Ting: Another Contract-Free Mobile Carrier In The U.S.

Does America really need another mobile provider? Perhaps. You may remember the name "Tucows" from early downloading days of the '90s. Now, you'll be familiarizing yourself with a slightly different project of theirs. The company just introduced "Ting," a new mobile service that'll run on Sprint's network and enable yet another option for those seeking a contract-free mobile provider. "What people are forced to put up with from mobile service providers just doesn't make sense. It's too complicated, too opaque, too adversarial, too expensive and frankly too inhuman," said Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows. "We're changing that. Ting is a mobile service that makes sense."

Ting has a very different approach to pricing than the major providers. Minutes, messages and megabytes are each billed separately. If customers use less of any than they anticipated, they are credited at the end of the month. If they use more, they are simply billed the appropriate additional amount, without onerous penalties or premiums. Businesses and families can pool an unlimited number of phones and data devices on one Ting account, offering even greater savings over other providers' more limited sharing options.


People considering Ting are encouraged to instantly calculate how much they'll save with Ting by entering past bills from their current provider into the Ting Phone Savings Calculator on the Ting site (http://ting.com/calculator). The pricing layout is definitely different than most other plans, but it's hard to say that there will be enough marketing to go around to make this stick.