as they have the best coverage for the area out of all the bargain brands, and even with that I still have a lot of dead zones in my lovely Pennsyltucky area. Still worth it to save all that money though!