Phone startup Wing seeks to disrupt the industry

NEW YORK (FOX 5 NY) - A mobile phone company with no contracts, no fine print, and no more Saturday afternoons wasted waiting in line for help at a store. It may sound too good to be true, but one local startup says it is making it happen. The founders call the company Wing and describe it as a phone carrier made for the digital age.

David Arabov, Ilan Yarden, Greg Dybec, and Joe Santagato say they felt like the Big Four (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint) weren't doing a good enough job, so they came up with Wing. No contracts. No retail stores. No nonsense. You can sign up via text in less than 10 minutes.

Ilan says they don't believe in contracts or hidden fees and they're not trying to do anything tricky. If you're not happy with Wing, you can leave at your own will. Wing offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.

If you switch to Wing, you can keep your phone, phone number, contacts, and photos. Once you're a member, you can manage your account in an app. Greg says the app shows how much data you're using and how many days are left in the cycle. You can manage your plan there, too, and add or subtract data with the press of a button. You're not locked in to a specific plan.

Wing launched last October and already has customers in all 50 states. Wing has added all kinds of customers—from millennials leaving their family plans to the grandma who just got her first flip phone and gets to pay just $12 a month.

So how did a bunch of millennials from New York figure out how to provide telecom service? They emailed all the major carriers to see if they could sublet their towers. David says Sprint was the only carrier that got back to them, and finally agreed to do a deal.

The guys flew out to Kansas City and worked out a contract to use Sprint's towers nationwide for a fee.

The average Wing customer pays $34 a month for a plan that includes 3G of data.

David says that people save on average 30 percent to 35 percent on their cellphone bills by switching to Wing.

If you don't use all your data, Wing will credit you in cash.

So far, the Wing team says they have 20,000 sign-ups and hundreds of happy customers. Wing has more than 250 five-star reviews on Facebook.

And while Wing is the new kid on the block, the company's goal is to become a major telecom player.

Joe says they'd love to knock out the Big Four. They're not trying to be a small, "kind of successful" company. They'd like to change the entire industry and disrupt it completely.