Verizon, Verizon prepaid, Straight Talk data coverage

Yes the coverage area is the same. However the download/upload speed has been reported to be heavily throttled using Straight Talk. No difference has been reported between Prepaid vs. Contract plans.

As far as I know the coverages are identical. One word of caution. If you go with straight talk get the 4g unit instead of their 3g unit. Verizon has plans to leave the 3g space in the not to distant future.

The throttling that I have read about does not worry me much.

I switched from Verizon to Straightalk when I discovered that Straightalk sold a few phones that use Verizon towers (required in my area). Been a happy camper but you should note that you need to buy a Verizon capable Straightalk phone and when I bought they were limited to 3G and probably a generation behind the latest/greatest. I am unsure but believe that tethering Straightalk phones is a problem. For my use (phone, text, internet surfing) works great.

I recently converted to Straight Talk from Sprint and so far I'm impressed with their coverage on a GSM phone. One thing to note is that Straight Talk does not allow roaming. I'm assuming that if you are out of their coverage area, you just won't have service but I have yet to run into this.

What is throttling?

mikeleblanc413 wrote:
What is throttling?

Throttling is when a carrier reduces the speed of a data download or upload. For instance Verizon 4G LTE down load speed is normally around 20mbs. Straight Talk download speed on the same Verizon network is reportedly reduced to 3.5mbs causing slower downloads and uploads.

Just beware that NOT all the phones sold at Walmart for Straight Talk are Verizon. Some of them are ATT.

I found out AFTER I bought the phone.:R

It is listed on their website under the picture of the different phones if you carefully read all the specs of each phone you will find which phones are ATT and which are Verizon. And you can't change it.

You have to buy specific phones to get the carrier you want.

If you look on the box of a Straight Talk phone look for CDMA-V which will be a Verizon phone. Also not all 4GLTE phones on Straight Talk are on Verizon. If it says LTE alone on the phone code like the CDMA-V you may be getting an ATT or TMobile LTE phone and service.

Also - tethering by cable or wifi is prohibited by Straight Talk - it is in the agreement. If you tether and they figure it out by data usage they will come back at you.

My wife has Straight Talk with Verizon service and is very happy with it. She does not use much internet on the phone so I cannot comment on how good it is, but she does only have 3G on the phone she has which is a Blackberry. She is on the $45 unlimited plan.

Regarding the data on Straight Talk.

You can monitor your data usage on these phones and I highly suggest you check it as soon as you activate your phone because data is being constantly used and you are not using it!

I do NOT use the data at all on my phone and after only one week I had reached their 'so-called' threshold for throttling and I never used any data!

Straight Talk is heavily all hooked up with google. There were all these programs running in the background eating up all your data. I went in and disabled as many as I could that they hadn't hooked up with the actual phone usage so you couldn't disable them. :R
And btw they run even if you shut off the data tab.

Go to:
1. Settings
2. Data Usage
3. Scroll down and see all what is running eating data and they actually show you how much
4. You can go into some of them and disable them completely and others you only can disable the background usage.