After 15 years of service, it seems that T-Mobile MNVO PTel Mobile is shutting its doors. Customers have until February 5 to port out their number or it will be lost. Their plans at the time of shutdown ranged from plans with no LTE at all up to a 10GB plan for $60 a month with unlimited talk, text and 3G data. To avoid leaving customers out in the cold, it seems that PTel has cut deals with various wireless providers to get customers ported over and enjoying seamless coverage as quickly and cheaply as possible. In the spirit of making a graceful and fairly quiet exit from the industry, the carrier’s shutdown announcement and a fairly long list of port-out deals for current customers are now on the company’s home page.
VidaExpress brands Ultra Mobile and Simple Mobile get top billing with special offers for PTel customers across the board, essentially meant to mirror PTel plans. As an added bonus, Ultra Mobile is offering $30 off plans that are $30 or more, or $15 off plans under $30, rendering some of the higher-tier plans under $10 out of pocket. Ting is offering a $75 service discount for PTel customers porting in their number. LycaMobile, under Auto-Refill, is also offering PTel customers a break in the form of their first month free on certain plans. PTel is claiming that customers can bring their current phone to any of these partner carriers and maintain the same network coverage. T-Mobile is also offering former PTel customers a free SIM starter kit and first month of service.
These changes will also apply to Giv Mobile customers, since PTel mobile operated Giv. Giv customers, of course, are eligible for the same exit offers as PTel customers and have the same cutoff date for porting their numbers out, being February 5. The MNVO started out on Cingular’s network, moved to Sprint and eventually T-Mobile, but simply couldn’t keep up as the competition expanded, consolidated and got ever cheaper. A move to lower prices and attract more customers in 2014 didn’t help as much as it was expected to, leading to a far from stellar 2015 that prompted the shutdown.