Updated Cricket coverage vs.Straight Talk coverage?

I was considering going with Straight Talk, but am now wondering how Cricket's new and improved coverage will compare with Straight Talk's use of the Verizon native network.

I understand that Vz network is the biggest, but am wondering if Cricket's collection of roaming agreements will make it a strong alternative. I know you can get Vz roaming for an extra $5 on Cricket, but I would like to keep things as cheap as possible.

Your thoughts on how the new Cricket compares with ST?
 
Basically Cricket now has the coverage that Sprint does and Straight Talk has the coverage that Verizon does. Just look at the maps and see which one works for you.
 
Yes.

Roaming on the new national talk and text rate plans works like this.
If you have any plan other than the new $60 plan (which includes 100 min of roaming) you will need to add a roaming feature package ($5 for 30 min) to your account to enable roaming. Once that 30 min is used up you can raom from your flex bucket at the rate of $0.25 per minute. That's 25 cents not 39. (per minute roaming hasnt been 39 cents since last noveraber)
So as an example if you are on the $40 plan and have $27 in your flex bucket and go into a roaming area you will NOT have service.
However if you add a roaming feature pack for $5 to your account before you leave your Cricket area, once the 30 min from that pack is used up you will still have service available until your $27 dollars is gone. At $0.25 per minute that would be 108 minutes.

If you like you can also add the $5 roaming package up to 5 times for a total of 150 minutes for $25.. again once these minutes are gone you can roam from the flex bucket at $0.25 per minute until your flex bucket funRAB are depleted.
 
Thanks for the info,everybody!
If you would, please confirm if I'm interpreting the posts correctly:
Within Cricket markets, when you access Sprint towers it is not considered "roaming."
 
IF you are able to access Sprint in a Cricket market it is because the decision was made to turn on certain areas to enhance that market. You should not be charged roaming.
 
i mean you can look at the coverage maps... they both have them on their websites... but straight talk definitely beats cricket coverage wise, but i had straight talk and it was a mistake... the straight talk CS reps were awful, i don't mean the accents, i can get past that, but they don't know how to do anything! all they know how to do is set up an account and thats it... i was the biggest straight talk supporter till 3 months into it i started having service issues... my service would freak out where i had full bars and it would jump down to 0 for about 5 minutes... i could make and receive calls, but they were choppy and were eventually dropped. i tried rebooting my phone when this would happen, but as soon as the power came back on, the bars were still at 0... i even updated the PRL which did nothing.... i switched BACK to cricket after that... it started to happen every 10 or so minutes... just insane, and the CS reps did nothing, it was like they didn't even hear what i was saying... they were just programmed to have a one solution fixes all...

plus you never know if they will cut you off, its the most unstable company, it got stressful everytime my bill was due. i got tired of it and even got a new phone nuraber cause straight talk wouldn't let mine go... just absolutely ridiculous...
 
Yeah, I checked out the coverage maps, but I've learned to be suspicious of them. As they say, your mileage may vary.

Anyway, with all the hype about the new roaming agreements announced today, I was hopeful that Cricket's coverage might be a little better.
 
Does that apply to the month you add the minutes too, and then after that it expires and you have to do it again for the next month? or after you add the $5 package, can you use roaming minutes at $0.25/min forever? lol

does that question make sense? i don't want to have to keep adding roaming minutes every moneth because i don't know when i'm going to be roaming, i just want to have the capablility to make a roaming call (without calling and asking for the $5 package right then) if i need to
 
I have a Straight Talk Samsung Messenger and I have a Cricket Motorola Hint.
I had Straight Talk and the coverage was and is awesome. I haven't been anywhere yet that I didn't have coverage. (I live in Bastrop, Texas) Even in the little dinky one-horse towns and out in the country I have experienced lose of signal for about 100 feet on a dirt road way off the beaten track then it was right back.

I had been interested in Cricket for a couple of years and it finally arrived in Bastrop. I saved up the money for the Hint, gave my Straight Talk to my DH and got the Cricket $40 a month plan which amounts to $47.21 compared to Straight Talks $48.71 every 30 days.

I love the phone.

First thing I discovered was that I barely have service in my home. If I need to make an important call I use DH's Straight Talk. Next thing I discovered was that the Hint has been discontinued and I wasn't even able to register it with Motorola. If I go into Austin, which I rarely do or go into town in Bastrop I have pretty good coverage. If I go 5-10 miles in any other direction, I have no phone and I mean no service at all.
I bought the phone March 31st and the day after Easter I tried to return it and was told that since I had talked on it for more than 30 minutes I couldn't return it. I had talked on it for 51 minutes.
So I have a really cool phone that is almost useless to me. I really wish I could get my Straight Talk phone back from my husband, but he isn't about to take the Cricket.
When my free month is up I probably won't pay for another month and I'll just throw the phone in a drawer. I couldn't even get a call for it from Craig's List when I posted it for sale.
I gotta start saving change for another Straight Talk phone now.
Oh and there's no roaming with Straight Talk. It's just really really unlimited talk not like Cricket. I think I hate Cricket.
But I love the phone.
 
I have to agree with you. I live in the Knox, tn area. We have had cricket in the area for better than ten years. You can't drive for 10 minutes without hitting 15 dead spots. I have had cricket several times over the years and I must say that their signal strength is getting better all the time but the final straw with myself was at my work I got zero signal. I had to spend my break outside with one bar and was always saying, "what? i can't hear you. repeat that?" It got irritating. Not to mention the phones that cricket has available. The most basic P.O.S. phone is usually better than 100$ and the decent ones are unbelievable. So I switched to Straight Talk and got the 79$ LG phone and got the wife the 99$ Samsung Messenger. I now have 100% coverage EVERYWHERE at work and all over town. I havn't found any dead spots in the six to seven months I've had it. The only issue I have with service is I can't make ringtones and send them to my phone online. All of the sites I know of don't support straight talk. I have tried verizon, trac phone (which if you read the back of a straight talk time card it says powered by trac phone), and other. None of those work. Other than that there have been no issues to speak of.

I do have to say that the Straight Talk phones are somewhat durabed-down versions of the ones originally released with whatever company. Before straight talk my had the Samsung Messenger offered from Cricket, 200$, it only lasted about 5 months before it fell apart but the image quality of everything was much better.

Another thing I dislike about Cricket is the rate at which they cycle their phone nurabers. Any time we get new Cricket service we get people calling us for the previous nuraber holder. I know this is to-be-expected but it always lasts for 6months or more. It's always the same people calling. I don't know how durab you can be that if you are told so and so isn't at this nuraber anymore you'd get the hint after SIX MONTHS! Cricket is not to blame for the stupidity of some people but i wish they would hold a nuraber for a few months before they issue it out to somebody else.

The wife has decided to switch back to cricket because she doesn't like the way her phone handles web browsing. I don't use mine for anything other than google or wikipedia, which it does fine with. I guess she has more problems with the networking sites.

Anyways make sure you look into all of the features you will be using before you decide on one. I also highly recommend getting a nice phone and flashing or having it flashed if you decide to go with cricket.


*EDIT* I dislike the edit button. It tripled/mixed up a lot of text. Took forever to straighten out.
 
Trac Phone owns Straight Talk. Straight Talk uses Verizon's network. Verizon and Straight Talks coverage is near identical. Verizon should have worked for you just as well as Straight Talk. ST is MUCH cheaper though!
 
cricket signed roaming agreements with many other carriers besides sprint. There are alot of regional carriers as well as metropcs. So having someone look at sprint's coverage is not accurate. Just look at the coverage map for your area on mycricket.com to get the most accurate map.
 
Thanks, jgalaz. I saw the maps and they look really comprehensive, but I don't really trust carrier maps.

Can anyone tell me what their experience with the NEW coverage is like?

I'd also love to hear if anyone can give insight on their experience with the updated roaming coverage in the Little Rock AR, Detroit MI, New York NY, and Princeton NJ metro areas. I live in Little Rock, but travel a lot for work to those areas.
 
the new coverage is great! there were plenty of buildings where i never got a single bar at before, but now i have full bars! i dunno about traveling yet...
 
I don't understand how that is possible since Cricket is not allowing in-market roaming. If you are in a Cricket market, then coverage is identical as before. You will only see changes when you travel outside your local Cricket market...
 
At different places in my house when I try to place a call I get a message stating that I can complete my call by using a credit card; how lame is that? I haven't had a phone that charged roaming in years. Sooooo . . .
this morning I boxed up my Motorola Hint that I really loved and gave it to my grand daughter. She is living in Austin so she will be okay with Cricket there. Her dad said he would pay for her service. Now I am without a phone until I can scrap up the money for a new Straight Talk phone. Sure wish I could afford the Samsung R810c, but that is just too much money for me even for a touch screen.
So guess I won't be coming back to the Cricket forum again.

Ann
 
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