MLM wireless companies? Lightyear? Spirit/Triniti?

[powwowtime]

Share your experience with Lightyear Wireless or Spirit Wireless by Triniti Communications, good or bad, from a customer perspective only (i.e. not interested in business building/recruitment perspective please).

Coverage area, customer service, value of plans, data limits, hardware/BYOD, any weird/hard to resolve issues, any substantive comments appreciated.

[Cell Freak]

Share your experience with Lightyear Wireless or Spirit Wireless by Triniti Communications, good or bad, from a customer perspective only (i.e. not interested in business building/recruitment perspective please).

Coverage area, customer service, value of plans, data limits, hardware/BYOD, any weird/hard to resolve issues, any substantive comments appreciated.

I am a rep with Lightyear, but also a customer. The coverage is great and, as it uses the Sprint network, is the same as if you bought your phone from Sprint. Customer service is good and usually the wait times are not long at all. I recently got a new phone, a Samsung Instinct for $99, and it only took me a few minutes with customer service to get it up and running once I received it.

The No Contract plans are as follows:



Honestly, Lightyear's phone selection the past few years hasn't been all that great. Right now, some of the better phones are:

HTC Hero: $314.99
Kyocera Zio: $199.99
Samsung Instinct $99.99
Samsung M350 Seek: $94.99
Sanyo 2700: $24.99

However, next month we are supposed to get three new Android phones, so that will help make the selection better.

[powwowtime]

The coverage is great and, as it uses the Sprint network, is the same as if you bought your phone from Sprint

This can only be true if Lightyear's phones also have the same roaming capabilities as Sprint's phones. Have you specifically verified this? My current Sprint account includes roaming at no additional charge.

[powwowtime]

And by this map it would appear that Lightyear's coverage is NOT the same as Sprint's native+roaming coverage:

[Cell Freak]

This can only be true if Lightyear's phones also have the same roaming capabilities as Sprint's phones. Have you specifically verified this? My current Sprint account includes roaming at no additional charge.

And by this map it would appear that Lightyear's coverage is NOT the same as Sprint's native+roaming coverage:

This is the coverage map from Sprint's website:



The coverage maps should be exactly the same except, as you pointed out, we don't have free roaming. I believe you can pay minute-per-minute when roaming, although it's expensive. But honestly, Sprint's coverage is really good and the only time my phone has been roaming is when driving through the mountains in West Virginia. (I live in Virginia now; I used to live in the midwest). Of course, you can still call 911 if your phone is roaming..

It's worth pointing out that, on either coverage map, most of the areas in the eastern U.S. that don't have coverage are mountains, or some other area where you wouldn't expect to get very good coverage. Sprint's coverage in cities and along highways is excellent, however, and their 4G network is going to be exciting.

Sprint's coverage in some states out west isn't that great. Someone living in Montana or Wyoming, for instance, would probably not want to purchase a phone from Sprint or from us. Anyone purchasing a phone from Lightyear is asked at the beginning of the sign up process to enter their zip code and the coverage is checked for their area. For example, if you were to enter the zip code for Acme Wyoming (82839), the website would no let you buy a No Contract phone since the service is bad there.

If someone is in an area with good Sprint coverage (which is most of the eastern and southern U.S. - especially around cities) and looking for a No Contract plan, then Lightyear is a good choice. Also, unlike Boost Mobile, who uses the old Nextel network, our phones use Sprint's 3G network and our first 4G phone, the HTC EVO Shift, is coming out next month.

Lightyear isn't for everyone. If someone is in an area not well covered by Sprint or wants a specific phone we don't have then they should go with another wireless company. But many customers, including myself, are very satisfied with Lightyear's service.

[lywealthmentor]

I am also a customer of Lightyear. I use the mifi as well. Works great. It really is amazing to me how Lightyear can offer fully unlimited everything at 20 bucks cheaper then Sprint ( almost 30 when you count the bogus taxes and fees Sprint adds on ) Just goes to show you how these wireless companies have massive overhead and gouge you. Let's not even talk about ATT or Verizon who do not offer unlimited data anymore. It is like giving crack to a drug addict and making them pay thousands for a crack pipe. Sort of sickens me that these big wireless companies like ATT and Verizon and US Cellular can claim unlimited in their advertising and then throttle you or data cap you. Pretty fraudulent. As far as Lightyear goes the service is just fine and no one can come close to the refer three and it is free argument of easily attaining free wireless.

Chris