Users can also make purchases online at the Straight Talk and Walmart websites. For companies providing Tracfone's Straight Talk cell phones to employees, the pay-as-you-go feature removes the need for employees to submit expense reports for phone charges and allows the employer to cap monthly spending for employees wanting to use the phone for non-work communications. Straight Talk leases network equipment from other telephone service providers, making it a mobile virtual network operator MVNO.

Straight Talk has structured its business this way to avoid the costs of building its own network so that it can provide lower-cost cell plans, which are ideal for business owners who need to provide cell phones to employees with controlled costs, or anyone who wants more control over their cell phone spending. Cell phone networks rely on more than a million antennas across the country to transmit and receive phone calls.

Many of the antennas, in turn, are mounted on towers.

A single tower can contain a dozen or more antennas from several cell phone service providers as well as from non-commercial communications services, such as police transmissions. Devices and service plans can be purchased via the Total Wireless website, Walmart website, as well as in-store at Walmart, Target and Dollar General.

All plans include unlimited talk minutes and texting; and a variety of data options to choose from. Walmart Family Mobile offers no-contract prepaid plans. Service plans can also be bundled together for families needing more than one line. Customers can decide if they would like to bring their own phone or purchase a new one through Walmart Family Mobile. Apple, Samsung and Android devices are all available for purchase through the company either online or in-stores.

TFWI brands sells phones by many manufacturers. Each phone contains a SIM card applicable to that brand. The choice of phone thus determines the network used and the quality of service in specific locations. A typical retail display includes a coverage map or several, one for each relevant network , indicating the parts of the U. The customer must buy service through the chosen TFWI brand. Service cards are available at many retail locations. A typical service card carries a specified number of service days and usage units such as minutes.

At some stores, there is no service card; instead, the PIN is printed on the sales receipt. The customer can use a brand website, use TFWI customer service, or send a text, to redeem the card. Redemption loads the phone with the purchased resources and prevents the PIN from being reused.

Service cards have a bar code that is scanned on purchase, so that PINs from stolen service cards never become valid. Having bought a phone, the customer must register it with their chosen TFWI brand. This process assigns a phone number to the phone and loads the phone with service days and usage units from the initial service card.

The assigned phone number has an area code and exchange based on a ZIP code that the customer specifies. This choice of a geographic location does not affect service or cost, but it lets customers of landlines in that vicinity reach the TracFone as a local call.

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The customer can transfer an account to another TFWI brand, which activates service under the same phone number and closes the account with the previous provider. The Federal Trade Commission made a lawsuit towards TracFone, saying that they limited their "unlimited" data. Tracfone gave each of their customers an extra 20 units of airtime. TracFone Wireless uses the networks of major wireless providers to offer service, the coverage of which varies by the provider for each device.

Retail boxes indicate the network with a code printed in the lower right corner on the back of the box. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the indoor American football tournament, see Arena Football League. Mobile virtual network operator. Main article: Page Plus Cellular. Main article: Simple Mobile. Retrieved June 13, TracFone Wireless. Retrieved December 27, Retrieved May 31, South Florida Business Journal. Retrieved December 18, TracfoneReviewer blog. Retrieved June 1, Retrieved July 26, No you can only transfer minutes to another Tracfone and yiu can't put an iPhone on Tracfone.

The best thing you can do is to donate the excess funds to charity using SMS. However, it could be roaming, check for a triangle roaming indicator in the top status bar. To determine what network you are roaming on, try dialing and see whose customer support answers. This may not work in all cases as some roaming partners forward calls to the SIM's home operator.

I am leaning toward the Precedent because of the screen size useful for streaming vids on the unlimited data plan. This is an Android phone, so Sprint will the the home network, correct? The Sprint coverage map shows very little coverage for my area and mostly "off network roaming". As stated in the article, prepaids on the Sprint network don't roam.

Does this mean that the Precedent will only have coverage in the dark green coverage areas and not in the lighter green "off network roaming"? If so, traveling even miles would put me out of coverage. Am I correct? The Precedent does use Sprint and there is no roaming so yes you would only have coverage in the Sprint native coverage dark green areas.

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All other Straight Talk Android phone use Sprint. I would have been very disappointed with sprint service. I'm glad I found this! That's strange. I wonder if Tracfone made a mistake or if they changed the way the system works. Hi, I get different answers about porting my tracfone number to iPhone 5. Can I do it? You can't put an iPhone on Tracfone if that's what you mean. Can you give me a heads up about coverage on that route? I have a real simple Samsumg Trac phone which honestly I don't care for, but have almost 1, mins. I would like to get a Net 10 Android phone. I work a lot in an area where Verizon is the only cell service that works.

But I also work quite a lot in areas where Verizon service is veryu spotty and poor while TMobile and Sprint are strong. It doesn't matter to me if I have to by New or shop CL. I have a question, Is it possible to block text messaging on my tracfone?

TracFone Wireless

Can tracfone do that for me? It's probably technically possible for Tracfone to do it but I've never heard of them blocking texts for a customer. At least they don't charge for texts if you don't open them unlike every other operator. Hey thanks for putting this up.

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I wanted to upgrade to a smartphone, and considering that the Samsung Galaxy S II from Straighttalk was the best option on the prepaid market I decided to go with it, I was just worried that it might be a Sprint based phone, which for me at college and back home I get horrible service from. You have a great blog. Thanks for you hard work. I want to purchase a new Iphone 5 when it becomes available unlocked. I live in the area code. What would you recommend for a prepaid carrier that would work for me? Am I able to purchase a sim only or would I be better off purchasing a pre-paid phone through that carrier and popping that sim into the new Iphone?

Also, if I were to purchase a Verizon Iphone 5 without a contract would I be able to get Verizon service somehow on a prepaid? Straight Talk is the most cost-effective choice. Also, you won't get LTE data though,just 3G. If I could find an auto mechanic as meticulous and honest as you - thank you for your info.

I've had tracfone for countless years. Any info on how minute costly it would be to peruse my email hotmail, about 40 per day? Will this be on 2G? Any "average" number of use minutes to expect? Can I look up a Newegg site for example in 10 munutes or less? I assume this is possible with the SG - any info or experiences out there would be appreciated. Hotmail: There's no email client on this phone so you would be using the browser. Newegg: The Newegg site is well optimized or mobile browsers, figure a half a unit to load each page of the site.