Is it virgin mobile in terms of cost? Mine is 38/month with 300 minutes and unlimited text and internet.
Is it true t mobile has an unlimited everything plan for 50 per month?
IMO Virgin Mobile is by far the best month-to-month provider. I believe T-Mobile has a bandwidth cap.
Let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
“Straight Talk” is a Wal-Mart product. It’s $45 for 30 days of unlimited talk, text, and data. It uses the AT&T network so make sure you have a phone that will work. You can order a SIM card off of the Wal-Mart website for like $15 and have it set up and your number ported within a couple hours of when you receive your card. It is a month to month non-contract plan.
First you have to find out what underlying carriers have the best coverage in the specific area you want to use it. It does absolutely no good to find out about a plan for a carrier which has lousy or no reception in the local area you live, work and shop in.
The second question is exactly how much data, messages, minutes you use in a month.
No. They have an unlimited everything plan for $45 per month! (or even $35, if you don’t mind slow speeds)
To quote myself from another thread, so I don’t have to type it again:
Tmobile prepaid, like most other prepaid (and even contract) services, has monthly usage caps, after which they throttle the bandwidth. Most Tmobile plans place that usage cap at a very ample 5GB, during which you can get blazing fast data 4G/HSPA speeds, IME. If you somehow exceed that ample amount, they never charge you more, they just slow you down.
Without checking, I’m almost positive that VM has an even lower data usage limit (I’m thinking it’s 2GB… they’re not as upfront about it as Tmobile) before they start throttling your bandwidth, and their typical unthrottled speeds are nowhere near what Tmobile is typically capable of.
And from the last time I checked, there’s also the issue with the limited phone choices which are usually one generation behind the curve. And since they’re just reselling a Sprint signal, and I have had bad experiences with *actual *branded Sprint service in the past, I wouldn’t personally ever even consider VM.
Ok, looked it up. VM’s data throttling takes place after 2.5GB/month. So, contrary to what you seem to think, Tmobile is twice as good as VM, in just that one aspect.
That $35 plan looks very attractive to me… you gave me such good advice when I was phone shopping before, so do you know: will the LG Optimus T work with the GoSmart plans? I’m currently using the $30 unlimited data/text + 100 minutes T-mobile plan. But I’d be very interested in trading down bandwidth speed for unlimited minutes. Will GPS work well over 2g? My phone’s only capable of 3g speeds anyway, and I don’t do significant browsing on it. Mostly just GPS, text, and talking.
Yeah, your phone will work fine, but I’m almost positive you’ll need a new SIM card activation kit, which I believe usually go for $8. (Sadly, not 99 cents like the older plan SIMs.)
As for GPS, the actual GPS positioning signal comes from public/military satellites and doesn’t use data, but the maps that your position is superimposed on DO need data. Luckily, Google Maps and other nav programs lets you “cache” some preselected areas’ maps ahead of time by downloading them while you’re on wifi and saving them to the memory card. It’s a good idea to cache the maps for your commonly traveled areas for performance and reliability reasons, even if you have unlimited data speeds.
My partner and I have T-Mobile family plan:
$45 each for unlimited text, talk and 2 gigs of data. Plus, for an extra $10 we can make unlimited international calls - important, as we call Germany a lot (and I make the occasional call to New Zealand). If you get that extra international plan, do NOT call anyone in Germany with a “handy” (German word for cell phone) as that costs extra - way extra - only call if they have a landline - that is unlimited for the price of $10.
So for the two of us, $104 or so (plus tax) per month.
Metro PCS also has unlimited talk/text/data, month-to-month plans at the $40 price point. Most of my family uses it and are pretty pleased. The network continues to expand and, even if you are on roaming for talk, you can still text for free.
The self-quoted excerpt from a previous thread that I posted up-thread was in response to a similar message from you in that older thread. Now I guess I’ll self-quote the whole post in response (again).
So, yeah, the network will “continue to expand” as Tmobile transitions it into their network. But if someone were to buy an expensive phone designed for MetroPCS today, it will be a paper-weight in a couple of years. Much better to just go with Tmobile in the first place.
Thanks! Might nab the sim kit now and change over when my current billing cycle expires. It’s only an extra $5 a month for unlimited minutes, and I really don’t care about web speed. Thanks, as always, for the phone tips!
Good enough. I didn’t see your response to the previous thread (I don’t even remember posting to the previous thread!), but even given your info MetroPCS is still a cheap option. In cell phone technology 2 years equals 2 generations (or more) in advancements. A large portion of consumers replace their phone within 2years, even if not under contract. Used phones are available for pennies on the dollar. Plus, if previous mergers are any indication, 2 years is optimistic at best. I’m guessing it will be more like 4-5 years.
Anyway, we give options, it’s the OP’s job to determine which fits best.
Yeah, I’m not saying you shouldn’t recommend MetroPCS at all, just that people considering that option should be made aware of the impending switchover to Tmobile and the currently planned obsolescence of MetroPCS phones.
I think the sort of people researching, and making their buying decisions based on reading a thread like this, are much more likely to buy a phone and keep it for as many years as possible. They might be unpleasantly surprised if they went with Metro and were forced to buy another phone in around two years. (It might even be sooner, I don’t know.)
I bought my used phone over a year ago, and at the time it was just over a year old, and I hope to keep it for at least another couple of years, since it serves me well and does everything I need it to do. With someone buying the Nexus4, which I recommended in that post, there’s no reason whatsoever that that phone shouldn’t last them a good four years, or maybe even more, as long as they don’t break or lose it. Not everybody always feels the need to constantly upgrade to the latest and greatest, as long as their current phone does everything they need it to.
ETA: No way will the merger take 4-5 years. There’s way too many good reasons to get it done ASAP for Tmobile, MetroPCS, and all of their customers.