A couple of months after Republic Wireless teased a new plan that’d pay customers for their unused data, the offering is going live for the public.
The new Republic Refund plans give you a set amount of cellular data each month and then will credit you for any data that you don’t use at the end of a billing cycle. The 4G data plans include 0.5GB for $17.50 per month, 1GB for $25, 2GB for $40, or 3GB for $55. Each plan also includes unlimited talk and text as well as unlimited Wi-Fi data.
Republic Wireless held a trial of its Refund plans for over the past month or so, and the MVNO says the average tester paid $14.78 for a month of service.
Republic says that customers on an old Republic Wireless plan won’t be required to switch to a new Republic Refund plan until July 31, 2016. If you’re on an old Republic plan, switch to a new Refund plan, but then decide that you don’t care for it, Republic will let you switch back to the old plan once.
Republic Wireless has offered plans with unlimited data (more specifically, 5GB of data and then throttled speeds thereafter) in the past, but like many other US carriers, Rebublic has decided to shift to tiered data plans. It can be tough to predict how much data you need each month, though, so Republic is going to pay you for whatever data you don’t use each month, just like Google does with Project Fi. So long as you’re not a crazy heavy data user, Republic’s new plan seems like a decent deal for customers of the MVNO.