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About Me

Hi! 👋🏻

My name is Stetson Doggett.

On November 4th, 2010, my parents gave me my first phone. 

It was a Samsung SGH-T369. 

It was a terrible phone. 

The microscopic banana-shaped number pad keys were impossible to press. The slide-out QWERTY keyboard was mushy to type on. And 1.3MP camera was horrendous quality.

I needed a new phone.

ASAP.

My eyes were set on an iPhone.

And there was good news: I learned you could buy almost any phone "unlocked" directly from the manufacturer, which meant it would work on any cell phone plan from any carrier.

Including the cheap $15/month T-Mobile Prepaid plans my parents had me on.

I mowed lawns in the summer, shoveled driveways in the winter, and saved up two years' worth of birthday gift money for an iPhone.

Then, on November 30th, 2012, I bought the iPhone 5 unlocked from Apple.

It was awesome.

But, there was a new problem. 

The cheap $15 T-Mobile plan my parents were paying for only had minutes and texts. There was no cellular data

Have you tried using an iPhone without data? 

Safari could not load websites. Music would not stream. Snapchats could not send. I couldn’t even check the weather!

To top it all off, my high school didn’t have public Wi-Fi.

I was blocked from the Internet for six hours per day, five days per week.  

I had to fix this. 

So I asked the question: what is the cheapest cell phone plan I can get with cellular data? 

That question changed my life forever. 

I started researching to find the best and most affordable cell phone plans available on the market. I learned there were prepaid carriers, known as MVNOs, that used the major networks for coverage and offered cell phone plans at a fraction of the price. 

I had so many questions:

  • Were these MVNOs too good to be true?
  • What was the catch?
  • Was the service any good?
  • How did I sign up and transfer my number?

If I was wondering these things, I thought other people may be, too.

So I started creating videos.

On March 3rd, 2015, I published my first review of a cell phone carrier to my YouTube channel. It was a review of US Mobile. 

The video got 30,000 views.

And I kept going. 

On March 6th, 2015, I reviewed Cricket Wireless. 86,000 views. 

On March 16h, I published Best Cell Phone Plans of 2015. 85,000 views.

I was having a lot of fun making the videos. And people were finding the videos were helpful! The comments were amazing:

At the start of 2016 I launched the Carrier Testing Initiative. 

My goal was to review a new cell phone carrier every month. 

And I went on an absolute video production tear!

I reviewed eight different prepaid cell phone carriers:

  1. T-Mobile Prepaid
  2. RingPlus
  3. PagePlus
  4. Project Fi (now Google Fi Wireless)
  5. TPO Mobile
  6. FreedomPop
  7. Verizon
  8. Twigby

I covered how to get a free phone number with Google Voice. 

I explained the new T-MobileONE plan.

And, of course, I covered the best cell phone plans for 2016!

I felt like I had found my groove, and my channel had found its niche. 

Since my first US Mobile review in 2015, I have reviewed over 23 different cell phone plans. I’ve reviewed industry experts, telecom analysts, and MVNO CEOs. My videos have been viewed over 27,400,000 times.

And my channel recently surpassed 100,000 subscribers.

I feel grateful for everyone who watches and comments on my videos.

And most importantly, I sincerely hope the videos help people save money on their cell phone bill. Because that has been my goal since I started this journey almost a decade ago.

Oh yeah, you're probably wondering, where did this kick-ass website come from?

As I was reviewing and comparing cell phone plans, I got increasingly frustrated at how challenging the carriers made it to compare basic features across plans.

Things such as:

  • How much high-speed data was included?
  • If data speeds slowed down after a certain allotment, what did they slow down to?
  • Was the hotspot feature supported? If so, how much hotspot data can you use?
  • Was there a video streaming speed cap? And if so, what are the limits to video streaming resolution?
  • What international talk, text, and data features are included, available as add-ons, or not supported at all?

I was going crazy trying to figure all this stuff out!

The information was in different parts of the websites. I was using "control + f" to search through terms and conditions documents. I was spending hours chatting with customer service agents to get answers that I was only half sure were correct. I was pouring through Reddit threads.

It was a real pain in the butt.

I needed a better way to compare cell phone plans side-by-side.

When I was selecting classes for my senior spring semester at Ithaca College, I spotted the computer science school was offering COMP 307. It was an independent project where students could pitch an idea related to web design or development to faculty and receive academic credit for it.

It sounded too good to be true.

I pitched the idea for building a website to compare cell phone plans.

It got approved.

I teamed up with fellow student Peter Mankiewich. Over the next six months, Peter and I designed, built, and published the first version of the BestPhonePlans.net website.

We launched the website on May 1st, 2019.

After graduation, Peter and I each went our separate ways. Peter is currently working as a data analyst at Paytronix Systems. They are lucky to have him!

I have continued developing, designing, and updating the BestPhonePlans.net website.

And, through some miracle, I now get to say this is my full-time job.

My current mission is to help 1 million people save $10 per month or more on their cell phone bill, and I certainly hope you find this website helpful!

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