General points:
- They claim "unlimited data", but after 2GB of mobile data usage, every company except Solavei throttled my connection speeds (or slowed down to a crawl for non-tech nerds). I can't stand a slow internet connection and that drove me crazy.
- Confession: I listen to a lot of streaming music with Google Music All Access, Spotify, Pandora, and Slacker. If you don't burn through data like I do, you may never experience the speed slowdowns.
- These companies pay either AT&T or T-Mobile for the use of their networks.
- AT&T's coverage is better and T-Mobile's HSPA+ connection speeds are better. T-Mobile coverage has been more than adequate for me and I have been satisfied.
- Despite the same starting price of about $50, each carrier had varying taxes and surcharges. I have outlined those below within each carrier's review.
Here are my reviews, starting with my favorite to least favorite carrier.
#1 - Solavei
Their service was provided via the T-Mobile HSPA and HSPA+ network. They don't spend much on advertisement and instead take a unique, word-of-mouth driven approach. If I can get 3 of my friends to sign up with their service, I get paid $20 per month as long as those people stay active customers. For 6 friends, I would get paid $40 and so on.
I had some trouble getting started with their service. When setting up the APN settings, I had to ignore what their support site says. These are the APN settings that I needed for my Nexus 4. They were the last service that I was reviewing, so I also had all of the other services listed in my APN settings. I learned that you can't just choose the Solavei APN, but you need to delete all of the others first and then add the Solavei APN settings. I ended up having to get a new micro SIM card and spend hours chatting with support, so you can learn from my mistakes and just delete the other APNs first.
Once I was up and running, things have been great. As I mentioned earlier, Solavei did not throttle my data connection speeds, no matter how much data I have used. This is a big deal for me and the reason that I will be staying with them. It is odd how much more in taxes and surcharges they have over Simple Mobile, Straight Talk, and Net 10. Although, I'm certainly willing to pay an extra $5-10 per month for a non-throttled data connection.
- Cost: $49.00 monthly service charge + $10.67 taxes and surcharges = $59.67 per month.\
When I first started service with Straight Talk, I had the choice of an AT&T compatible SIM card or a T-Mobile compatible SIM card. I bought a couple of AT&T compatible micro SIM cards for testing. I am assuming that it must be cheaper for Straight Talk to pay T-Mobile for the use of their networks, because now there is only a choice of a T-Mobile compatible SIM card when you start a new account and the AT&T compatible SIM cards are going for $60-100 on Amazon.
I had very good coverage and working with their customer service was just fine. After about 2GB of mobile data usage, they did slow my connection speeds, but not as slow as Simple Mobile and Net 10 made my connection. If somethings goes wrong with Solavei, I will switch back to Straight Talk.
- Cost: $45 monthly service charge - $2.50 discount for auto-pay + $4.76 taxes and surcharges = $47.26 per month.
#3 - Simple Mobile
Their service was provided via the T-Mobile network. It was nice that I could get their micro SIM card for less than $1. While I enjoyed reasonable coverage and decent connection speeds, after about 2GB of data usage my connection speed was throttled. When I used them just a few months ago, they didn't have auto-pay options in place and it was annoying to set calendar reminders to pay the cell phone bill manually. From their website now, it looks like they caught up with the times and added auto-pay.
- Cost: $50.00 monthly service charge + $5.80 taxes and surcharges = $55.80 per month.
#4 - Net 10
Their service was provided through AT&T's network, which was great for coverage. I was a very satisfied customer for about 1 week. After using only 500MB of data, my connection speed was throttled to less than 0.3 Mbps. To me, that's not even a data connection. After a couple weeks of these slow speeds, I called their customer service and asked why I they were slowing down my connection speeds. The support person said they were definitely not doing that. I said goodbye and moved onto the next carrier.
- Cost: $50 monthly service charge - $5 discount for auto-pay+ $5.04 taxes and surcharges = $50.04 per month. This is for the first line. For the second line, it was an additional $45 monthly service charge - $5 discount for auto-pay + $5.43 taxes and surcharges = $45.43 per month. For two lines, it was $95.47.
If you are wondering how I tested data usage and speeds, I was able to track data usage through the settings in my phone and I frequently used the Speedtest.net app in multiple locations.
