The real deal with Republic Wireless

[meballard]

I'm kind of curious if it works over Verizon 4G LTE, but it will probably take a while for someone with that combo of toys to try it out and report back... Having 5GB of LTE with unlimited calling and texting on the phone would be pretty incredible for $69. I doubt calling or texts would eat that much data...

I haven't tested it much, but in the little I have played with it, it works really well. I have a Thunderbolt and turned on tethering and connected my Republic Wireless phone to it. It went green right away, and phone calls worked very well. Barring any particular issues, the LTE network is more than fast enough with low enough latency to handle VoIP etc.

[meballard]

It will be interesting to see if they have a roaming limit or some other type of restriction on it.

It just seems odd that they treat roaming minutes the same as normal minutes considering sprint post paid customers have a roaming limit of 800 minutes or majority of monthly minutes whatever comes first for a certain period of time or they get terminated and with this service which is only $19 a month you could technically use 1200 roaming minutes every month and never have a problem.

It may have a different cost to them, that may not be worth separating at this point, but one big difference is that minutes on the Sprint network are practically free for Sprint, but roaming they have a direct per minute cost, whereas RW and other MVNOs have a per minute cost regardless of which network is being used.

[GSMinCT]

I haven't tested it much, but in the little I have played with it, it works really well. I have a Thunderbolt and turned on tethering and connected my Republic Wireless phone to it. It went green right away, and phone calls worked very well. Barring any particular issues, the LTE network is more than fast enough with low enough latency to handle VoIP etc.

Very nice.

It may have a different cost to them, that may not be worth separating at this point, but one big difference is that minutes on the Sprint network are practically free for Sprint, but roaming they have a direct per minute cost, whereas RW and other MVNOs have a per minute cost regardless of which network is being used.

That's quite true. They are probably pretty much just paying through Sprint on roaming, so it's hard to say how roaming rates might compare to Sprint's own MVNO rates.

[JasonMArKing]

They didn't actually explain it the way that I did. They announced a complicated formula that adds up to 200. I've simplified it. I actually like your simplification even better.

[thauncle]

so as long as your using data and texting while using wifi signal its unlimited correct?

[meballard]

so as long as your using data and texting while using wifi signal its unlimited correct?

Current policy is unlimited, period, although you are encouraged to use WiFi as much as possible.

[Endeavor]

They claim that everything is unlimited now. However, they could just be cutting off people who are using too much. Even under their original plan, however, you could use unlimited talk and text when on Wifi.

[JDubTrey]

Current policy is unlimited, period, although you are encouraged to use WiFi as much as possible.

What I've seen from them is that users have unlimited use of Sprint for the duration of the "beta". They did not say this would continue after the service is fully open and released to the masses.

Before that, they were pretty explicit on their usage formula (6 min = 3 texts = 1 mb.....with a max of around 3600 min equivalents if i remember correctly). I honestly don't see them lifting that after the beta is over.