All the places I used my Trump Mobile wireless service this week

As I sat in a bookstore that had a cortado and an oat bar, I panicked a little when I turned on my phone’s hotspot. What if my hotspot network abandons me? Will he say “Alison Trump’s phone”? Could a smart person sitting next to me, sipping matcha, see it? What will they think of me?

This is not what happened, of course. The default network name was “Allison’s S25”, which reflected the Samsung Galaxy phone I was using, not the network. But this experience sums up a weird feeling I can only describe as “bad” as I text, talk, and scroll through my day using my Trump Wireless plan.

Frankly, I was surprised that the service identified itself as Trump and not Liberty Mobile, which is the MVNO that the Trump Organization’s MVNO service relies on. But there they were, those five letters staring at me under my SIM card settings as soon as I installed the card. They were at the top of the status bar every time I swiped down to check the notification as well.

I didn’t really go out of my way to do a bunch of things while testing Trump Mobile that seemed antithetical to the whole Trump ethos — that’s just the way it went. I used the service to check my reservation at my public library. I used it on public transportation. I used it while shopping at a local grocery store. I used it to find my way to an independent book store. It worked well. It’s still difficult to do all of this with the Trump grid indicator in the corner of the screen.

I have a number of complaints about the values ​​that the Trump Organization and the Trump name stand for. But wireless service? Well, I guess. The Galaxy S25 proudly displays the 5G badge most of the time. Trump Mobile runs on the T-Mobile network, and T-Mobile’s coverage is very good here in Seattle, where they are headquartered. In fact, I got better download speeds on the S25 using Trump Mobile than I did using my Verizon plan on the S25 Plus. I pay road More for my Verizon service than the $51.99 that Trump’s service costs. Side note: The official price for the plan is $47.45, which is a nice nod to a Trump presidency, albeit out of order he’s supposed to charge a few extra dollars. But when you add the tax, you end up with $51.99.

As is typical, the Trump Organization put its name on an already established product — in this case, T-Mobile’s wireless service. To be fair, this is the basic way an MVNO works, so it’s no surprise that the network portion of the product works well. Everything else, though, was a bit of a hit and miss. There was a case of a missing SIM card, which wasn’t great. But the problem was solved by some kind customer service staff, and once I got the card, I was able to start the service myself, by putting the card in my phone, logging into my account, and typing some numbers in the right place.

But there are a few red flags here and there that suggest Trump Mobile may not have it all together. The hours given for the customer service line listed on the SIM kit you receive differ from those on the website, which differ from the actual hours given when calling. The instructions on the SIM card packaging tell you to go to TrumpMobile.com/activate, but that page returns a 404 error. The tutorial video telling you how to install the SIM card looks suspiciously AI-generated (and I swear to God the voiceover sounds like Dieter). It all seems interconnected and inconsistent. Ikki, indeed.