On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 8:17 PM, Michael Canfield <slozuk...@gmail.com>wrote:
> I have heard the wallymart straight talk is a good deal. I just wonder > about service coverage. > With Straight Talk you choose either AT&T or T-Mobile as your base network. You can voice roam to the other, but it is not technically supported - in other words they might turn that off. There is no data roaming, from what I understand, though SWMBO is not a heavy data user. You can buy "normal" phones on Straight Talk that are CDMA (i.e. no SIM, no worky in Europey), I know nothing about those other than they are slightly cheaper and run on Sprint, so I would not buy one*. Big disadvantage of prepaid is the up-front cost of the phone, you are basically buying a computer with a fancy radio and touchscreen at retail price so it can be quite expensive. Google's $300 Nexus 4 was a low price, but average smartphones would be around $500, give or take, new, less 30-40% on Craigslist. ALSO NOTE if your prepaid account goes inactive you will lose your phone number. Look at Google Voice to get a permanent number to forward, but your caller ID will be wrong and it is another level of indirection. > He is mostly interested in unlimited text/data so he can use it for > internet access/entertainment as well as a communication device for calls > back home. Limited calling minutes aren't much of an issue with Sprints > 450 minute plan as cel to cel and after 7pm to 7am are unlimited. That is > $69.99/month. Everything else including roaming on other networks is also > included. > T-Mobile's 100-minute, 5GB data plan ($30) is the best price if you don't average more than 250 minutes per month ($0.10/min overage). If you have an Android phone (possibly also iPhone?) there are apps to use data for calls, if that's an issue. 5GB is pretty much unlimited, in my experience, and I think they just downgrade you to 3G rates if you go over. Postpaid Sprint and T-Mobile offer unlimited data, VZ and AT&T do not. In my experience the connection rates on Sprint have become very poor since they got the iPhone - I often see rates in the 50-80Kbps range now. That could be regional. T-Mobile offers HSPA+ rates up to 42Mbps which should be a much better experience, but I think the initial cost for phones is higher. > Is roaming included in the prepaids? Do they have the same coverage as > contract phones? I have been told that they don't and that in rural area > they don't work as well. Is there any truth to that? > Generally no, yes but of course without roaming, and sort of. It isn't so much rural as region - I get horrible Sprint service in DC and VA, for example, but I get service fine in the empty forests around NC. Meanwhile a friend couldn't get Verizon at his new house south of Raleigh. The northern SC coast has strange T-Mobile coverage. Moral of the story is that there are pockets everywhere, so it is worth going to the places where you will be and borrowing someone's phone - no one network has universal coverage, especially indoors. Also, not to be ignored, phone hardware is really significant to receiving a signal - Samsung is the worst I've had, Motorola is the best, but I don't know how if that holds true across product lines. * I have recently had to force roaming [to Verizon] at home just to get a Sprint signal, I assume it's because of their LTE conversion since I used to get good signal with this same phone in the same place. Because of that I would not buy a Sprint-based prepaid phone if I expected to keep it for a while. You can always dial '911' in the US from an inactive phone, so you can just keep a charged battery and a phone from another network in the trunk if that's a concern. As you can see from Mitch's response, voice-only prepaid plans are priced much more competitively, so your son might give some thought as to whether he could survive without data. I use Google Maps too much, but a lot of my iPhone-toting peers are always in WiFi range and navigation doesn't matter to them. Best, Tim _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
