Nexus 4 + Straight Talk: Part 4 - Data Usage

What if you never had to worry about going over your celluar data plan again?  What if you could use your phone for web browsing, email, navigation, and occassional tethering without fear of going over some arbitrary limit?  Does that sound too good to be true?  Could Straight Talk possibly offer all of that and still cost half what you're paying with a major carrier?  Alas, that is just a bit too good to be true... but only a bit.  Here are the highlights - if you want more information, just ask.

There is just a ton of information out there about Straight Talk data usage, the supposed risks of using  Straight Talk, and the rumors of discconects and other frustrations.  Some of it's true, but take it with a grain of salt.  While I only have a couple of data points at this point based on my own usage, I've throughoughly investigated this matter and here's what I've learned...

First of all, Straight Talk's Terms of Service (TOS) basically state that you have unlimited web browsing capabilities.  Not unlimited streaming, or unlimited file transfers... just unlimited web browsing.  How do they tell the difference between web browsing or streaming?  They don't.  And from everything I can tell, the tools that they have to measure this are fairly rudimentary - they can only determine excessive bandwidth allocation consumption, or respond to the underlying carrier flagging network abuse and reporting it to Straight Talk.  Straight Talk's job is to prevent the underlying carrier's network from being effected by the MVNO's users, and Straight Talk's duty is to protect their relationship with that underlying carrier.  

Ok, so what's my limit?

There is no arbitrary limit.  I think that's where a lot of the confusion on data usage stems from... it depends on a number of variables, the majority of which are unknown to you as an end-user at any given point in time.  For example, do you know what bandwidth has been allocated by the carrier to the area that you're currently in?  Can you tell how much is currently being utilized by other users?  Can you determine what impact you might be having on their network?  The reality is you can't make most of these determinations with any degree of accuracy.  But you can influence it by being responsible with your data usage.  This is why there is conflicting information... with some users report being able to get 5GB+ per month and of never being throttled, warned, or disconnected... why other's report warnings starting at 2GB.

So what's my limit?

Again, there's not an arbitrary limit.  But here's the deal... unlimited actually used to mean unlimited... until smartphones went from 5% marketshare, to 70% marketshare and data usage exploded.  This was about the same time AT&T started throttling the top 5% of their users in every market.  Today, the unofficial Straight Talk limit is between 2.0GB and 3.0GB per month (down from 5GB a while back).  OR...when you're affecting the underlying carrier's ability to provide quality service to the rest of their customers, and Straight Talk get's a warning from them.  You can count on the fact that AT&T isn't going to risk loosing more post-paid customers (like me, when I was paying $167 per month) to Straight Talk, and then having the Straight Talk users abuse their network.  

Yeah, great... but what's my limit?

I think I answered that a couple of times, but to be on the safe side... your limit is 2.0GB per month, and dont use more than 100MB per day.  Never watch Netflix, or stream excessive video.  A little Pandora?  Check.  Tethering to your computer so you can VPN into the office and RDP into your workstation for a bit?  Check.  If you use your phone as a tool, and avoid streaming media over your data plan - you should be fine.

What happens if I get warned?

If you hit a limit, they'll throttle you way down.  If you made a big enough impact, the first time you're flagged, Straight Talk will call or text a warning to you.  Heed the warning, because the second time you will be deactivated.  Unlike some of the other MVNOs, Straight Talk always warns you the first time.  After that, you will be deactivated.  

How can I avoid being warned?

Be responsible with your data plan usage.  First set a warning level that's reasonable (e.g. 1.5GB), so that you don't accidently go over.  Beyond that...

• Use WiFi when it's available.  
• Don't stream video... especially don't stream Netflix, or excessive YouTube.
• Don't use your phone in place of your computer... file transfers, downloading content, etc... really belongs either on WiFi, or your laptop. 
• Try not to tether (or if you do, do it responsibly)

How much data are you using?

My last two data points were 1.5GB and 1.9GB.  I haven't been throttled, warned, or deactivated.  Two simple tweaks have also substantially reduced my data usage.

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Nexus 4 + Straight Talk: Part 3 - A month in review

If you've read part 1, and part 2, you already know the potential... start saving $1,000 a year by getting off of a big carrier contract and switching over to a prepaid StraightTalk plan.  So after a couple months, is StraightTalk living up to the hype?  Or have I been cast into scylla or charybdis - marooned on a prepaid plan and having been throttled (or worse) to my doom?  Well, don't let me keep you waiting... hurry-up and read on!

The very first thing I did after initiating service was to enroll in auto-renew.  Auto-enroll is precisely what you'd think it is... it's what makes the pre-paid service seem as though it's a contract... add your credit card information to set it and forget it.  No more worrying that you'll forget to re-up at the end of the month, and no concerns that you'll loose your phone number, etc.  It's worth the 2 minutes it takes in frustration averted.  

My first mistake... 

My StraightTalk "kit" came in a giant envelope... which contained a couple of smaller envelopes, one for each contract I had purchased.  Now, I had purchased a plan called the "AT&T Compatible SIM + Unlimited* Plan", which at $59 came with everything I needed for the first month of service.  Importantly, this first month of service includes a small green card for each plan, and on those cards is a scratch-off code. The activation kit doesn't make this need particularly clear... and I had wrongly assumed that it would all just work, as I activated.  But alas, that was not the case.  So after activating service, and paying (again) for the first month, it became obvious that something had gone wrong.  After all, I was up to a couple hundred dollars in expenses at this point for 2 lines.  So that meant a call to StraightTalk Customer service - which was fortunately quite easy to find (1-877-430-2355), both on the web-site and all over the activation kit.  

Customer Service...

So if you've read through the various forums, you probably are under the impression that StraightTalk has terrible customer service.  My experience suggests that that impression is inaccurate.  It might not be AT&T, where I get a US-based agent... but it's not terrible.  Here's why... I contacted customer service because I thought I had been double billed for the first month.  My call was the evening (8:00pm Eastern) and the automated message gave me a wait time of approximately 30 minutes, but offered to hold my spot in the queue and call me back, which I opted for.  About 15 minutes or so later, I received a call from Customer Service.  I explained what had happened (billed twice for the first month), and they... transferred me to someone else, who put me on hold, and then came back after about 15 more minutes.  After working through my explanation for the second time, they were able to determine that I should have received a pair of activation cards, but mentioned that occasionally these are missed in the shipment.  So she gave me a credit for each phone for the next-month, and said I was good to go.  By the time I hung-up, I had spent about 45 minutes, and received text messages noting the credit had been applied on each line.  Which was good.  I later found my activation cards buried at the bottom of the  large envelope.  So it turns out, I didn't need to call customer service, it was my fault that they were missed.  But  my takeaway was that customer service was at least adequate to understand the problem, and was empowered to fix it.  So the lesson for folks - look carefully in that large envelope, and customer service is descent.

Billing...

Almost everyone that I talk to about StraightTalk asks me some variation of... "how much does it really cost per month?".  I guess they ask this because they're so used to contract carriers and hidden fees which drive up the monthly cost.  For those of you with this same concern, you'll be happy to know that the advertised $45 cost was pretty close... the actual total monthly cost was $48.93 (there's also a $2.50 per month promotion right now, when you sign-up for autorenew... just FYI).  The break down is like this...

• $45 for unlimited everything
• $2.93 for taxes
• $0.23 for E911 services
• 0.68 Federal Universal Service cost
• 0.09 regulatory cost recovery
• Total: $48.93

So how does that compare with my expectation?  Well, my goal was to save about $1,000 per year.  The input number I used was $167 per month for my prior contract (when I reconciled the numbers it was slightly higher, but we'll ignore that for simplicity sake), which means I'm on track to save $829 this year after taxes and fees.

Stay tuned, in a posts I'll cover data usage and coverage.

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Save $1,000 a year by buying a Nexus 4 and moving to Straight Talk. Step 2 - porting your number.

Imagine you have the very best smartphone available... the highest quality display, with an up-to-the-second current version of Android, and the snappiest UI available! Now, imagine that AT&T has just offered to cut your annual bill by $1,000 while still giving you unlimited data, and then throwing in unlimited text and talk just for good measure?  Too good to be true?  Not if you have a Nexus 4 and have moved from post-paid AT&T to Straight Talk.

Chris over at TechCrunch called the Nexus 4 almost perfect, and after having lived with it for more than a month, I have to say that I'm agreement.  The phone is a piece of craftsmanship, and plenty of folks put it through the paces already, so I'm not going to try to convince you to get one.  It's a nice phone, that even a non phone-geek can appreciate.  But if you're like me, you're really here to save $1k by ditching your post-paid major carrier contract and moving over to an MVNO like Straight Talk.

So I'm not going to walk you though the sign-up process over at Straight Talk.  But I am going to explain the transition process.  Assuming you've already got a Nexus 4 (or other carrier unlocked phone), head on over to Straight Talk (and don't forget to grab some frequently available free shipping).  Do the obvious...

1. Click Shop>Sim Cards>Please choose the type of phone you have, and selected "Unlocked GSM phone".
2. Select an AT&T compatible Straight Talk Micro Sim if you have a Nexus 4.
3. Get the "AT&T Compatible Micro SIM + Unlimited* Plan".  As a heads-up - when you receive your shipment, check carefully through all of the envelopes that Straight Talk sends for the ugly green card that has $45 stamp, and has a bar-code and a scratch-off section on the back.
4. Finish your order and wait a few days to receive your shipment.  And yes, FedEx/UPS will require someone to sign for it.

After you receive your cards, you'll need to follow the instructions that come with the card.  With your current phone powered on and working correctly with your old AT&T post-paid service... get started... 

1. Go to Straight Talk and select Activate/Reactive">Transfer Number>Activate my Straight Talk Service with a number from another Company.  
2. Straight Talk will next ask for you AT&T login information, account number, and the last 4 digits of your security code (Remember, your AT&T account number is located at the top of your last invoice - it's NOT your phone number).  
3. If you haven't already done so, now might be a good time to print out any records or invoices you might need for taxes or reimbursement.  Because after you transition your phones, you'll no longer be able to login to the AT&T site.
4. At this point, you still have your Nexus 4 with the old AT&T SIM card installed and you're just waiting.  According to Straight Talk this can take days.  And a skim of various forums suggests that hours is common.  I was moving 2 phones (1 at a time), and slower of the two was the second one, which took a full 5 minutes at around 7:00pm Eastern time mid-week.
5. Make certain you setup Auto-Fill now backed with a credit card so you don't risk loosing your phone number.

How do you know when the number is ported?

If you left your phone on, and working... you'll notice the signal bar has dropped to zero.  And if you try to hit a 3G data network, you wont get a response.  Or if you just want to reboot the thing after waiting a few minutes, you can do that too and see if you have no service.  As soon as service is down and you can no longer make calls, you're ready to finish the process.  

Power off the phone.  Remove the old SIM card, and put the new Straight Talk SIM into the phone, and turn it on.  You should should now be able to place phone calls.  Data doesn't work yet though, on your Nexus 4 you'll need to go to Settings>Mobile Networks>Access Point Names> New APN.  I recommend you go to Straight Talk and make sure you using the latest APN settings, which I'll also post for Good Measure:

Name: Straight Talk, APN: att.mvno, Proxy: Not Set, Port: 80, Username: Not set, Password: Not set, Server: Not Set, MMSC: http://mmsc.cingular.com, MMS Proxy: 66.209.11.33, MMS port: 80, MCC: 310, MNC: 410, Authentication Type: Not Set, APN Protocol: IPv4, APN roaming protocol: IPv4, Bearer: Unspecified).

Are you ready to save $1,000 a year by switching to an MVNO?  Stay tuned, as I'll be reviewing total costs, service quality, and more in an upcoming article.

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Save $1,000 a year by buying a Nexus 4 and moving to Straight Talk? Step 1.

Having been a customer of AT&T mobile services for the better part of a decade, voice and 3G service has been "good enough" for me for a while.  I know some phone geeks rave about the transfer rates on Verizon, or T-Mobile, and for some reason most just seem to hate AT&T... but despite living and breathing IT for most of my life, I just can't get juiced about mobile bandwidth.  WiFi at home, WiFi at the offices, and more bandwidth than I really need most of the time... it works.  So, what I have is really good enough.

But good enough, is also expensive.  Too expensive.

My objective is to reduce the total cost of my my plan by some noteworthy amount... say $1,000.  And to do it in such a manner that I don't have to think about my minutes, my texts, or my data - because I won't.  I also don't want to have to be ever in search of hot-spots, or anything like that... because that's irritating.  Oh, and I don't want a contract, because who in their right mind would want one?  I also don't mind paying more for a phone either, if it can be cost justified.

The history...

So flash back a couple of years to when I last renewed my contract... I was really looking for a pre-paid monthly option, and did a bit of market analysis and considered Simple Mobile, which at that point was an independent MVNO that ran on T-Mobile's network.  However, for a number of reasons... not the least of which was perceived complexity and a need to replace a phone quickly, I failed to pull the trigger and ultimately re-upped with AT&T.

What's an MVNO, you ask? 

Good question... an MVNO is a mobile virtual network operator.  To make a somewhat long, and unnecessarily convoluted story shorter... and MVNO buys capacity on someone else's network (e.g. AT&T, T-Mobile, etc.).  They negotiate to get wholesale rates, and then they chop it up and resell it to to consumers.  So they're a middle man... they don't own a network, and they don't build service.  They just repackage the capacity.  Virgin Mobile UK (1999) was the first to successfully make inroads in the UK MVNO space.  And if you know anything about Virgin, they're an interesting company that takes risk.  Helm'd by Sir Richard Branson, they tend to get involved in markets that abuse, neglect, and gouge their customers...like the mobile phone market, or the Airline business, and then they do it better/faster/cheaper... or at least cheaper (or they go out of Business, Like Virgin Brides).

Why do carriers resell to MVNOs?

An even better question.  One which I've found more difficult to answer.  There's some evidence to suggest that at one time, MVNOs let carriers service a market that they previously were unable to reach.  For example, having a cell phone contract requires some type of credit score (and a cursory skim of the Internet suggests it's south of 500).  But the reality today is that if your breathing, and you don't owe a major carrier money... you can probably get a contract.  That still leaves swaths of the market under-served.  So an MVNO steps in and can enable the carrier to reach a market that they have historically identified as too high-risk, and at the same time put phones in the hands of people that otherwise might be unable to get them.  Or, that once was the argument.  So win-win, right?  Well, I think it's a bit more complicated than that.  The reality today is that there are so many MVNOs out there on each major carrier, that the carriers are being forced by the market to enable MVNO's to compete, and what might have started out as a means to reach more subscribers could be more disruptive than the carrier's originally anticipated.  Although at the end of the day, the carriers are the carriers... they own the infrastructure and that counts for something.

Where's the market going?

 MVNOs seem to be here to stay, and while there are scores of them, Straight Talk appears to be the leader right now, reselling AT&T and T-Mobile in a one-size-fits-all $45 of month plan that includes unlimited voice, text, and data (officially throttled after 2gb).  That fact, combined with what Google is doing via their carrier unlocked Nexus branded phones, and the carrier market is under a bit of pressure in the US.  For instance, With a Nexus 4 you get the fastest, most up-to-date Android-based phone on the market, with a LG-manufactured "zerogap" LCD Display.  Put another way, the phone doesn't suck, and and is a viable competitor with the iPhone 5, and costs $299 with no contract.   In terms of network performance, on AT&T the phone can do HSPA+ in markets where it exists (HSPA+ is a 4G-ish service, based on 3G and is faster than traditional 3G, but slower than 4G LTE).

The market:

• As of 1/2013, AT&T is paying an annual dividend of over 5%, and the performance of their stock suggests that the future is bright.  Indeed, if BT is the canary in the coal mine, then the prospects for AT&T remain strong if they're able to jettison legacy costs. 
• The percentage of the US population that has cell phones is 103%.
• From 2006 - 2011, AT&T invested more than $115 billion in operations and spectrum.
• Mobile traffic grew at more than 20,000 percent in 2011
• AT&T Added 7.7 million subscribers in 2011

The Plan:

I'm currently paying $2k per year ($167 per month) for two AT&T mobile lines with a mix of voice/text/data services.  Straight Talk offer unlimited talk/text/data for $45 per month per line, or $1,080 per year. To get two Nexus phones, I'm going to pay a $200 premium relative to a comparable carrier-subsidized Samsung Galaxy S3.  So after 2.6 months, I'll recover the premium that I paid for the phones.  And moving forward, I'm saving $924 per year for more minutes, more texts, and unlimited data on both lines.

Stay tuned to this series, as I review the switch, number port, etc.  Ready for part 2?


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