Cricket Coverage post AT&T Buyout

[bastage]

I am growing increasingly tired of T-Mobile & thinking its time to switch due to the lack of coverage.

I was thinking I was just going to switch back to Verizon as they have the best coverage in the area, but then I found out Cricket is now AT&T. Well I have family that has AT&T & they get pretty decent coverage so I assume cricket will to. Are cricket customers getting the same tower priority & roaming/shared tower access as normal AT&T?

If so then that will pretty much make up my mind as I can keep my phone (Nexus 5) and grab my daughter a Moto G LTE for 25 bucks after rebate (lower cost for devices then anywhere else combined with very reasonable monthly).

 

[Kluden]

The short answer. Yes.

The long answer, they throttle speeds...so if you have an LTE phone, you will be max downloading at around 8mbps. If you're an insane LTE band downloader, you may be angry at that cap. If you're a typical phone user (I consider typical to be <5gb data per month), you probably won't notice.

Netflix, and other streaming work fine for me. But I came from sprint...two cups with a string between them seem like a winner compared to Sprint.

Coverage wise, its pretty great where I am and travel...SW Ohio to Philly to DC areas. Coverage is phenomenal. Definitely uses AT&T towers. Can't tell you about prioritization though...as I have never had an issue yet.

Also, since you already have a GSM device, and they are a monthly service, it would only cost you $50 to try it out for a month.

 

[bastage]

I'm not too worried about the speeds being throttled. I have Wi-Fi at home and work and both other places where I spend considerable time at.

For me it's just a matter of being able to make a damn call. At my house I can't talk with the handset up to my head or it drops.

 

[bebble]

Google is rumored to be a virtual carrier. Maybe you can wait and see what is going to happen.

 

[CannibalTrout]

I switched to cricket from Verizon and call wise I've haven't seen much difference in call coverage out and about. AT&T signal does suck in buildings tho compared

The throttled 8mb speeds weren't really an issue with me, but the internet doesn't get routed through the same servers as full ATT customers, the ping times are horrid with Cricket. I constantly had issue where it would sit for a good 15-30sec after clicking a link or typing in a url before anything would start loading.

I also had weird issues with the visual voicemail on cricket, I would also get a traditional vmail notification and the visual vmail one on top of that.

the little quirks eventually irritated me enough that I just did a no contract plan through ATT directly. I get a good corp discount so the price was less than $10 more a month. I'm not worried about less data, it's just been a smoother experience on full ATT vs cricket.

 

[bastage]

I switched to cricket from Verizon and call wise I've haven't seen much difference in call coverage out and about. AT&T signal does suck in buildings tho compared

The throttled 8mb speeds weren't really an issue with me, but the internet doesn't get routed through the same servers as full ATT customers, the ping times are horrid with Cricket. I constantly had issue where it would sit for a good 15-30sec after clicking a link or typing in a url before anything would start loading.

I also had weird issues with the visual voicemail on cricket, I would also get a traditional vmail notification and the visual vmail one on top of that.

the little quirks eventually irritated me enough that I just did a no contract plan through ATT directly. I get a good corp discount so the price was less than $10 more a month. I'm not worried about less data, it's just been a smoother experience on full ATT vs cricket.

The corp discount is actually a pretty valid point. Mathematically speaking it would by 8 bucks a month more for AT&T (actually a bit more since AT&T has tax on top of the monthly service) which isnt bad at all, but I would have to look into getting a 2nd phone through some other means as that's about 150 more for the same device.

Maybe ill just use it as an excuse to order myself a direct from Motorola Moto X pure

 

[dandragonrage]

Are cricket customers getting the same tower priority & roaming/shared tower access as normal AT&T? .

In my experience, yes, except that you get no roaming with Cricket (and almost any other MVNO - I can't think of any that do have roaming).

The reception for me is damn near perfect and a LOT better than Sprint (and its MVNO Ting).

Check www.sensorly.com for user reports of coverage, though it is far from perfect. There is no site that will give you a 100% accurate coverage map (especially since it varies between phones and in different types of weather etc.) Still, Sensorly was a big part of the research I did that led to me getting onto the AT&T network because it showed me that AT&T has coverage at a couple of disc golf courses I play at which Sprint and T-Mo did not cover.

AT&T reception is not as good as Verizon but for most people it is good enough. Sprint, for me, was not even close to good enough and that was fairly recently (around 2 years ago).