If On GoPhone - How Is Your Experience With The Lack of Roaming?

[tmann202]

Seriously considering joining GoPhone with a new smartphone, probably a Moto X (currently on Sprint 3G), but I am wondering how people are faring regarding coverage/signal loss since there is no roaming (when I found this out it stopped me in my tracks from joining right away). I live in DC and travel to Long Island NY, Portland ME, San Diego, Norfolk VA, Dayton OH, Chicago, and Gulfport/Biloxi MS, among other places.

If you comment please say where you had the good/bad experience. I like the price and 4G capability, and I know the network has improved in recent years, but I also like knowing I have a signal just about anywhere right now even if it's only 3G on a Palm Centro, instead of having no signal at all if I am out of AT&T's coverage. (I have looked at coverage maps but still would like to hear people's personal experiences since maps can be incomplete or inaccurate.)

 

[Gekko]

it's a non-issue. the AT&T GoPhone Map and the AT&T Post-Paid Map are identical. i travel the entire east coast and have no issues. i was with Sprint from 2008 to Nov 2013 and switch to AT&T GoPhone. i was shocked at how fast and ubiquitous AT&T LTE 4G is. i didn't know what i was missing!

GoPhone customers ( since june 2013) are treated on par with postpaid at&t customers - they use the same apn settings. I specifically asked at&t tech support and was told that go phone customers are now on the same n/w as postpaid. This means that they should in theory have same access to roaming ( as long as the phone also supports roaming partner frequencies).
Yeah, Aio customers have to go through a proxy. There's a youtube video where a guy does a speedtest with an AT&T sim (i don't remember if it was gophone or contract sim), and has a ping in the 60's. He pops in Aio sim, and ping goes into the 200s.
GoPhone doesn't throttle your data speeds. 8mb/s is about the average HSPA+ speeds for AT&T in some areas. Their LTE is much faster, maybe more than twice or three times that.

good luck.

 

[tmann202]

Thanks, good to know about your experiences.

Huh I was told by AT&T customer service that there is NO roaming with GoPhone, and their map shows "partner networks" where you supposedly would not get service without roaming (not that they make it easy to read, with the very similar colors).

Very frustrating that it's so hard to get straight answers with all this stuff. Then again I guess AT&T has the largest GSM network so maybe there is not much to roam to. One nice thing about Sprint 3G is the ability to roam on Verizon, which has better coverage here in DC, but I am ready to move on.

 

[Gekko]

Sprint sucks. you will be shocked at the LTE speed and coverage difference.

Nexus 5 + AT&T GoPhone.

 

[Mike Pawka]

There is no roaming with the gophone. I'm in San Diego and sometimes travel to parts of Arizona where there is no AT&T coverage. I have to bring along a cheap Verizon phone to get coverage.

Mike

 

[tmann202]

There is no roaming with the gophone. I'm in San Diego and sometimes travel to parts of Arizona where there is no AT&T coverage. I have to bring along a cheap Verizon phone to get coverage.

Mike

Correct me if I'm wrong since I'm just getting acquainted with the details of all this stuff but even if you could roam, wouldn't you still not get service since AT&T (GSM) can't roam on Verizon (CDMA) (and I just read something that said they made it so you can't roam across LTE)? Or am I mistaken?

 

[Mike Pawka]

There is no roaming with the gophone. I'm in San Diego and sometimes travel to parts of Arizona where there is no AT&T coverage. I have to bring along a cheap Verizon phone to get coverage.

Mike

I should clarify, it's the "Pay as you go" version of gophone that does not allow roaming.

Mike