It's still impossible to get a Straight Talk AT&T SIM online unless you get it on eBay for $3-4x the face value cost.

While there's speculation out there that it's a due to a problem with the SIM design, or AT&T is losing money from people who bought locked phones but then used a ST SIM, or ..., it seems that something else is going on.

ST is part of the same company that owns Net10. Net10 says - https://net10data.com/ (which of course is an image so I can't extract the text). Here - http://androidheadli...ited-anymore.html

Many of you out there are using Straight Talk, Net10, or a number of other MVNO’s that operate on AT&T or T-Mobile’s network. Well today we have some interesting information for you. It appears that users on Straight Talk using an AT&T SIM card will no longer have unlimited data as of March 1st. Instead, it’ll be capped at 1.5GB and then throttled down to EDGE or 2G speeds. But we kinda knew AT&T would do this since Straight Talk’s market share is going through the roof. Especially with the Nexus 4 being so cheap unlocked. Straight Talk has been taking customers away from AT&T’s prepaid GoPhone service.

Now this doesn’t affect T-Mobile SIM cards for Straight Talk, just AT&T ones. Here’s the full statement from Net10 as well as Tracfone. Tracfone owns Straight Talk and Net10.

[...]

So, it looks like I have to go with T-Mobile for the Nexus4 if I want reasonable data access unless I go directly with AT&T. T claims I have "Good" coverage outside my home, which probably means 3G when conditions are optimum. Bah. Their plans are $60/month for up to 2.5 GB 4G, $70/month for "unlimited" 4G. Or $30/month for 100 minutes with up to 5GB 4G. If J ends up using it a lot, 100 minutes won't be nearly enough.

Our iPad v1 works well enough on 3G inside on AT&T. Their prepaid coverage map also shows "Good" while their standard data plan map shows "Excellent" (which probably means they have 4G planned here but aren't guaranteeing anything).

AT&T's prepaid data/voice plan is $65/mo for 1 GB (presumably plus taxes). Extra GBs are $50 each?!? ($0.05/MB * 1000 MB/GB = $50.). Zooks! Their "Mobile Share" plan with 4 GB of data per month is $110 for 1 phone or $150 for 2 phones (plus taxes and fees).

This is insane. But it looks like the AT&T MVNOs are being killed off - I wouldn't be surprised if the others end up in the same boatt.

Gotta keep pondering what to do... :-(

Cheers,
Scott.

As I understand it, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus on Verizon is a CDMA/LTE/GSM phone. The CDMA/LTE only works on Verizon; the GSM only works outside the US (as I understand it). I vaguely recall that Verizon had it locked for a while so that you could only use their network overseas with it (not simply pop in a local GSM SIM). I don't know if they unlocked it - I'm sure they didn't do it unless they had to.

The (LG) Nexus 4 is GSM only. The Nexus 4 isn't an option on Verizon.

While J has Verizon, I want to avoid it because I really don't like the company and I want to be able to use local SIMs when we travel overseas. I've still got Sprint, but don't think we'll see LTE from Sprint in this neck of the woods in the next 5 years or more, and it has the same non-GSM issues as Verizon...

Yeah, hemming and hawing is a fault of mine, but it's cheaper than buying something that I don't fully understand. Beats reading and posting about stupid politics, doesn't it? ;-)

I'm mainly worried about data usage on the road - I understand Google Maps and Navigation can eat up a lot of data... If we're off the road then WiFi is likely to be available.

I'm leaning toward the $30/mo T-mobile 100min+data plan. Even if it doesn't work very well here at home, we can always download off-line maps for it, and we'll have a GSM phone that we can use traveling in Europe and elsewhere. But I'm still on the fence, though leaning now.

Thanks.

Cheers,
Scott.

$10 microSIM + tax purchased from http://prepaid-phone...om/phone-sim-card , will sign up for the $30/mo plan here: http://prepaid-phone...com/prepaid-plans

Nexus 4 16GB for $349 + tax, shipping from the Play Store - https://play.google....s?id=nexus_4_16gb

We'll see how it goes.

Thanks for all the advice everyone.

Cheers,
Scott.