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Has a car phone
I thought I would just provide my feedback about Straight Talk. I have an AT&T jailbroken iPhone 4 with the Straight Talk MicroSIM. I pay $45 a month for the service. Let me just start out by giving my short thoughts on the other carriers out there since unfortunately, I've had ALL of them.
This is for the Phoenix area.
AT&T - Costs WAY too much, data is VERY limited or $$$, and you have to sign a contract.
TMO - Very inexpensive, data is VERY limited, coverage is horrible.
Verizon - Costs WAY too much, data is very limited or $$$, and you have to sign a contract.
Sprint - Crippled network with "unlimited" data, however I could only get 100 - 300 kbps download.
Virgin - Bad selection of phones. Runs on Sprint's network.
Boost - Runs on Sprints network.
Okay, so now that the other guys are out of the way, here are my thoughts on Straight Talk with my experiences so far. I got the SIM in the mail, popped it in my iPhone, followed the instructions in the booklet and online. Bam. iPhone up and running with talk, text, and 3G data (4G according to my phone, but its not really 4G).
I am what is considered to be a heavy data user. I hardly ever use a laptop. I do all my email, music, movies, and social media on my phone. This is just the way it needs to me. For me I have issue with the "need" to be connected to WIFI. I want the network my phone operates on to be fast enough to do whatever I need it to do, and I don't want to need to use WIFI at anytime when I know I'm paying for unlimited data. Please remember, these are just my own personal opinions.
I've had the service for 2 months now. I've used 6.2 GB my first month (450MB in one day actually from downloading a game from the appstore), and no where in the first month did I get a warning call or was throttled. I can get 4.5-6.0MB download speed according to SpeedTest App.
My second month so far I have used 4.0 GB with one week to go. No call, no warning, no throttle. To make sure my review is accurate, please stand by. I'll run a speed test right now.
5.25 MB download 1.0 MB upload.
***JUST A NOTE - I NEVER TETHER MY IPHONE. EVER*** I dont know if that has anything to do with the other stories of being cut off and warnings etc. When I spoke with ST customer service they gave me a VERY black and white answer.... IF YOU USE THE DATA ON YOUR PHONE FOR WEB BROWSING, IPHONE APPS, YOUTUBE, WHATEVER, you will NOT be throttled or disconnected. I was informed if you ever tether, they will suspend you for abusing data. I think when people get caught and they play stupid Straight Talk gives the "make sure you close your browser" speech really just as a courtesy because they know as well as you do that you were tethering your phone. Instead of losing a customer they just make it known that THEY KNOW you're tethering and DONT DO IT AGAIN.
What this means for me is my internet is plenty fast for me to do whatever I need to do on the phone, and I'm using AT&T's network to do it all through StraightTalk.
Bottom line, I'd be paying well over $120 on ATT for the exact same thing I'm getting on Straight Talk for $45 a month. Let me just finish up by saying, I've never been happier with a cell provider. I've had mostly all of them only to be left financially drained or unhappy with the level of service I was getting on the network. Straight Talk has left money in my pocket along with quality service I really feel I can depend on. Best part of all... I get to keep my phone! LOL I'm kind of starting to feel like the chick in the commercial that drives the station wagon. Lets just hope they keep this service exactly the way it is. I'm in love with the ST.
I've got more phones than fingers
The proxy server doesnt do anything to their ability to see how much data you use. They really don't care how you use the data, they just care that you don't use a lot of it. They pay AT&T wholesale prices per MB or GB. So if you use more for any activity (streaming, downloading, etc), it costs them more.Originally Posted by Airforcekid
Verizon 4G LTE
San Francisco | San Jose
AT&T 4G LTE
My screen is bigger than yours
And that's only for your area. For someone who has great Sprint connectivity, either Sprint or an MVNO that uses Sprint (including ST's smartphones) will give you fast downloads for $45/month. (Granted, IMO GSM is better than CDMA, but that's a totally different issue.)
I've climbed a cellphone tower
Pray tell, who is this mythical being?
Phone Collector
I wonder if there is any merit to the idea that your location also has some influence on how much data you can get away with using. Say an area where at&t has a heavily loaded network compared to an area that is relatively light or if your home area is edge rather than 3g/hspa+ for that matter?
Last edited by Cheapfone; 04-10-2012 at 09:58 PM.
Radiation is good
I always thought CDMA was better? Isn't that why Korea and Japan adopted it?
My screen is bigger than yours
In my normal 50 mile driving radius I've found one spot, about 100 yards along an interstate, in which the signal goes a bit "under water". Otherwise I have solid connectivity from Sprint wherever I go. And I'm not in the center of a major city. Sprint used to be a joke here - they had stores but no signal at all. They built out and they cover about as well as Verizon and AT&T (actually better, since they have fewer users).Pray tell, who is this mythical being?
That's here. Everyone is different. If you lived where I do but traveled into the city, you might find that Sprint is useless for you. I don't know - I've never tried using my phone the very few times I've driven through the nearby city.
@Airforcekid:
When CDMA "goes digital", it sounds as if you're under water. When GSM goes digital it sounds more like analog breakup. And with over 50 years of using analog radios, I'm more comfortable listening to noise than to "burble". If the carrier doesn't allow the tower to be overloaded, there's no difference in range or coverage. As far as the codec (a wider codec makes for better audio), that has nothing to do with whether the signal is CDMA or TDMA (which is GSM).
Phone Collector
That's true, as long as you never travel outside of Sprint's native coverage area. The problem with Virgin and Boost is that there is absolutely no off-Sprint roaming. For Sprint postpaid, at least you get to roam onto other CDMA carriers (at least for voice).
MetroPCS might be a better choice than Virgin or Sprint because at least they'll sell you extra-cost roaming off of their very limited network.
Phone Collector
Thanks. ST is very serious about tethering because they know that that's what uses massive amounts of data. There are numerous reports of ST users using well over 2GB per month of data and never receiving a warning about excessive data usage. Your experience confirms this.
Last edited by smsgator; 04-13-2012 at 02:39 PM. Reason: Corrected error. Actually RP does forbid tethering.
Phone Collector
And of course all the 3G data is on W-CDMA, even on the carriers that use GSM for voice. CDMA is much more spectrally efficient, as well as requiring fewer towers to cover a given area.
Phone Collector
LOL. I remember pointing out to someone once that AT&T lacked any coverage on many of California's major state highways where Verizon had at least roaming coverage, and he responded that he plans his driving trips based on where his AT&T phone has coverage. I was in the Florida Everglades about seven years ago and Cingular, AT&T Wireless, and T-Mobile users had no coverage at all because both had moved to pure GSM. I was using my Verizon phone to roam onto AT&T's analog network, which was rather ironic.Pray tell, who is this mythical being?
When the carriers turned off AMPS that analog coverage was thoughtfully replaced with nothing.
My screen is bigger than yours
I've had great coverage with the TMO sim in the Phoenix Metro. The amount of individual usage relative to other users given available bandwidth in specifics sub markets was what ATT used to target the top approximate 2% of users. So in one market it could be 2gig in anther 4. I'm sure ST has a similar formula to squeeze out margins, which would explain the discrepancy between when people get the "call" or shut off. I would be nice to know a hard number as some phones are data hogs, and monitoring your own usage is not difficult. Have a feeling that the unofficial data cap will/is increasing as LTE etc. is rolled out and more powerful phones/pads come on line with the postpaid crowd. My question is; is there any way for them to tell if we actually tether, other than inferring it from data use?
Last edited by Loansharkie; 04-13-2012 at 01:19 PM. Reason: grammar
My screen is bigger than yours
That depends on how you tether - in some cases there's no difference from their end between your phone doing the download and something connected to the phone doing the download.
Phone Collector
AT&T has extensive capabilities to determine whether or not you're tethering, and it's not just based on the web browser's user agent, there are other indicating factors. It's not clear if ST has access to AT&T's capabilities. On the one hand, AT&T wants to sell more data so they have an incentive to not help ST detect tethering. OTOH, AT&T would prefer to have those customers that need to tether for themselves so they can charge them more, so detecting tethering would be beneficial. Perhaps when AT&T agreed to sell data to MVNOs a condition was that the MVNOs not allow tethering, and that AT&T would provide them with a list of those IMEIs that are tethering, and the MVNOs were required to take action.
For streaming they can do packet inspection and determine the source of the packet and they pretty much know the big providers of streaming audio and video to look for.
If your ISP provides VPN service you can prevent the carrier from looking at the packets inside the VPN connection. The iPhone has a Cisco VPN client. Good luck on the Android though, there have been attempts to get VPN to work for a long time with little success.
Some people thought that by using VPN they could hide their tethering use as well, but AT&T found other ways to detect tethering.
Bottom line, be very careful. Some people say that ST doesn't actually care about streaming, as long as your data use is not excessive, but they'll quickly cut you off for tethering no matter how little data you use.
Red Pocket also forbids tethering, but not streaming. It would seem to make no sense for RP, since you get a fixed 2GB limit, but even RP would prefer that their users minimize data usage.
I've got more phones than fingers
That's just not true. They don't care about either of the two activities as long as you don't use a lot of data. I usually tether 150MB a month over 3-4 days, never have an issue. There's other Hofo members who tether as well without getting the boot.Bottom line, be very careful. Some people say that ST doesn't actually care about streaming, as long as your data use is not excessive, but they'll quickly cut you off for tethering no matter how little data you use.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus
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