Andrew Yang Has Begun Paying People to Use Their Phones Less

Introducing Noble Mobile and Its Monthly Data Dividend

For those who have followed my work for years, you already know that I've considered Andrew Yang a friend since before he ever launched his presidential campaign back in 2017. He ran in the Democratic primary with universal basic income as his key policy and quickly became known as the guy who wanted to pay us all $1,000 a month in universal basic income. He called his proposal the Freedom Dividend, and alongside it, he proposed ideas like ranked choice voting, the American Scorecard, Democracy Dollars, and over 150 others. One of them was Data as a Property Right which was meant to "enable individuals to share in the economic value generated as a result of their data."

Now, as of today, Andrew has launched Noble Mobile, which is a new mobile service that will pay users every month to use their phone less. I've been testing it out early and based on my own usage, it looks like I'll be earning about $19 a month by minimizing the amount of data I use on the 5G network.

Here's the MATH. All Noble users will pay $50 a month and get unlimited data. Users who barely use any data, or who restrict their usage mostly to Wi-Fi as I do, will get up to $20 per month back as their data dividend. Users can then immediately cash that in so that their monthly phone cost is closer to $30 a month, or they can let that money sit and gain 5.5% in interest. Apparently, based on my usage, I can expect $213 in a year if I don't withdraw any of it.

I've actually used a secondary carrier for years, so it's nothing new to me to spend less on my mobile service than most people do. Until Noble, which uses the T-Mobile network, I was using Boost, which uses T-Mobile and AT&T. I was paying $35 a month until I upgraded to $50 a month in order to be able to use my phone as a mobile hotspot (which Noble includes). So for me, it's not a huge change and I'm a bit happier spending a bit less. But I know most of you reading this still use a primary carrier.

There's a good chance that right now you're spending somewhere between $67 and $131 a month on your current plan, so let's say it's $85 a month. If I were you, and had just switched from your $85/mo plan to Noble, then I'd expect to save about $54 a month, or $648 a year. That's 43.2 hours working at a $15/hr job.

I think at this point, most of us know we should be using our phones a bit less. Might as well get paid to do it, right? It's a good incentive to put your phone down a bit more if you know it might make you a buck or two to keep it in your pocket or purse. Spend some more time being present in the moment with your friends and family. And if you can do that and still have your phone to use when you need it, and only pay ~$30 a month for it, that's a pretty good deal, right? I think so.

Even better, if you make the switch through my referral, you'll get an extra $50.

So yeah, consider switching as I did, using your phone less, and enjoying a small monthly data dividend as a reward. You deserve it. We all do.

Society needs a break.