I just ordered a $45 unlimited plan from Straight Talk Cellular and wonder if anyone else here has had any experience with their services?

Here's the deal:  You buy a $15 sim card, and then are able to purchase monthly service with Unlimited Talk, Text, and Data for $45 a month.  You can even save a few bucks by purchasing 3 months for $126, or $42 a month.  

They have the ability to use AT&T branded phones, including iPhones and practically any phone that uses a sim card (GSM), and actually run off of the AT&T network.  According to the website, the phone does not have to be unlocked or even jailbroken if it's an iPhone for this service to work.  This only became available a few weeks ago from what I read, but the web cellular forums report favorable service, and that it has no discernible difference from AT&T contract speeds.

I currently have two iPhones with AT&T, and this will cut my phone bill in HALF if it is comparable quality and speed.  The only negative I've read about so far, is calling customer service is a PITA, and a language barrier due to outsourcing I think.

I should get my sim on Thursday, 3-1 so I'll post my findings after a day or two of trials.

Here's a link to the beginning of the purchase process that outlines the deal.

Straight Talk Unlimited for ATT phones

Good deal.

Well it seems so.

I am especially interested in this, seeing as I have one of the grandfathered "Unlimited" data plans that AT&T has been throttling lately.  

Kinda like being "Hoisted On Their Own Petard" if I can stop paying directly for their services, and still have the use of their network, with them delivering the same product, but getting less of the pie as a result.

I have used it for a year or so.

Pretty good service.

I use the 30 dollar plan

Nightfalcon007

Thanks for commenting.  

Have you had any outages, or poor call quality with your service?  If you use data, has the speed been acceptable, or do you feel it's downgraded from what AT&T users are experiencing?  

Can you tell if you are really using AT&T's network, or not?

This is relevant to me.

This is very relevant to my interests!!

I'd love to tell AT&T to fuck off.

Yes, good deal.  I'm ditching my Virgin Mobile Triumph and grandfathered $25/month plan for ST and a Galaxy Nexus.  Biggest complaint with VM is the native Sprint coverage:



vs. Straight Talk, which uses both AT&T and T-Mobile towers:



In addition, conditional call forwarding works with the AT&T SIM, so you can fully integrate Google Voice as if you were on a post-paid carrier.  I'm switching to my GV number so I can carrier-hop in the future without worrying about porting issues.

I have never had an outage.

It has pretty good call quality.
(I have a more bottom end phone though)

Data is   ok but that could be my phone as well.

Quality wise i would say it is just as good.

But i cant comment on using a smart phone, mine is just a regular old phone.

The SO has StraightTalk, cut his bill in half.  We live in a pretty rural area and he drives about 45 minutes to/from work.  When he's home he gets OK service, but during his commute his service is spotty.  (I think a combination of terrain and just how far from civilization we live).  When we're closer to larger towns/cities his service has been great.  He's had it for a few months now, don't know about customer service, we haven't had to call them yet

The carrier for his StraightTalk plan is Verizon, we had to get one of the lesser phones because out here AT&T has even more limited service than Verizon.

Just got it for my wifes iphone and my droid.  You do have to jailbreak the iphone if you want MMS but regular data will work fine.  All you have to do for the droid is enter new APN values.  It's a great deal.  We'll see how long they can keep offering the service for that price.

Warning: ST can and will terminate your account if they consider you a data hog.  HowardForums members suggest limiting your "unlimited" usage to 70MB/day (about 2GB/month)

I'm a little concerned also about how long this can last.  I'm considering going for the one year plan if the trial period works out.  

I think there is a workaround for getting MMS (Picture Texting, mainly) working without jailbreaking, but I'm already jailbroken, so that's just trivia for my purposes.

Along these lines, I have used and will continue to use another cellular service that piggybacks on AT&T called: iPhoneTrip.  They have international roaming service on locked AT&T GSM phones for data for $8 a day.  I used it on a Caribbean cruise in Dec. 2011, and it worked perfectly.  I was able to log into the ship's WiFi and browse the web via my iPad or phone, and there were no additional charges or problems.  It's slow onboard cruise ships due to the sattelite link for internet, but acceptable considering the alternative is about $.50-.75 a minute if purchased from the ship.  While in ports that have roaming agreements with AT&T it worked as well as AT&T service at home.

I read some comments to the effect that up to at least 100Mb per day was no issue, but at least this isn't any worse that AT&T throttling accounts that hit 2Gb in less than a month.  

I seldom even use 2 Gb even though I stream Pandora whenever I drive, and pretty much do what I want without regard to my data use.  I guess I would not be considered a data hog, but at this price, it will be worth it to keep track if necessary.

Just something to consider.  IE, don't buy the $499 1-year plan and immediately tether and torrent a dozen movies... we won't really know until someone reports they've been warned/kicked off the new SIM plan for excessive usage.

I agree.  

There is a a thread on HowardForums that's over 100 pages long that I skimmed looking for info.  One of the posters said he had done over 300 Mb in a day without any death threats, but the others seemed to feel that 100 Mb would be a safe amount, and several said they hit that regularly without any issues.  I shouldn't have a problem since I don't use too much now, but anyone who streams videos needs to be careful no matter who they are with these days.

Use ST $30 plan. Good service that works for me. Fuck AT&T.

I got my sim a day early.  It arrived about an hour ago, and my service was up and running within about 15 minutes.  So far, it's everything I expected.  The phone seems to work normally, I got my MMS texting set up the first try, and now it's just do my daily activities for a reliability test.  

I have a spare iPhone 3Gs that I've kept for travelling since it's software unlocked, so I put my AT&T sim in it and forwarded it to my new phone number assigned by Straight Talk.  The only problem with that is texting does not forward, only calls.

If this works as well as it appears, AT&T is going to be taking a hit from the competition.  I love the irony of them competing with themselves and losing!

Stay tuned for more "Dear Diary" entries.

ATT is bleeding customers because of the ST sim.  I am just one of many people that I know that have switched.  Like I said earlier,  I hope ST's wholesale agreement is under contract for a couple more years.  I just don't see how they can sell it for what they are without ATT yanking the rug out from under them.  Then again, ST is supported by one of the largest retailers in the US.

Here is a SpeedTest.Net  test from this morning at around 4:00 AM.  (I get up early)



The download speed is pretty consistent with my past AT&T measurements, the upload seems a little low, however the same test was low on my AT&T line this morning also.

I can certainly live with these speeds for what I have ever needed to do on my phone.  I also ran a check on FaceTime, and it worked normally over the 3G network.  I have an jailbroken iPhone 4s, with 3G Unrestrictor installed from Cydia, and so WiFi is not required for video calls.

I was also able to send a photo attached to a text message, or MMS, but that requires being jailbroken also.  There is possibly a workaround for this without the JailBreak, but I didn't read all the details since I don't need that to use MMS.

So far, no downside or loss of funtionality, but I'll keep testing and report back.

I've had a ST phone that uses the Verizon network for nearly 2 years now.  Great coverage in my area and most others.
I'm on the $30 per month plan, have only come close to running out of internet use(30mb) once or twice and always have plenty text and talk time left over at the end of the month.

I'm a happy customer.

1. Post-paid carriers spend a ton on advertising.  Most people aren't aware of carriers beyond the big 4 (Verizon, Sprint, ATT, T-Mobile)

2. Pre-pay has the stigma of being for people who can't pass a credit check to get a contract plan

3. Americans suck at math and like their phone subsidies.  They think $199 iPhone with $100/month 2-year contract is cheaper than $1200 unlocked iPhone and $45/month on Straight Talk

4. Post-paid carriers work out roaming agreements with independent network operators.  So Verizon contract will roam on a tower operated by Billy Bob's Telephone Co., but Verizon pre-pay will not.

Basically, postpaid carriers are not interested in the under $60/month market.  They wholesale their extra capacity rather than lower their revenues by offering cheaper contract plans.