Costs less than more reliable cell service, but so unreliable in my experience it's not worth it

If you're willing to pay for reliability, maybe more reliable service is the better deal

If you're willing to deal with unreliable service to cut off funding for the deep state, maybe the better deal is ditching a phone number completely, switching to something like a satellite texting device with no camera/microphone/speakers, or maybe internet messaging with one of those 5G hotspots that include a small amount of monthly data for the device's lifetime