Carrier Cricket Questions

[XTheLancerX]

my family is currently on Verizon... We have 12GB shared plan and 5 devices, one is a basic phone. After taxes and fees, it's like $220/mo BEFORE device installments, etc. Right now we pay $283/mo. And we get only 12GB to share between all of us!!

I noticed that Cricket is only $180 for 4 lines with 10GB EACH... And since it's prepaid it's exactly $180 right? We probably would go more for a 10GB line, a 5GB line, a 5GB line, and a 2.5GB line which would be $140 (+ $10 to $20 for enabling tethering on a line or two). The fifth line I mentioned earlier would get axed, it's a family member who already pays us to be on our Verizon plan. They can easily pay that same amount for a plan on their own.

Aaaannyywaayy.. What major things would we be losing, coming from Verizon? I know we will lose Wi-Fi calling and VoLTE which really sucks but we can do without it. Tethering if we don't pay up. What else?

Does Cricket allow us to pay for our phones via installment plans? And does Cricket have any type of delay when it comes to access to new flagship smartphones?

Is it possible to get a cell booster with Cricket just in case service is bad in our house (I'm almost positive AT&T is pretty much identical to Verizon where I am in terms of service so we should be fine but just in case)? Would it just be an AT&T one?

I am aware of the 8mbps cap on speeds. Has this affected any of you guys on Cricket? Do you pretty much always get 8mbps down where service is good or does the cap sort of cause speeds to be much slower than that for some reason? Is the ping (network latency) bad? I've heard that it is usually worse on these smaller MVNOs as they have to tunnel the data through differently to use the big guy's networks.

And lastly, I'm wondering how I personally could try out Cricket, just me before the whole family jumps ship. I'm 16, so, would I be able to buy a prepaid Cricket SIM + 1 month of service? I would just get the cheapest $40 2.5GB one to test. Since it's prepaid I can just buy this one month and be done with testing correct?

 

[Channan]

I don't have answers to all of your questions, but 8Mbps is plenty for streaming HD video. Obviously app downloads are going to be slower, but that should still be fast enough for anything you want to do on a phone.

I'm not sure what the latency is on Cricket, but it's going to be worse than regular AT&T service as a side effect of throttling speeds to 8Mbps. It should still be fine for VoIP and video chat, but some online gaming may give you issues.

And yes, you can buy a month of service with Cricket and just cancel after that month if you find they aren't any good.

 

[kupkakez]

There are no cell boosters for cricket. The latency does not seem noticeable to me and I'm streaming video/music/podcasts/games over it pretty often. My SO uses ATT and I really do not see a difference between them. I live in a decent size city and regularly hit the 8mb cap.

They did or do have phone installments at some stores I would not recommend this to anyone. It has something like 30% interest and is done through a 3rd party.

As far as flagships your options will be limited. iPhones in 16 and 64gb versions and the only Samsung flagships I've seen is the Galaxy (s6,s7 etc).

You can pick up a SIM at a store or other places such as some Gamestops have them.

 

[timeconsumer]

my family is currently on Verizon... We have 12GB shared plan and 5 devices, one is a basic phone. After taxes and fees, it's like $220/mo BEFORE device installments, etc. Right now we pay $283/mo. And we get only 12GB to share between all of us!!

I noticed that Cricket is only $180 for 4 lines with 10GB EACH... And since it's prepaid it's exactly $180 right? We probably would go more for a 10GB line, a 5GB line, a 5GB line, and a 2.5GB line which would be $140 (+ $10 to $20 for enabling tethering on a line or two). The fifth line I mentioned earlier would get axed, it's a family member who already pays us to be on our Verizon plan. They can easily pay that same amount for a plan on their own.

Aaaannyywaayy.. What major things would we be losing, coming from Verizon? I know we will lose Wi-Fi calling and VoLTE which really sucks but we can do without it. Tethering if we don't pay up. What else?

Does Cricket allow us to pay for our phones via installment plans? And does Cricket have any type of delay when it comes to access to new flagship smartphones?

Is it possible to get a cell booster with Cricket just in case service is bad in our house (I'm almost positive AT&T is pretty much identical to Verizon where I am in terms of service so we should be fine but just in case)? Would it just be an AT&T one?

I am aware of the 8mbps cap on speeds. Has this affected any of you guys on Cricket? Do you pretty much always get 8mbps down where service is good or does the cap sort of cause speeds to be much slower than that for some reason? Is the ping (network latency) bad? I've heard that it is usually worse on these smaller MVNOs as they have to tunnel the data through differently to use the big guy's networks.

And lastly, I'm wondering how I personally could try out Cricket, just me before the whole family jumps ship. I'm 16, so, would I be able to buy a prepaid Cricket SIM + 1 month of service? I would just get the cheapest $40 2.5GB one to test. Since it's prepaid I can just buy this one month and be done with testing correct?

I understand you're specifically asking about cricket, but just wanted to mention that t-mobile offers a plan for 4 devices at $120 per month with 6GB data for each device and includes binge on.

Depending on what phones you have and coverage in your area (and places you travel to) this would be better than Cricket in my opinion. Might be something to look into if you're not 100% sold on Cricket.

 

[XTheLancerX]

There are no cell boosters for cricket. The latency does not seem noticeable to me and I'm streaming video/music/podcasts/games over it pretty often. My SO uses ATT and I really do not see a difference between them. I live in a decent size city and regularly hit the 8mb cap.

They did or do have phone installments at some stores I would not recommend this to anyone. It has something like 30% interest and is done through a 3rd party.

As far as flagships your options will be limited. iPhones in 16 and 64gb versions and the only Samsung flagships I've seen is the Galaxy (s6,s7 etc).

You can pick up a SIM at a store or other places such as some Gamestops have them.

Hmm. Ive heard of their awful EIP plan and yeah nope. I've done a little research on my own and have completely decided against the switch because of two family members that use Android. My mom and I have an iPhone 6s and iPhone 6 respectively. Switching for us would be extremely easy, but for my dad and brother that prefer android... It would be far more annoying for multiple reasons.

The android phones in question have terrible support for the LTE networks, the one has only bands 4/13. The other has bands 2/4/5/13/26. The network cricket uses, AT&T, needs bands 2/4/5/17/30 with 17 being the most important one to have. My mom's phone and my phone? They have literally everything we would need for AT&T except for band 30, but that's the least important band as it's just being deployed and only in cities to relieve congestion. We live in a rural area.

The lack of EIPs would only hit my dad and my brother because they aren't with Apple. My mom and I could easily just finance with Apple's iPhone Upgrade Program.

Finally, updates. The android phones will pretty much cease to get software updates as freaking android is annoying, being controlled by carriers and such. I've heard cricket is awful with updates for Android.

I understand you're specifically asking about cricket, but just wanted to mention that t-mobile offers a plan for 4 devices at $120 per month with 6GB data for each device and includes binge on.

Depending on what phones you have and coverage in your area (and places you travel to) this would be better than Cricket in my opinion. Might be something to look into if you're not 100% sold on Cricket.

I would LOVE to switch to T-Mobile but it is a 100% absolute no because of coverage, and only that. I got a prepaid T-Mobile SIM to test the coverage and holy crap there is no service in my entire town except up my street where I got 4 bars of EDGE from a tower 9 miles away... Verizon and AT&T are the only viable options. Sprint gets 3G decently consistently but a lot of roaming on other networks would happen according to the only person I know around here who uses Sprint which is no bueno.

Nearest place with service is like 10-15 miles away and it's spotty there too. After that it's 30-40 miles away and it's spotty there as well with No Service in buildings. It's because of the geography here. All the towers are placed high up in the hills with low-band spectrum in mind. The 1900mhz band 2 LTE does not fare well with this, by the time it covers the distance from the hills, it's pretty weak. Buildings then promptly kill the already weak signal. This region needs 700mhz band 12 LTE really badly which travels much farther and actually penetrates buildings decently.

It's so rural though there's little reason to cover here... Zip is 14813. Only hope of getting coverage is if they cover the i86 which is decently plausible actually. Anything off of there though would be unlikely. T-Mobile would simply want to cover more major freeways and such to avoid expensive roaming on AT&T's network that would happen from simply commuting customers.

 

[kupkakez]

Just a note as far as I know you cannot use the Apple upgrade program with prepaid. I'm not sure if that's changed lately but I'm sure someone will chime in to correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[XTheLancerX]

Just a note as far as I know you cannot use the Apple upgrade program with prepaid. I'm not sure if that's changed lately but I'm sure someone will chime in to correct me if I'm wrong.

Crap well that throws my idea of using iPhone Upgrade program to avoid the big upfront costs. I honestly thing it makes more sense to just set aside some money for a few months ahead of time and then pay upfront but my parents do not. Not in my control, they refuse to do so and I don't have a job to pay for my own crap. I'd be on my own plan if that was the case. I'm just thankful my parents are gracious enough to pay for my line and phone through installments in the first place.

 

[Racer198]

I was in the same situation with T-Mobile. No service. We have five lines with cricket and the signal is still weak inside but fine most of the time. The fifth line is free. I heard with the upgrade program you can cancel AT&T right away if switch to cricket.

 

[kupkakez]

I was in the same situation with T-Mobile. No service. We have five lines with cricket and the signal is still weak inside but fine most of the time. The fifth line is free. I heard with the upgrade program you can cancel AT&T right away if switch to cricket.

Yes you can do that. You can have them start a line with ATT get the phone and go home and cancel the ATT line. Biggest downside to this is you are taking 2 hits to your credit. One for ATT to start service and one for Citizens for the phone loan. You'd have to decide if that's something you'd want to do or not.