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TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
I'm needing to replace my iPhone 5 on net10 at the Genius Bar and I was wondering it AT&T phones need unlocking to work on net10. I posted in the iPhone proper thread asking how the swap would work since I don't have one of the carriers that they sell through. Someone kindly pointed out that AT&T offers five unlocks provided the etf is paid (which it was) but not sure if that applied to replacement devices.

Then I remember reading that straight talkers don't require an unlock. Appreciate any feedback!

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TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

hotsauce posted:

$41.49, no tax. Used them many times. Legit.

http://www.refillmobi.com/

Does Refillmobi ever put the net10 family plan on there?

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

mAlfunkti0n posted:

Throwing my brand new experience with Net10 out here to warn people about.

First off, Net10 customer service is TERRIBLE.

Let me get to why that is. So I have two Net10 BYOP SIMs. I activate SIM #1 and service starts working, I initiate a port from Verizon wireless to Net10. During this process I am told "oh sorry, you will need a new SIM, we will send you one". That's all well and good, cool, I will get a SIM to replace this one and the port will happen after that.

Nope. The port I requested last night is done TODAY, the SIM in the device no longer works. So my wife's phone with Verizon is now dead, her Nexus 4 on Net10 no longer works. Since I just happen to have a second SIM it isn't a huge hassle, but if I did not have a second SIM here with me we would be out of service until we could get another SIM from these idiots.

I call customer service, who couldn't care less about the situation. They do not seem to see any problem with the events that just transpired. The fact that I would be days without mobile service because the SIM in the phone now just doesn't work. Yeah, this will be the only month of Net10 service for me.

Edit : Reached a "manager" who right off the start sounded like she would enjoy life more with a gun in her mouth. Needless to say, she also didn't see a problem with it. She also informs me that there is no SIM card order placed, so there is no new SIM card on the way! Fantastic!

Oh dear, that wasn't my experience at all. It was a little bumpy (at least in understanding what was happening and that it was working correctly) porting my and my wifes number from T-mobile prepaid but it worked out in the end. I did do the whole thing on the phone from the start though.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Mister Fister posted:

Oh AT&T launched their prepaid service:

http://phandroid.com/2013/05/09/att-aio-wireless/?utm_source=feedly


Hahahaha gently caress you AT&T

Edit: This is the only place reporting the throttling so far though.

Minutes/texts for each plan?

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

SB35 posted:

StraightTalk or Net10 could put you at ~ $50/month and on At&t's towers

Net10 gets a bad rap on many sites for various reasons, but for our use case it's damned near perfect. We don't stream often, but when we do it's maybe an hour of Pandora (~20mb?) here and there. For $89 on callingmart (no tax that way!) I get a phone for my wife and I that works well with the caveat of being a bit mindful on data usage. I've found that if you don't stream, you pretty much don't need a big data plan at all.

On the other hand, for an iPhone, you HAVE to have it jailbroken so you can access the APN settings. Also, the settings seemingly random reset themselves and you have to back and set them in order to regain 4G access and MMS capability to non-iMessage folks. This is inconvenient more than a problem. Strangely it happens a lot on my phone and very rarely on my wifes. She is at home most of the day on our Wifi so I don't know if that's a factor.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Can anyone on AIO with an iPhone do a trip report? Currently have my 5 and my wifes 4S on net10 family plan and we're jailbroken to set the APNs which frequently get forgotten and need to be re-entered. Does MMS work while jailbroken? What obstacles did you have to jump through to get it working?

I'm also very interested in precisely what information I will need from net10 in order to port my number over. I despise their customer service and would be willing to jump. Am I gathering that the $40 plan is bullshit for smartphones leaving the $55 as the floor? I use about 500-750 megs a month and don't stream often so I could handle the 256kbps.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

ThermoPhysical posted:



Also, despite what the website said, the $40/mo plan DID used to work on smartphones but AT&T randomly changed it as soon as AIO went nationwide. You won't even get full LTE speeds anymore on that plan.



Does that mean I would have 3G/4G speeds? I'd be fine with that, really.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

ThermoPhysical posted:

Speaking of ATT MVNOs, HowardForums seems to think that GoPhone is straight up postpaid ATT with cheaper plans.

They claim that ST/Net10 and AIO aren't actual postpaid and that ATT "gives priority" to GoPhone for speed, coverage, and support.

Anyone have input on this?

Edit: Apparently, they like to try and game the system by buying tons of prepaid cards on eBay to pay the bill instead of paying normally. Starting to think Howard Forums is a bit sketchy.

I buy all of my refill cards for net10 on callingmart. Don't think it's sketchy at all, but I would be considered about the future pricing of the cards. Callingmart basically subverts sales tax for me so I'm paying a little less than the $90/mo for the unlimited family plan. It was $95 with the discount + tax to go straight through them.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Would it only make sense to get the LTE for the latency? With a 1.5gb cap its not like you can really make good use of it.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
I think you've pushed me over the edge to finally transferring my number to GV. I am on a family unlimited plan on Net10 with my wife. What will happen to her phone number if I do this? I obviously want to preserve her number along with mine. Considering jumping to the AIO on mine and keeping her on net10 until I find out how it is.

What do you all recommend given how awful their tech support is?

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

The Entire Universe posted:

I would recommend making peace with losing your numbers or waging a battle of attrition with their service reps.

Personally I'm getting ready to audit all my contact information and make sure I have my GV number everywhere or have identified where my mobile number is in order to change it. gently caress dealing with Net10's poo poo sandwich of a support org.

This is very ominous, would I be better served by porting both out then?

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

The Entire Universe posted:

The problem is that porting them will be like pulling teeth.

To port you need an account number and a PIN. Net10 is very unwilling to provide either to subscribers. More power to you if you're able to pry it out, but it's bloody unlikely. Seeing as though they're (I'm fairly sure) required to provide the information on request it could be grounds for a complaint to the FCC or FTC, whichever governs number portability. I doubt it'd get anything done but I imagine it makes for a decent threat.

A quick google brings this, it's from a year ago:

quote:

i porrted my phone number from net ten yesterday successfully. i used the imei number for my account number and the last four digits of my phone number as the pin number. it only took one day too. i hope this helps.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
I was hoping to benefit from the collective wisdom and past experiences of the goon hive-mind. As you can see from my recent posts I'm highly considering moving my prepaid number to GV. My question is how have you integrated GV with your iPhone? I am hoping to make the integration as seamless as possible. Here is what I have gathered/hypothesized.

iMessage (text and MMS): Don't link to disposable number, but to email address. Educate friends to just use that and not phone number? This is the area I have the least amount of understanding around. If I do not have data I will not have any 'send as text' backup for those contacts. I send a lot of pictures/videos with my iMessage friends, so I would like to maintain this if possible.

Non-iMessage Text: Use GV App, or other Jailbroken app/tweak to integrate with iMessage?

Non-iMessage MMS: Out of luck.

Calls: Easy as pie, that's not an unknown

What are the best practices? The weirdness of iMessage throws a real wrench into the mix. I appreciate the feedback!

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

goku chewbacca posted:

If you set up iMessage/FaceTime with your email and disassociate your disposable number, here's what will happen: other iPhone users will still SMS text your GVoice number. Reply in GVoice app and you wont be iMessaging. When you'll reply in iOS Messaging, your reply will come from your iMessage email. They'll be too obtuse to understand why some new person is responding to the SMS text they just sent. To you it'll be inline in the same thread, but our contact will see a new thread, even if they have your email in their contact book. Then they'll have two messaging threads with your name on it and will pick one seemingly at random when they want to contact you. Every god drat time you message them from your iMessage email, they'll reply, 'who/what is this?' iMessage savvy users will ask, "I thought you had an iPhone?" when they message you and it's green.

I haven't even covered outbound dialing and not being able to use the stock dialer/contact book. Or having to use two apps for messaging. Or getting two notifications for SMS texts if you leave text forwarding on in GVoice. If you want to receive MMS, you have to forward texts to email, so that's three notifications. GVoice is burdensome unless you're on Android, where it's a techno marvel.

So the simplest implementation is to disable iMessage completely and solely use the google voice app losing MMS completely? They almost sounds preferable to having a hodge podge of addresses to give people and just let them know to email me.

If I do not have data is there any way to get them routed to me through text or just always get two notifications for the app and text for that odd case?

Last question: I know you get a special google number when a text forwarded (or called) that you can reply to and it is from the google voice number. This doesn't support mms either, right?

I believe there are some jailbreak tweaks to alleviate some of these pains such as not being able to use the stock dialer. Curious as to what other tweaks are available.

Thanks for the information, its very helpful! You're encouraging me not to do it but the pitfalls may be something I willing to deal with so its appreciated.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
A horrifyingly foreign idea just occurred to me also. Since I am farting around with prepaid and have no interest in contracts any longer perhaps I should *gasp* get an android to do it proper and either keep my iPhone 5 or get a touch to fill the gap in apps (or use the ones I've sunk the cash into) during the transition.

Just for a thought exercise: are there any good android phones that aren't the size of pop tarts and don't have crippling battery life. Yes, these are the biases I have about android. :/

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Can someone with an unjailbroken iPhone on net10 let me know how easy it is to get the phone working with data on the service? Is the only feature you're missing MMS? I have been jailbroken for so long I have forgotten if it's even possible to roll net10 without a jailbreak.

The obvious reason is that I want to update to iOS7 and still maintain basic functionality of my phone. I can do without MMS.

That being said, can anyone speak of the same with an unjailbroken phone and AIO?

I've basically abandoned by idea of going to Google Voice & Android. Too complex of a move (transitioning apps, data, use behaviors, etc) for minimal gain. I love my iPhone, what can I say?

Thanks in advance!

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

SB35 posted:

Net10 or StraightTalk on a non-jailbroken iPhone is easy. You just need http://www.unlockit.co.nz/, visit that with safari and install the correct APN. Restart and good to go.

Thanks! I will try that. Do the settings persist? I frequently have to go into the APN settings and re-enter them as they get reset to 'phone'. I will experiment today, clear the settings, uninstall the jailbreak app and install that APN.

Appreciate the feedback.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

SB35 posted:

Do they persist? Um, if you install the profile they should persist. I've never really dicked around with changing APN settings on the iPhone after I had installed the profile.

When I was jailbroken I didn't have the profile installed, just manually had the settings input in the Cellular settings menu. To get to that menu (with net10 at least) you have to jailbreak and install TetherMe. Seems like the settings are forgotten every so often. This is how I was able to get MMS on net10, but seeing as 99% of the people I MMS with are on iMessage, I really don't need that and can simplify my life and go unjailbroken. I have already set up the profile and it's working just fine. Just need to update to iOS7 now.

Thanks!

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Order two sims from the tmobile website. They are typically $1/piece. Activate one with the $3/day unlimited plan. Try it out and see how your signal is and such. If it works fine then activate the other one under the $30 plan and port your number. I had the $30 plan on my AT&T iPhone 5 for a bit but left because signal in my area was shite.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Nihiliste posted:

Speaking of T-Mobile and iPhones, here's an interesting situation. Right now I have a Galaxy Nexus with the $30 T-Mo plan. The GNex uses a full-sized SIM, the iPhone 5s uses a nano-SIM. If I ask for a nano-SIM, presumably I can get one without switching plans and just pop it in a new 5s?

Don't believe you can do this. Go online and buy a sim cutter for $10.

Something like this

Techno Earth® Nano Sim Cutter for Iphone 5 Ipad Mini Simcard Cutter Cut Any GSM Sim Into Nano or Any Micro Sim Into Nano Sim + Car Charger for USB Devices
http://amzn.com/B009WTXB5G

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

TheLastManStanding posted:

I've had them switch my account to a new sim before, so I know they can do it. I don't know if you can do it through the online activation though. If you do call, google around for their Prepaid Department number. You'll get much faster results that way.


Edit: There's a support page for this. It says you can do it online.
http://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-4677

But not to the magic $30 plan. Or at least it's an uphill battle.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Someone recently posted all of the downsides to AIO (no short codes, etc), would someone mind posting a similar pros/cons (more focused on the cons) for GoPhone? I'm very interested in seeing what the tradeoffs would be. I'm willing to do eBay vendor gymnastics to cut the cost.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

DrBouvenstein posted:

I'm also curious about GoPhone.

ST seems to enjoy dicking me around constantly. After several months of good service, I'm now getting random speed drops, no data connection some days, etc...and I don't know why.

It shouldn't be any kind of nebulous "data cap," my download graph shows I only downloaded 150 MB on cell data this month, and never more than 30 in one day.

If I can pay $10-$15 more a month for more reliable service, and potentially LTE, I will. (I think AT&T has LTE here. I tried to check their coverage map, but like all the other providers, they use very similar shades of the same loving color to differentiate between 4G and 3G so it's really loving hard to tell.)

I just said gently caress it and ordered two sims for my wife and I on the net10 family plan. My biggest fear is screwing up the porting process by only doing one phone so I'm just going to do both and see what happens. Everything I'm reading is highly positive save for the short codes thing. I like the 2gb cap and the ability to add data if needed. Callingmart has $57 refills, which is reasonable to me for the security of the company (net10 feels so fly by night, despite being a huge company) and the reliability of the service. I'll give it a try and see what happens. Beauty of prepaid, if it sucks I just switch again!

How do the refills work for GoPhone? Do I need a specific refill card or just get dollars in the account however way I can and the $60 is deducted?

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

ThermoPhysical posted:

AIO's "no shortcodes" thing seems to be temporary, according to the reps I've asked. Also, Google Voice is now able to use them so you could just use that on AIO (which I do anyway).

I would, but the gymnastics required to get GV to work 'well enough' on an iPhone isn't worth it. I wish it were because it'd solve a lot of problems.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Mister Fister posted:

About $47 a month, buy only from highly ranked sellers though.

Do you have to buy high dollar value to hit $47?

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Mister Fister posted:

Yeah i think you do, i tried looking on ebay but i can't find it but i remember someone in the straight talk LTE thread at howardforums and someone mentioned it and i looked it up on ebay and it was there, forgot the dollar amount you have to buy though.

I'll have to give that a strong look after I try out the service. No sense in buying up a years worth of service if I want to switch after a month.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Mister Fister posted:

Straight Talk/Net 10 is supposedly adopting a more 'transparent' data use policy:

http://www.phonenews.com/straighttalk-and-net10-officially-adopt-more-transparent-data-policies-24027/

Hope this isn't bullshit, because that'd be awesome if true.

This is because I bought two GoPhone sims this week.

If they still QoS the crap out of their connection it's not going to be any better, just more clear.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Panic mode ceased, I didn't waste the cash on the sims.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Just got my two net10 numbers transferred to gophone relatively painlessly. I made the mistake of activating the sims before calling and had to run to the corporate store to get two more for free.

Can anyone who has an iPhone on gophone share which setting on unlockit.co.nz they using? GoPhone isn't working.

Thanks!

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

TraderStav posted:

Just got my two net10 numbers transferred to gophone relatively painlessly. I made the mistake of activating the sims before calling and had to run to the corporate store to get two more for free.

Can anyone who has an iPhone on gophone share which setting on unlockit.co.nz they using? GoPhone isn't working.

Thanks!

Holy cow, they really set GoPhone up proper. It wasn't working because I was putting settings in. I removed the APN settings and my iPhone5 fired right up and working perfectly. I think even MMS is working... If this is true, then GoPhone is THE poo poo. Had to reset network settings on the wifes 4S, but that's up and running just fine!

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Quick trip report for my net10 porting to GoPhone with my iPhone 5 and 4S.

As net10 is a reseller for AT&T, it seemed like the port was ridiculously easy. I had purchased the sims in advance, created the accounts and got some temporary numbers. I called customer support to get the port going and they said in order to complete the port they needed fresh sims. I went to the corporate store and after receiving two free sims I called the customer support number (will update this post with the actual porting department number when I get home) and in 15 minutes had both phones ported over to GoPhone. For net10, the account number was my IMEI on the sim card and there was no PIN code needed.

I was struggling to get the data to work on my iPhone and kept going back to unlockit.co.nz to get the right APN selected until I realized that GoPhone is not 100% supported by AT&T. I removed all APN profiles and every function on my iPhone works, even LTE. So, to summarize:

net10 Account number for porting: IMEI of sim card
net10 Pin number for porting: None (some have said last four of phone if given hassle)
Data: LTE (in Ann Arbor, MI) quick test showed 78ms ping, 14.71 down, 4.20 up :420:
MMS: Working natively without any changes needed. Successfully sent picture to Android user on Verizon
Visual Voicemail: Working, had to call in and set up initially and then change the pin code in my Settings to enable
Short codes: Working, receiving local news alerts that I signed up for via nixle.
Tethering: Haven't tried, not in my use case

Hope this information can help someone else as I had a hard time finding all of it on my own.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

BonoMan posted:

The "MY AIO" app on my phone (and you should be able to download it from the app store) shows exactly how much I use each day. It's right under the vague bar graph-y part.

Anything similar for gophone on ios?

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
If I am shopping eBay for GoPhone refills, will any denomination work? Can I buy up a bunch of $50 refills and throw them on the account for the $60 unlimited plan? I would think so, but before I start gobbling them up I'd like to make sure of it.

Thanks!

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

Boris Galerkin posted:

Can I port my ST number over if I do that?

And what happens if I go over 100 minutes, does it just start charging me by the minute?

Yes, $.10/minute which is very reasonable.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

These work in iPads, correct? I may grab an extra one to swap out for occasional usage for when I go through my free 200mb.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

IuniusBrutus posted:

So I'm reaching a point where I'm running over on minutes every month with the $30/month plan on TMo. I get really good LTE speeds (for TMo) in my area - 19-25 Mbps down, and 7-10 Mbps up on my N5. As such, I was just going to go to the $50/month plan with unlimited talk and text, but only having 500mb of LTE kind of makes the high speeds useless.

What would be my best bet to get more talk minutes? I get 15% off of anything I can purchase in a Target store - Net10, GoPhone, and Tmobile. I don't mind using a VoIP solution if I won't have to change everything up again in 6 months - I use GV forwarded to a throw-away number. I use about ~1.5gigs a month, most of which comes from streaming Google Music.

How many minutes are you going over? If it's under 200 you're at breakeven and can keep your old plan.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

ThermoPhysical posted:

Oh, so that's what happened. Was just gonna go here to check.

Is AT&T itself affected or just AIO?

GoPhone worked without issue here today in Detroit. Never had an issue yet, actually. It's like regular AT&T but cheaper. I love it.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

ThermoPhysical posted:

AIO just changed up their plans.

Basic Plan is now Unlimited Talk/Text/Data (first 500MB full LTE speed) for $40/mo.

Smart Plan is now Unlimited Talk/Text/Data (first 2.5GB full LTE speed) for $50/mo.

Pro Plan is now Unlimited Talk/Text/Data (first 5GB full LTE speed) for $60/mo.

The biggest change is the Pro Plan which went down from $70 to $60 and lost 2GB. However, if you signed up with the $70/7GB plan, you do get to keep the 7GB.

If you sign up for autopay, you get an extra $5 knocked off (this means it's $35/$45/$55 respectively).

http://www.aiowireless.com/shop/plans.html

These are all after-tax out-the-door costs right? So a $40 for my wife and a $50 for me, less $10 for auto-pay, would come out to $75/month for the pair of us or $37.50/line average? That's really fantastic. I presume these lines do not have tethering included.

TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down
Oops, terrible math. $40/mo is fantastic. Great news that you can put an iPhone on the $40 plan as that's what I'd be putting. We have an iPhone 5 and a Moto X. Currently on GoPhone and averaging about $53/57 month depending on when I buy up some cards. For our usage this seems far far superior.

The throttled down speed is still usable for basic stuff, right? I rarely go over 1.5gb let alone 2.5 and my wife hardly cracks 300mb but I'd like to know the full extent of the downside.

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TraderStav
May 19, 2006

It feels like I was standing my entire life and I just sat down

dr.bateman posted:

Considering going with these new AIO plans for my family. I can't remember if it was an ST or AIO issue, but are there some special steps you have to take to get MMS to work on an iPhone?

I would also really like to hear about this. Very important for wife acceptance.

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