- A YouTuber signed up for Trump Mobile and documented the process
- He struggled for days to get it to work
- What he found out about the plan, especially its limitations, may surprise you
It’ll be months before the Trump Mobile T1 phone, which is apparently not made in America, arrives in the US, but the Trump Mobile cellular service plan is live today. One courageous YouTuber has signed up and learned some interesting and, at least one, concerning things.
The good news is that, ultimately, the plan, which appears to be an MVNO built on the T-Mobile network, works very much like any other 5G mobile plan.
For $47.45 (a price referencing President Trump’s two terms), YouTuber Stetson Doggett got 5G connectivity with blazingly fast downloads and decent uploads, group messaging, RCS support, and a little “Trump 5” label at the top of the iPhone that he added to the plan.
Now for the bad news.
It took Doggett almost a week to get on the plan. He signed up, but the website and service appeared almost unprepared for him. During the course of his test, the Trump Mobile website repeatedly changed. In fact, it almost appears that they were rewriting the site based on issues Doggett was having; elements were moved, typos appeared, QR codes failed, and bizarre, lengthy instructions arrived for new users.
Even after Doiggett got the plan to work, the phone number he tried to transfer via eSIM onto the plan disappeared, and he was issued a new one without his input.
Once Doggett got the system working, things moved more smoothly, and he was able to run multiple speed tests and send and receive text messages. He did have to dig into settings to enable RCS messaging.
When the data runs dry
Trump Mobile promises 20GB of high-speed data at the $47.45 a month price, but doesn’t say what happens after 20GB. Doggett found in his test, though, that Trump Mobile does not throttle speeds after the initial 20 GB. Instead, it appears to shut off the service. After intentionally burning through his 20GB allotment, Doggett found he couldn’t run any speed tests or access websites.
That’s not the kind of surprise anyone wants. At the very least, Trump Mobile should send a warning message that you’re either about to run out of data or that you have done so, and tell you what to do next. No one wants to run out of data mid-month and then have to get on he phone with Trump Mobile to try and secure more GBs of data.
Speaking of which, Doggett spent a lot of time with Trump Mobile support, who sounded helpful but not always knowledgeable about, for instance, supported features.
So, on one hand, Trump Mobile is a fairly straightforward mobile service provider that uses one of the big networks to provide the foundation of its cellular service. Still, on the other hand, it sounds a bit like a seat-of-your-pants operation, one that’s figuring things out on the fly.
If you’re desperate to get on the plan, you might want to wait until all the kinks are worked out or at least until they get the T1 Phone built (somewhere) and shipping here in the US for the full Trump Mobile experience.