This post is probably for the new international grad students who have just arrived in the US recently and looking for a mobile plan. Not just for new international students, this might be helpful for those who are seeking reliable cost-effective mobile plans.

In US, you should have some documentation (i.e Drivers license, proof of address) to prove your identity to get a monthly mobile plan. But, newly arrived international students may not have all of these documents, so when you buy any plans with any providers, you may have to buy very expensive plans.

Also, grad students always want to save money as they don’t make fortune out of graduate assistantships. So, it makes more sense to get a prepaid service at a lower price tag. When it comes to prepaid services, you have several options, you may get a prepaid plan from one of the big heads or you can just simply get a prepaid plan from a MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator). Basically, MVNO is part of one of the big heads, they just rented a portion of the big network’s bandwidth and sell it at a lower price. You can think of this as a bulk buying re-seller. Bulk buying re-sellers buy a large number of products at a discounted price from the manufacturer and sell a small amount at a lower value with a profit.

Now that we know what’s MVNO is, let’s see what are the best MVNO on the market and their pros and cons.