Straight Talk by Tracfone [Telecom]

I had one a few years ago and it pretty much worked everywhere. They seem to have reciprocal agreements with all the big players. Mine worked in and around Blacksburg, Va. where I live, and when a friend and I rode our motorcycles out ot Sturgis, SD it worked everywhere there was a signal.

I think they home to Verizon when there is a choice, but as I said, mine worked pretty much anyplace that had signal.

Bill Ranck Blacksburg, Va.

Tracfone is a reseller; they buy into various networks, depending on where you are. That is reflected in which flavor phone is sold in your area.

The network they use varies from one part of the country to another. If you can look inside the back of the phone, it's probably AT&T if there's a SIM chip, and Verizon if not.

Note that GSM phones do not work on CDMA networks and vice versa, so your phone will use the network it's built for no matter where in the country you go.

R's, John

Since Southern Maryland is Verizon dominated, Tracfone works very well in most of Maryland. Western MD is iffy mostly because of hill blockage.

Mark L. Smith

________________________________ From: " snipped-for-privacy@vt.edu" To: snipped-for-privacy@> Since I live in a rural area of Virginia, and my service options are

I had one a few years ago and it pretty much worked everywhere. They seem to have reciprocal agreements with all the big players. Mine worked in and around Blacksburg, Va. where I live, and when a friend and I rode our motorcycles out ot Sturgis, SD it worked everywhere there was a signal.

I think they home to Verizon when there is a choice, but as I said, mine worked pretty much anyplace that had signal.

Bill Ranck Blacksburg, Va.

Mine has worked in just about any place I've tried it so far, rural as well as in major cities.

I recently heard a radio advertisement from I believe a Dollar General store that had a TracFone, model unknown by me, that included double minutes for life of the phone with a starting price of $10. At that price I'm thinking of buying one as a backup and activating it only if my present one drops into something wet unexpectedly...

They will transfer an existing TracFone number to a new phone provided you call the service desk before you even try to activate the new phone yourself.

Last time I played around with TracFone they wre a MVNO for AT&T Mobility (formerly Cingular Wireless). This may have changed in recent history, but as of a few months ago, my Motorola C155 was GSM on AT&T.

Dave

As far as you know, John (or anyone), will TracFone give you the subsidy-SIM-unlock code for one of their SIM-based GSM handsets (after a suitable time interval as customer, perhaps)?

TIA. Cheers, -- tlvp

-- Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP

No, they will not. Google around for Tracfone forums and you'll find this is a common question. I can report that the SIM will not work in other phones either, although it did boot up in my V600 enough to let me copy the phone's address book onto the SIM.

I just got a Tracfone Moto V376g. It's a decent phone, but it's quite customized for Tracfone, with a constantly updated home page display of minutes remaining and expiration date. Since the phones are sold far below cost, I gather they have chronic problems with people buying them up, unlocking and perhaps reflashing them, and selling them overseas, so they make them as hard to unlock as they possibly can.

Considering that most of their phones cost about $20, I can hardly blame them.

R's, John