FreedomPop 2020 Review

FreedomPop is becoming a popular phone plan because it has a range of affordable plans, including a free phone plan. I had decided to switch out my phone service from a no contract Tracfone (T-Mobile Network) due to not being able to send photographs with my texts using their basic phone plan. I had been using their LG306G phone with good results for a few years, until the last several months. I was finding the poor quality video camera that this phone has to be a factor in wanting to upgrade the phone. Their 1 year service for a basic phone was $199.99 for 1500 minutes, which comes out to $16.67 per month.

I had been considering upgrading to a Simple Mobile (T-Mobile Network) phone at $50 for the new 2018 Motorola Moto 5e Android 8 phone and $20 per month for automatic renewal service with 3GB data and international calling, but then became aware of the cheaper FreedomPop service with a free phone and free service. FreedomPop uses the Sprint and AT&T networks that have good coverage of the USA.

My needs were quite simple:

• Local, national and occasional international calls. • Answering machine. • Texting. • Low data use for sending pictures occasionally. • Calling 911 emergency services.

Like most phone plans, you have two options with phones:

• Buy a FreedomPop phone. • Use an unlocked phone with their sim card.

I decided to assess their service with both devices. The following were purchased:

• FreedomPop certified refurbished ZTE Prestige 2 2017 Android 6 phone at $19.99 (free phone + $19.99 activation fee.)

• Blu Vivo 5 Mini 2017 Android 6 unlocked phone at $55. I had also purchased one year of voice/text/monthly 1GB data service sim for $35 from Target. Target states: “For less than $5/month, get Unlimited Talk, Text, & 1GB LTE Data on FreedomPop's Nationwide 4G LTE GSM network, with FreedomPop's 12-Month Prepaid Plan - 3-in-1 LTE SIM Kit. Compatible with most unlocked Android/iOS GSM devices, including unlocked phones from AT&T, T- Mobile, Metro PCS, Cricket and other GSM carriers. The SIM card kit includes, nano, micro, and mini SIM cards. FreedomPop's 4G LTE SIM works nationwide in the US. Make free calls and send texts using our high speed network or over WiFi. With no contract and no cancellation fees, you can choose from a variety of flexible and affordable prepaid plans. You'll be able to pay for only what you need even if it changes from month to month.”. Over 300 Target reviews rate FreedomPop at 4 out of 5 stars.

The FreedomPop ZTE Prestige 2 phone came with a 14 day free trail of their $30 monthly 2GB data plan and their $10 monthly premium service. International service is free for 100 minutes of call time per month. FreedomPop state that they will unlock their own phones on request after six months of service. Their small print disclosure for the phone purchase stated:

“By clicking Activate, you agree to pay the amount Due Today. Your FreedomPop service will not begin until your device ships. Your subscription includes a 14-day(s) free service trial. At the conclusion of your free trial, your service will automatically renew at the provided rate found in your shopping cart of $34.98 every month. Additional taxes and surcharges may apply. When downgrading to the free plan, an account balance is required to protect ourselves from fraud and leakage, as data usage can be delayed up to 3 hours. Downgrade by logging into your FreedomPop account. Cancel service by contacting support, Monday-Friday between 9am-5pm PST at 1-(888) 743-8107.”

Regarding the free 14 day offers, they could be turned off to avoid monthly bills during the first 14 days after the phone shipped by agreeing to put an undisclosed amount of credit into the account.

So my “free phone & free service” had risen to $19.99 which was still very competitive with other phone carriers. My existing phone number could be attempted to be ported to FreedomPop, but they advised me to start with a new phone number and to transfer the old number later:

“The porting process can take up to 2-4 business days. To ensure that you have full use of your FreedomPop service while the porting process is underway, we highly recommend that you select a New Number for use on a temporary basis. Should the porting-in process fail, you will still have full use of your FreedomPop service with the New Number selected.” I placed my order on December 8th 2018. They also offered me a Netgear AirCard 770S 4G portable hotspot for $4.99 with 14 days of free service, which I took. The clock on the 14 day free trial for the phone started as soon as I placed my order, even though I would not have them for at least a week, as they were in the mail. So my free 14 day trial was actually 7 or less by the time it arrived. My service start date was listed as December 8th 2018 and my free trail days were counting down! They were shipped from Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. I received the hotspot on 21st December 2018. The phone took a lot longer and I received it on Saturday 29th December 2018.

Their free phone plan appears to be based on WiFi and a Cellular data plan. You must use their voice over internet (VOIP) app to make phone calls and send texts. WiFi phone calls can be low quality with dropouts. VOIP calls tend to be lower quality than voice calls using the conventional cell phone voice service. It comes with 200 minutes of free voice, 500 free texts and 200MB of free data per month. This would be sufficient for anyone with low phone usage, but you may run into extra monthly charges with high usage. Unused voice/text/data does not rollover to the following month. Going over these monthly limits results in charges. They state:

“As per our terms and conditions, because actual data usage may be delayed up to 3 hours, to protect ourselves from fraud and leakage, you must have minimum account balance to be on 100% Free account, if not, $20 will be added to your credit which can be used for data overage.”

In plain English: They are saying that if you downgrade to free and are below a minimum unstated credit balance, you will be charged a $20 non-refundable fee that can be used for a later data purchase. Prior to downgrading my plans, I purchased a $10 credit for each account in an attempt to avoid the larger $20 charges for downgrading the service. They state:

“Why do I need Account Credit? When you sign up for a FreedomPop talk,text and data plan, you are given a set allotment of MBs (megabytes). Browsing the internet, streaming movies, downloading applications and playing games will use the MBs that are in your plan. Because actual data usage may be delayed by up to 3 hours, to protect ourselves from fraud and leakage, when you come within 100MBs of your data plan limit you might be suspended. To avoid account suspension or service interruption, please add credit to your account. An account suspension will affect not just data usage, but calls and texts as well.”

There are two levels of FreedomPop free services: “Our free plan provides you with 500 MBs of data per month on a phone, hotspot or tablet account, and 200 MBs of data per month on a SIM card account.”

So it is best to buy your hardware devices from FreedomPop to get the larger data allowance.

I downgraded my services on 21st December to the free plan. Both were showing that I had 3GB of data in each device. The phone was showing the following services:

Premium 2GB 24.99 per month:

• Talk Unlimited Minutes. • Text Unlimited Text Messages. • Data 2 GB. • Additional Data US$0.020 / MB.

FreedomPop Phone Premier $9.99 per month:

• FreedomPop Visual Voicemail: Receive, manage, and store voicemails and record personalized greetings.

• FreedomPop Data Rollover: Rollover your unused data and bank up to 20 GB for use anytime. • FreedomPop Premium Voice: Ensure high-quality voice, even when network connection is low. • FreedomPop MMS Texting: The best way to send pictures and videos through text messages. • FreedomPop Data Compression: Get up to 2x your data with compression technology. • FreedomPop Private Internet: Ensure your internet, voice calls & texts are secure and encrypted.

• FreedomPop Usage Alerts: Prevent pay as you go charges before going over data limits with usage alerts.

• FreedomPop Pay As You Go Boost: Save 50% on your data when you go over your Basic 500MB plan limit.

• FreedomPop Tethering: Turn your phone into a hotspot and connect up to 8 devices anywhere you go.

• FreedomPop Speed Boost. Enjoy lightening fast internet speed, without any restrictions. • FreedomPop Ad Blocker: Block intrusive ads, pop-ups, and video ads to enhance browsing. • FreedomPop Sponsor Ads Free Messaging. Avoid banner ads in your messaging app. • FreedomPop Data Saver: Control your data usage with data throttle

The phone downgraded to:

Free Basic 200

• Talk 200 minutes. • Text 500 text messages. • Data 500 MB. • Additional Data US$0.020 / MB.

The hotspot was showing the following services:

Freedom Pop Premier $9.99 per month:

• FreedomPop Data Rollover: Rollover your unused data and bank up to 20 GB for use anytime FreedomPop Usage Alerts.

• FreedomPop Usage Alerts: Prevent pay as you go charges before going over data limits with usage alerts.

• FreedomPop Pay As You Go Boost: Save 50% on your data when you go over your Basic 500MB plan limit.

• FreedomPop Sponsor Ads Free Messaging: Avoid banner ads in your messaging app

Premium GSM 3GB $29.99 per month:

• 3GB data.

Hotspot downgraded to free Basic GSM 200:

• Data 200 MB • Additional Data US$0.025 / MB

Placing the minimum credit of $10 into each account did avoid the $20 free service downgrade fee. The first device tested in Tucson, Arizona, USA, was the hotspot. It looked new, even though it stated that it was pre-owned. It worked when first turned on and I could connect my WiFi devices to the internet through it. However, after charging the device and trying out the sim in my cellphone, I found that it no longer worked. It had a 90 day warranty and I emailed the warranty department to send a replacement device that did work. Viewing the data usage for the brief period that it was connected to the internet showed that 4.27 MB or 2% of the 200 MB of data had been used in just a few minutes of testing the device. It was clear that this data allowance would be easily used up within the month, causing extra data charges to be incurred. Their data plans were all limited and there was no way to purchase an unlimited data plan for it. I decided that the hotspot was risky to use due to the data overage fees and abandoned it. I received an email response from warranty on January 4th 2019 advising to return the hotspot for a refund.

The refurbished phone was in relatively good condition and showed little wear and tear. The screen was clean and just a couple of nicks in the phone body. It was a CDMA Sprint network phone. Testing showed the following:

Day 1: It was connected to WiFi, wireless network data was turned off, and it updated over several hours. No extra apps were installed by me. At the end of the evening the phone had used up 6% or 92.02 MB of data, which I found concerning, as data usage at this rate would incur charges by the end of the monthly billing period. It appears that FreedomPop records all data for its monthly allowance, regardless of whether a WiFi network or the cellular network is used. Phone calls sounded clear and texts were almost instant. Their website and app do provide a delayed report of the usage of the devices and billing. With these devices, you will need to track daily usage in order to avoid overage charges.

Day 2: The next day the phone was saying that it needed to do another ZTE update. It had already done two ZTE updates the previous night. At the end of the updates, their app was showing 1.6 GB had been used of the 3GB listed as being allocated for the month. Their website was reporting different numbers. It was still at 6% or 92.02 MB of data used out of 1.49GB of available monthly data. I was assuming at this point that even though the phone had been downgraded to the free plan, it was still receiving the larger data allowance from the free trial plan and FreedomPop were reporting that there were 3 days left on the current billing cycle on the app or 6 days left on the website. The FreedomPop app and website matched up on voices and texts, but were reporting different things with data and plan cycles. I took a look at the android settings-data usage recording system and it matched the web site number of 92MB of data used. By the end of the day the phone had shutdown due to the battery being flat and had to be charged, which took about three hours. Day 3: The phone appeared to be fully set up and was using approximately 3MB of data daily. Over a month, this would be approximately 93MB of data usage in standby. To reduce this, some of the factory installed apps were disabled:

• Amazon. • Amazon Kindle. • Amazon Music. • Amazon Photos. • Duo. • Facebook. • Instagram. • Messenger. • Prime Video. • YouTube.

My problems with this phone started with the very first call to someone. I needed to call Spain and it took several attempts to get the call to go through the hotel operator to the room. I sometimes could hear them okay, but it seemed like they could not hear me and would hang up on me. Call quality varied with each call I made to Spain, sometimes it sounded okay and other times it would be filled with dropouts. When the call did finally connect, it was echoing and unexpectedly disconnected after several minutes. I gave up on the FreedomPop phone and used the home phone to finish the call to Spain.

Concerned with the calling issues, later that day I set up the unlocked Blu Vivo Mini 5 phone. The FreedomPop apps were loaded and the 1GB GSM AT&T sim card was installed into it. The network access point name was set to fp.com.attz per the instructions. I had expected setup to take 30 minutes or so, but I could not get the phone to work. In the end, it took about two hours of messing with the phone to make it work. I had to uninstall the messenging app and reinstall to fix it. There were no charges for activating the one year service and warning was given that there would be an account credit charge for downgrading to the free service in the future. The phone was really slow to respond, was difficult to make calls from and when a call could be made, they had lots of dropouts and poor call quality. They were barely understandable. Turning off the WiFi from the phone settings made it unusable. Restarting the phone would take several minutes before a call could be made. The AT&T signal strength looked weak and would occasionally disappear. I powered down both phones until the morning.

Day 4: Powering up the phones revealed that neither of them could make phone calls. I noticed that the home WiFi router was turned off. Both phones were showing that they were connected to the cellular network. The WiFi was turned on and it was found that both phones could receive calls. The Sprint phone could make calls but the AT&T phone could not. The Sprint phone could send texts but the AT&T phone could not. Turning the WiFi off showed that the Sprint phone continued to work on phones and texts, but the AT&T phone did not make calls (Call Error) or send texts (Server Error) or see the cellular network (network not available). I uninstalled the messenging app and reinstalled it to get the phone to work on WiFi but not AT&T. I disabled the built in phone and messaging apps that the Blu phone came with to fix the AT&T cellular network problems. After this I was able to send texts. After charging both phones, I again found them unable to make phone calls and the AT&T phone could not send texts. It could receive them after approximately a 30 minute delay. A search of freedompop on Blu phones revealed that data roaming had to be activated for it to work and IP4 had to be selected in the network access point. Activating this and rebooting the phone made it work on texts but not phone calls.

Testing continued over the following weeks as I had time and it was a similar story to above. I was able to get the AT&T unlocked Blu phone to occasionally make calls. I was surprised how bad the AT&T phone was. The Blu phone would not work correctly until I removed all FreedomPop apps and only reinstalled “Messenging” followed by “Voicemail”. At this point it burst into life and all FreedomPop services starting working.

With the benefit of hindsight, I may have made the phones unstable by changing some settings in the Messaging app in the pursuit of better quality voice calling. My recommendation is not to play around with the standard settings of the FreedomPop apps. The most concerning issue that I saw is the fake ringer. The phone says that the call is connected and gives a ringing sound while you are waiting for the person to pick up. However, the call has not connected, their phone is not ringing, and they will never pick up.

Prolonged testing showed that both phones were commonly unstable at start up, sometimes showing “Unfortunately messaging has stopped.” or “Call Error” when trying to make phone calls. The fake ringer was common also. It emerged that there were significant differences between the free service and the purchased annual service. Notably, the free Sprint phone could not receive pictures in texts, commonly called Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS). It was an extra monthly purchase. The optional services were also different. The free phone plan billed for optional services on a monthly basis, whereas the annual phone plan billed annually for services and was cheaper. An example of this was FreedomPop Premier service. It was $35.88 annually or $10.99 monthly totaling $131.88 annually. Far less service options were listed on the annual plan as compared to the free service which suggested that the annual plan comes with some of the optional services already built into it.

At this point it had emerged that the best performing phone at my home was the Sprint CDMA ZTE phone. It had a strong cellular signal and lasted much longer on a charge than the smaller AT&T GSM Blu phone that would only work for several hours before needing a charge and had slower performance. However, both cell phones were unusable for my purpose as they were not reliable on phone calls.

It was interesting to note that even though the phones had spent most of January switched off, they were reporting the following data use near the end of their monthly billing period:

• ZTE Sprint: 173.25 MB • Blu AT&T: 129.67 MB

Settings for Unlocked GSM FreedomPop Android Phone

The settings as detailed by the FreedomPop instructions for the AT&T GSM sim card for unlocked android phones was missing important information that was needed to get the phone working. Here are the settings that were used:

Power off the phone and install the sim card. Power the phone back on and let the phone restart all of its services. After ten minutes, set up the cellular network:

From the Android system settings menu: 1. Settings > More > Cellular Networks > Data Roaming: On 2. Settings > More > Cellular Networks > Access Point Names > + (add another APN) 1. Leave all settings as they are unless stated below: 2. Name: FreedomPop 3. APN: fp.com.attz 4. APN Protocol: IPv4/IPv6 5. APN Roaming Protocol: Ipv4 Save the APN settings before leaving the APN menu, make sure that FreedomPop is the selected APN and restart the phone.

Download and install the “Messenging” app from the Google Play store. Restart the phone once setup is completed. The phone lock screen should be showing AT&T and the signal strength meter should be showing a signal. My phone shows occasionally shows 4G next to the signal strength. If you have no signal, then you may be in a low signal strength area. Try using the phone in another built up area a few miles away.

Test the phone (WiFi router turned off): 1. Call another phone and ask them if the call quality is good. 2. Get someone to call your FreedomPop phone and ask them if the call quality is good. 3. Send a text and ask them to reply. 4. Receive a text.

Test the phone (WiFi router turned on): 5. Call another phone and ask them if the call quality is good. 6. Get someone to call your FreedomPop phone and ask them if the call quality is good. 7. Send a text and ask them to reply. 8. Receive a text. Summary

I found FreedomPop to be unclear on what the costs of their services actually were. I could only establish the true costs by setting up their “Free Phone” and their “Free Service”. Charges are built into their service and you will pay extra for exceeding the monthly free limits. Their free allowances are low and you may surpass their limits with typical monthly usage.

Hotspot costs came out at:

• $4.99 for hotspot. • $10 Service credit before downgrading to free. Total set up cost: $14.99

Free Sprint CDMA phone costs came out at: • $19.99 activation fee. • $10 Service credit before downgrading to free. Total set up costs were $29.99 for the free phone and free voice/text/data service.

1GB GSM yearly phone costs came out at:

• $35 sim purchase. • Purchase of an unlocked GSM Android phone (Typically $55 upwards depending on brand & model).

All devices have monthly overage fees for exceeding the free limits and monthly fees for extra services such as visual voicemail, premium call quality, higher monthly data allowances and so on. Regarding the phones plans tested, both had:

• Phone number. • USA calling. • International calling. • Texting. • Internet access. The one year plan had these additional services:

• Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS).

For those who do not want to incur overage charges, you should consider Unreal mobile. It is related to Freedompop and has unlimited phone plans starting at $10 per month. It is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) service and calls have to be made through their app. I have no idea if the service is reliable or what the quality of the phone calls are.

Regarding Simple Mobile, this may be a better choice if you have a need for your phone to always have high quality calling, use the T-Mobile network, roam for free in Latin America, want unlimited calling to 12 international numbers, 3GB of high speed data every month, unlimited slow speed data and no extra charges for exceeding the monthly data allowance.

During testing in Tucson, it emerged that the Sprint CDMA ZTE phone as supplied by FreedomPop had the better signal strength service at my home. Even though it was better than the AT&T GSM Blu unlocked phone, it was still unacceptable for daily cell phone use. It may be acceptable for a child that does not need a quality phone service, but not for a home or business phone.

There were some things that I liked about FreedomPop:

• The “Free” service is free after you have paid the initial charges. • Texting is responsive on WiFi and in strong cellular signal areas. • Being able to make calls over WiFi, which is useful where there is no cellular service. • The “Free” refurbished ZTE Prestige 2 phone was responsive and pleasant to use.

I could not recommend FreedomPop as a viable alternate to a traditional cell phone plan due to the following reasons:

• Poor call quality. • Poor documentation. • Sometimes it takes several attempts to successfully connect calls. • Fake ringer that makes you think that calls have connected when they have not. • I had no confidence that a 911 call would work in an emergency situation. • They disappear your credit balance after one month. You have to go in to your account and reactivate it every month.

Applications that appear to be best suited for FreedomPop:

• A phone that you can give to your visitors that can be used for staying in touch through texts. • A low cost phone for teenagers that can be used primarily for texting. • A phone for running low data usage apps, such as internet connected GPS that gives traffic alerts.

• A data sim for a dual sim phone that has a conventional cell phone sim installed for voice and text.

• A phone for using the Google Voice app on.

After testing was completed with FreedomPop, I decided to stay with a conventional cell phone service.

In the end I kept the FreedomPop phones turned off and in the cars for emergency use only. I installed the Google Voice app to give me a choice of VOIP calling services on the phones. Had I known about the call quality issues that FreedomPop has, I would have stayed with a traditional cell phone company for my service that does not automatically charge for overages. FreedomPop email warranty support advised me to return the non-functional hotspot for a refund using their supplied shipping label that would be sent to me. No shipping label showed up and as the return postage cost more than the $4.99 device I opted to keep it and gave it to my child to use as a toy.

Regarding the FreedomPop phones tested, these were the order of best performance: 1. ZTE Pestige 2 using Freedompop/CDMA/Sprint. 2. Blu Vivo 5 Mini using Freedompop/GSM/AT&T.

As with all cell phone networks, it is far easier to use the phones that are supplied by the cell phone company. These have the cellular network settings pre-configured and the needed apps pre-installed onto them to work right out of the box. The most difficult route is an unlocked phone that requires the user to set it up. Having tried it, I do not recommend the unlocked phone route for the general public. After 7 months, in July 2019 I decided to unlock the ZTE phone that I purchased from Freedompop. I discovered that I could not contact customer service unless I paid a fee: “Attention: Your ticket could not be created because this account is not subscribed to the FreedomPop Premium VIP Service. Please visit our free support tools below or upgrade to the FreedomPop Premium VIP Service.”. At this point I gave up on unlocking the “free” phone.

I was also informed in July 2019 that my free Freedompop service had been transferred to Ting. I followed the instructions to transfer the free service from Freedompop and discovered it was now a monthly paid service at $6 for phone and messages, and an additional $4 per gigabyte of monthly data use. I opted not to transfer to Ting, my “free” phone was no longer free and it became a useless phone to me. Freedompop has split off the Sprint CDMA business to Ting and kept the AT&T GSM business.

By January 1st 2020, I had successfully ran the hotspot and ‘free’ phone accounts without incurring any further charges. However, the 1GB GSM yearly phone plan automatically renewed at $49.99 for the year. I closed down the hotspot and ‘free’ phone accounts and no refund was issued for the $10 credit that each account was showing. I intend to close the 1GB GSM yearly phone plan in December 2020.

A “Victims of Freedompop” group is on Facebook and it may be worthwhile checking it out to see what the latest issues are with Freedompop.

Regarding using your cell phone safely, here are some of the current recommendations from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH):

• Keep the phone away from the body whenever possible. Carry it in a purse or briefcase instead of a pocket or bra.

• Reduce cell phone use when the signal is weak (i.e., the phone shows only one or two bars), or if you’re in a fast-moving car or bus, since phones put off more radio frequency energy at those times.

• Reduce the use of cell phones to stream audio or video, or to download or upload large files. • Keep the phone away from your bed at night, especially away from your head. • Remove headsets when you're not on a call. • Avoid products that claim to block radio frequency energy. These products may actually increase your exposure.

I hope that you enjoyed this article and I wish you the best of health. Quotes & Internet Links

• “FreedomPop From Wikipedia” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreedomPop • “FreedomPop” https://www.freedompop.com/ • “FreedomPop Certified Pre-Owned” https://www.freedompop.com/freedompop-certified-pre- owned

• “How to Upgrade or Downgrade your Plan” https://support.freedompop.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3328/session/ L3RpbWUvMTU0NDM 0NzA3OC9zaWQvZlUzR1hHZm1FeiU3RTZ0TkhYYzBXSW42Zkdk ell5Y2xMMGN0c3NT MTZzVlBxUHdBcWxDTllPSW5qSFQyX3RnMjVRNFM2SzduSl82bl8 2TjgxaklDTUhaOE9HbnlFSGtZdFpPZW42Mm1kbkR1ZGxmSXAzTWwxNWxNSGclMjElM jE%3D#error

• “Why did you charge me?” https://support.freedompop.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3144/related/1

• “Why did FreedomPOP charge me a $15 for "Credit Refill"?” https://www.reddit.com/r/freedompop/comments/9wlat3/why_did_freedompop_charge_me_a_1 5_for_credit/

• “Add credit to avoid Account Suspension” https://support.freedompop.com/app/featured/answer/id/3462#why

• “Need close my account and want refund of my credit.” https://forums.freedompop.com/us/discussion/37726/need-close-my-account-and-want-refund- of-my-credit

• “How to cancel your FreedomPop account” https://support.freedompop.com/app/answers/detail/ a_id/2634/related/1

• “FreedomPop 3-in-1 LTE SIM Kit 12-Month Prepaid Plan (Unlimited Talk, Text, & 1GB Data)” https://www.target.com/p/freedompop-3-in-1-lte-sim-kit-12-month-prepaid-plan- unlimited-talk-text-1gb-data/-/A-53511519

• “Global SIM Kit - Voice/Data Bundle (GSM)” https://shop.freedompop.com/product/global- sim-kit-voicedata-bundle-gsm/FGM-USIM-TRIOUSKIT01

• “How to use a Dual SIM card phone” https://support.freedompop.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/ 3233/~/how-to-use-a-dual-sim-card-phone • “FreedomPop APN settings for BLU Vivo 6” https://apn.gishan.net/en/apn/freedompop/blu- vivo-6

• “FreedomPop APN Settings. You must turn on data roaming with these APN settings.” https://bestmvno.com/apn-settings/freedompop-apn-settings/

• “BLU phone compatability” https://forums.freedompop.com/us/discussion/8163/blu-phone- compatability

• “Does my credit balance expire?” https://support.freedompop.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2233/~/does-my-credit-balance-expire %3F

• “What is The Difference Between IPv6 and Ipv4?...IPv4 is the most widely deployed Internet protocol used to connect devices to the Internet.” https://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/ipv6_ipv4_difference.html

• “RTP audio video profile” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTP_audio_video_profile • “It’s Not Me, It’s You: My Summer Fling with FreedomPop Comes to End. Poor Wi-Fi calling, inconsistent data connectivity, and a failure to set up a new phone left me wanting much, much more.” https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/08/22/its-not-me-its-you-my-summer- fling-with-freedompop.aspx

• “FreedomPop Review: Is a Free Cell Phone Plan a Scam?” https://www.doughroller.net/smart- spending/freedompop-review/

• “FreedomPop Supernova 655...FreedomPop's borderline misleading sales tactics, poor Web site, and aggressive nickel-and-diming are some of the worst I've seen anywhere in the wireless industry. I'm not saying you can't get a good deal from FreedomPop, but you have to be disciplined to do it, and it's an uphill process in which it feels like the company is working against you.” https://www.pcmag.com/review/348138/freedompop-supernova-655

• “Better Business Bureau...1,183 Complaints” https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/los-angeles/profile/internet-service/freedom-pop-1216-100115567/ complaints

• “SIMPLE Mobile” https://ww2.simplemobile.com/ • “TracFone” https://www.tracfone.com/ • “Blu VIVO 5 Mini” https://www.bluproducts.com/devices/vivo-5-mini/index.html • “LG 306G” https://www.lg.com/us/cell-phones/lg-306G • “Motorola moto e⁵” https://www.motorola.com/us/products/moto-e-gen-5 • “ZTE Prestige 2” https://www.zteusa.com/zte-prestige-2 • “Netgear AirCard® 770S” https://www.netgear.com/service-providers/products/mobile/mobile- hotspots/770s.aspx#tab-techspecs

• “Sprint” https://www.sprint.com/ • “T-Mobile” https://www.t-mobile.com/ • “UNREAL Mobile” https://www.unrealmobile.com/ • “Voice over IP” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_over_IP • “Comparison of mobile phone standards” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_mobile_phone_standards

• “Code-division multiple access (CDMA) is a channel access method used by various radio communication technologies.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-division_multiple_access

• “GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as tablets.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ GSM

• “Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a standard way to send messages that include multimedia content to and from a mobile phone over a cellular network. Users and providers may refer to such a message as a PXT, a picture message, or a multimedia message.[1] The MMS standard extends the core SMS (Short Message Service) capability, allowing the exchange of text messages greater than 160 characters in length. Unlike text-only SMS, MMS can deliver a variety of media, including up to forty seconds of video, one image, a slideshow[2] of multiple images, or audio.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service

• “Google Voice” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Voice • “Ting” https://ting.com/mobile/freedompop/plans • “Victims of Freedompop” https://www.facebook.com/VictimsOfFreedompop/ • “10 Cell Phone Safety Tips” http://it-takes-time.com/2015/05/27/10-cell-phone-safety-tips/ • “California Warns About Cellphone Exposure And Health Risks” https://www.forbes.com/sites/ alicegwalton/2017/12/16/california-warns-about-cell-phone-exposure-and-health-risks/ #6d702eba34a3

“The reason why traditional phones are more expensive than voice over internet phones (VOIP): Call quality and reliability of service.” Steven Magee - Author of Electrical Forensics