Well the two low end packages can be had for $15 and $34. $15 gets you 10 txt, $34 gets you 40 txts, and both unlimited presets. So if you get creative with the presets you can get a lot out of it for the prices. Compared to a sat phone, where the calls are crazy expensive... We had a $2000 sat phone bill doing field work last year. An overage txt here is .50cents per text.

Yeah it would be nice to see some competition to drive prices down a little. The whole "freedom" plan is kinda the second wave of pricing since these came out, and making it more practical for recreational users to justify it, compared to the full year contract which works great for pilots and such using it all the time but not that affordable for the rest of us.