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How is cellular/data coverage for T-Mobile and Sprint in western North Carolina? I live near Canton, though I commute to the Asheville area pretty frequently as well. I'm also fairly familiar with AT&T and Verizon's respective levels of service, so I'd like some idea of coverage for the other two carriers so I know which MVNOs are worth exploring once I get a job and no longer have to tighten my financial belt as much as I am. For reference, Verizon's service (through Tracfone) has been pretty reliable, whereas AT&T is a total crapshoot even in downtown Asheville.
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Oct 11, 2014 15:24
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I was using the Root Metrics app to determine carrier coverage in specific areas and it seemed to be very accurate, but I'm in NYC with lots of data points so ymmv.
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Oct 11, 2014 15:54
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My parents really want Verizon and they wanted to know if the prepaid Verizon offered option allowed them to roam on other carriers if they travelled around the US and didn't have a Verizon tower in range? I know the first page says only ST and Net10 allow roaming but I thought since maybe the Verizon prepaid was sold buy an actual carrier, it might work? What about Cricket? Is Net10 and ST really the only MVNO providing roaming on other networks? Wendigee fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Oct 12, 2014 |
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Oct 12, 2014 03:31
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Nope. Roaming agreements are one of the last major things that separate prepaid from postpaid these days.
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Oct 12, 2014 03:52
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Cricket does not roam. I drove through Wyoming and had zero service pretty much the entire day.
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Oct 12, 2014 07:52
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Wendigee posted:My parents really want Verizon Your parents are sadomasochists.
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Oct 12, 2014 08:00
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Darnit. Okay thanks guys.
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Oct 12, 2014 21:59
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Does Cricket hit you with an activation fee if you order online? My wife did her signup in-store, and paid $10 for the sim and another $20 for activation (or $25, I forget).
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Oct 12, 2014 22:05
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clockworx posted:Does Cricket hit you with an activation fee if you order online? My wife did her signup in-store, and paid $10 for the sim and another $20 for activation (or $25, I forget). None online
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Oct 12, 2014 22:12
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clockworx posted:Does Cricket hit you with an activation fee if you order online? My wife did her signup in-store, and paid $10 for the sim and another $20 for activation (or $25, I forget). No. That's just them profit taking. You pay just for the Sim and your first month without the $5 discount. I think it's $15 for the sim
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Oct 12, 2014 22:13
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Is this not a better deal than Cricket for those with T-Mo coverage: https://www.harbormobile.com/
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Oct 12, 2014 22:22
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Radbot posted:Is this not a better deal than Cricket for those with T-Mo coverage: From the OP: quote:Harbor Mobile is actually new to the MVNO T-Mobile group. It looks like they have some decent plans and every one of them allows for tethering. Unfortunately, it looks like Harbor Mobile is for businesses only. So, if you want a business line, here you go.
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Oct 12, 2014 23:04
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I'm using Harbor Mobile (1st month) and I don't think they even bother asking for a business name anymore. I'm pretty sure I didn't supply one.
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Oct 13, 2014 01:07
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clockworx posted:Does Cricket hit you with an activation fee if you order online? My wife did her signup in-store, and paid $10 for the sim and another $20 for activation (or $25, I forget). Order online and pay for the Sim+first month, get 2 day shipping and activate it online. $25 fee for activation in store.
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Oct 13, 2014 03:37
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SB35 posted:Order online and pay for the Sim+first month, get 2 day shipping and activate it online. $25 fee for activation in store. How does number porting work if I do it that way?
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Oct 13, 2014 15:32
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crondaily posted:How does number porting work if I do it that way? You give them your number, account number and password/pin for your current service. Then they ship you the SIM and your activation kit. Whenever you are ready to join, you activate and then they port your number.
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Oct 13, 2014 15:55
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Venkmanologist posted:From the OP: Yeah - you don't need a business, though. Thousands of SlickDealers can confirm that, besides the fact that you can be a legal "Sole Proprietor" with only your SSN. Not that Harbor Mobile even requires that. Seems like everyone in this thread lives in an area with bad T-Mobile coverage, since I can think of 2-3 T-Mo MVNOs that are consistently cheaper than Cricket. That's too bad. 
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Oct 13, 2014 19:20
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Radbot posted:Yeah - you don't need a business, though. Thousands of SlickDealers can confirm that, besides the fact that you can be a legal "Sole Proprietor" with only your SSN. Not that Harbor Mobile even requires that. It isn't that their coverage is even that bad in a lot of areas, they just won't let me check out unless I take a new number with some weird area code in the next state over. Even though I have a GV number I would rather just have a local one. Can't even port my current number in, either. It (402) isn't a trendy hipster area code or anything, it's just a pain to explain why I have the weird number saying I'm in a city a couple hours away. I imagine they'll eventually offer service here and I'll happily switch then.
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Oct 13, 2014 19:32
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Radbot posted:Yeah - you don't need a business, though. Thousands of SlickDealers can confirm that, besides the fact that you can be a legal "Sole Proprietor" with only your SSN. Not that Harbor Mobile even requires that. Haven't seen T-mobile or their mvno's be able to beat the 5 member family plan deal on cricket though. I'm paying $20 a month (that includes taxes) for 1 gig of data/unlim voice and text. $30 a month gets you 3 gigs i believe.
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Oct 13, 2014 19:33
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FAUXTON posted:It isn't that their coverage is even that bad in a lot of areas, they just won't let me check out unless I take a new number with some weird area code in the next state over. Even though I have a GV number I would rather just have a local one. Can't even port my current number in, either. They won't let you port your number in? That's super weird... Mister Fister posted:Haven't seen T-mobile or their mvno's be able to beat the 5 member family plan deal on cricket though. I'm paying $20 a month (that includes taxes) for 1 gig of data/unlim voice and text. $30 a month gets you 3 gigs i believe. That's a pretty good deal, though the 3GB one is just OK. Though there's fewer lines, the $100/mo for 4 unlimited voice/text lines + 10GB LTE data is a great deal on T-Mo postpaid. I believe they will also pay your ETFs, as applicable, for each line too. It's definitely going to be a tick more than your current plan, but the roaming capability you get on T-Mo postpaid is very nice compared to prepaid/MVNO.
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Oct 13, 2014 22:21
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Trying to activate my new Cricket SIM, but their activation page is nonexistent. Did I get bad directions or is the site just making GBS threads itself?
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Oct 14, 2014 17:56
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Anyone else on T-Mobile prepaid having issues with the account management page or the T-Mobile app displaying incorrect information for minutes? My wife's account management page is showing she's used all of her minutes (dork plan) about a week after the bill cycle, and the app shows she hasn't used any - she's used maybe 15-20 since the billing cycle. I know T-Mobile has poor online services, just curious if this is a global problem or something specific to her account.
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Oct 14, 2014 18:03
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Wapole Languray posted:Trying to activate my new Cricket SIM, but their activation page is nonexistent. Did I get bad directions or is the site just making GBS threads itself? I know AdBlock interferes with the activation page, as soon as I disable it for cricketwireless.com, it comes up as expected.
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Oct 14, 2014 18:22
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Merv Burger posted:I know AdBlock interferes with the activation page, as soon as I disable it for cricketwireless.com, it comes up as expected. Ugh, thanks. I would never have figured that out. 
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Oct 14, 2014 18:25
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Adblock is the first thing I check when sites go weird.
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Oct 14, 2014 19:33
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So if you're on the T-Mobile dork plan and you have a Google Voice number, you can use the Hangouts dialer to do unlimited VOIP calling and it's no longer a dork plan. I just started this week and so far Hangouts has only used about 3mb of data (including texts/chats) for 10 or so phone calls.
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Oct 15, 2014 15:33
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nimper posted:So if you're on the T-Mobile dork plan and you have a Google Voice number, you can use the Hangouts dialer to do unlimited VOIP calling and it's no longer a dork plan. Well it's still a dork plan because normal people probably don't have this setup, but yep pretty cool.
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Oct 15, 2014 16:03
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I'm considering jumping ship from Verizon if I like the new Nexus phone being announced today (hopefully). Can someone explain the number porting? The OP says I should port my current number to Google Voice, but that I won't be able to receive MMS. Why can't I just port directly to Cricket so I can still get MMS and group messaging? (I need these) The other thing I'm concerned about are the capped data speeds. I normally get around 30 mbps right now, but I don't know of any way to artificially limit my speeds to see if 8 mbps would be enough for me. Any ideas if I can test this?
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Oct 15, 2014 16:56
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Super Dude posted:I'm considering jumping ship from Verizon if I like the new Nexus phone being announced today (hopefully). Can someone explain the number porting? The OP says I should port my current number to Google Voice, but that I won't be able to receive MMS. Why can't I just port directly to Cricket so I can still get MMS and group messaging? (I need these) You can port over to Cricket. It's just that you can post to Google voice once, then you aren't tied to a specific carrier. Why do you need more than 8 mbps? What are you doing that the slow down would affect?
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Oct 15, 2014 17:02
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Port your number directly to cricket. If you would like a referral, I can help you out. Don't port your number to Google. Voice can sort of receive MMS in a really hacky way. It uploads to google and sends a link. 8Mbs is good enough for anything you're going to do on your phone unless you are torrenting very large linux ISOs.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:03
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Athenry posted:You can port over to Cricket. It's just that you can post to Google voice once, then you aren't tied to a specific carrier. Impressive speed test screenshots. My neighbor decided not to join cricket and is paying $80/month on at&t so he can keep his "unlimited" plan and that 8mpbs is too slow, somehow.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:04
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Athenry posted:Why do you need more than 8 mbps? What are you doing that the slow down would affect? I don't know if I need more than 8 mbps, that's the problem. My phone gets more than that right now, so I don't know what 8 mpbs feels like. If I had to bet, I think I would be fine with it. Can I still port to cricket if I'm just removing my line from a Verizon family plan? I'm not the primary account holder.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:09
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Super Dude posted:I don't know if I need more than 8 mbps, that's the problem. My phone gets more than that right now, so I don't know what 8 mpbs feels like. If I had to bet, I think I would be fine with it. 8 mbps (megabits per second) is roughly 1 megabyte per second. Its about the same as your average residential broadband connection. Unless you're doing filesharing and have no patience for things to finish or trying to stream studio-master quality lossless audio you probably won't even notice the difference.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:18
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Super Dude posted:I don't know if I need more than 8 mbps, that's the problem. My phone gets more than that right now, so I don't know what 8 mpbs feels like. If I had to bet, I think I would be fine with it. I was on straight talk, which doesn't throttle, but does seem to have a lower priority than other things on the tower. Even with Cricket's throttling, it feels faster because my latency is so much better. And i have a data connection all the time. Straight talk would just collapse at times and it'd be like I didn't have data.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:20
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Geoj posted:8 mbps (megabits per second) is roughly 1 megabyte per second. Its about the same as your average residential broadband connection. Unless you're doing filesharing and have no patience for things to finish or trying to stream studio-master quality lossless audio you probably won't even notice the difference. As far as bandwidth goes, that's correct. Ping times are higher on Cricket too because of their proxy. As a Cricket user who was previously on both Att and Tmobile, I can say that the delay caused by higher pings is ever so slightly more noticeable but not at all times.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:23
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Cojawfee posted:
Or need to win internet dick measuring contests Brock Landers posted:As far as bandwidth goes, that's correct. Ping times are higher on Cricket too because of their proxy. As a Cricket user who was previously on both Att and Tmobile, I can say that the delay caused by higher pings is ever so slightly more noticeable but not at all times. I definitely don't notice any slow ping times anymore, I think they've increased the throughput of their proxy by quite a bit.
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Oct 15, 2014 17:43
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Are their any MVNOs that use the ATT network, let you pay by the day and include data? I currently have the T-Mobile $30 plan which works great 99% of the time, but I don't get service when I visit my parents. They use ATT and get decent service, but ATT doesn't offer data on their daily plans. It would be great if I could pay for a few days when I visit and still have access to data.
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Oct 17, 2014 00:11
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http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/1...9-boost-mobile/ Added this to the list. Should I add the prices to the notable devices sections or does anyone care?
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Oct 17, 2014 17:00
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It's prob worth it, since the new Nexus's are now out of line.
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Oct 17, 2014 17:35
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I got a T-Mobile prepaid card for use while here in the States and keep getting random calls that are clearly not intended for me. Like, an announcement that my subscription is ready for pickup at pharmacy XYZ and just now got involved in a huge mms conversation about some daycare parent Amanda giving birth to a 6 lbs 13 oz baby boy  Do they just recycle phone numbers immediately after the original owner cancels/it expires or something?
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Oct 17, 2014 18:06
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