AIO at throttled data speed

[nelhop]

My Nexus 5 has been shipped!! Now I have to decide on a carrier. I'm considering AIO, the 2GB plan, because ATT coverage is better than TMobile in state parks that I visit in the Midwest. Wifi would not be available. I have no idea how fast 2GB data gets used up from such as reading the New York Times, email, weather, and some Google searches. Assuming I run out of the 2GB, does anyone have any experience with the throttled 256K speed? Is it useable for the sort of activities I mentioned?

 

[srkmagnus]

My Nexus 5 has been shipped!! Now I have to decide on a carrier. I'm considering AIO, the 2GB plan, because ATT coverage is better than TMobile in state parks that I visit in the Midwest. Wifi would not be available. I have no idea how fast 2GB data gets used up from such as reading the New York Times, email, weather, and some Google searches. Assuming I run out of the 2GB, does anyone have any experience with the throttled 256K speed? Is it useable for the sort of activities I mentioned?

Is 256k speeds useable? Sure it is, just depends on your patience . Honestly, I would still try and keep data to a minimum so you don't hit the limit too quick. There are browsers (such as Chrome and Opera) that offer data compression and news readers are light on data with a good method of displaying the information you want to read.

Do you currently have a smartphone? If so, try monitoring the data you use with a data monitoring app to give you an idea of how much data is being consumed.

 

[ZacHolley]

I wasted the last of my data with 2 days left on aio last month it was usable for browsing although slower and pandora worked but forget YouTube or downloading play store updates that are of any size

 

[N4Newbie]

My Nexus 5 has been shipped!! Now I have to decide on a carrier. I'm considering AIO, the 2GB plan, because ATT coverage is better than TMobile in state parks that I visit in the Midwest. Wifi would not be available. I have no idea how fast 2GB data gets used up from such as reading the New York Times, email, weather, and some Google searches. Assuming I run out of the 2GB, does anyone have any experience with the throttled 256K speed? Is it useable for the sort of activities I mentioned?

Don't just assume that AIO ill get you the same coverage as AT&T. Here is a copy/paste of an earlier post of mine on this subject:

I never gave much thought to this, but according to this recent New York Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/t...t-free-finding-a-phone-and-plan-that-fit.html the coverage offered by AIO Wireless is not the same as that offered with AT&T's "regular" plans, even though it uses the same network. The same seems to be true for all the carriers who offer both prepaid and pay as you go plans.

Check out the article; it is an interesting read. Specifically concerning AIO, it says, "...and the company uses AT&T’s network, though the coverage area is smaller than it is for AT&T’s contract plans."

 

[chiefandrews]

I've found this to be true. I just returned from a deployment. My AT&T line is still suspended. I bought an AIO SIM and popped it in my Nexus 4. On a recent trip throughout north Georgia my wife (on an iPhone) consistently had AT&T service while my Nexus 4 showed no service. I was pretty frustrated with the lack of service. Luckily, where I live in Alabama, it hasn't been an issue. If it does happen, I suppose I will switch to Go Phone.

 

[nelhop]

Don't just assume that AIO ill get you the same coverage as AT&T. Here is a copy/paste of an earlier post of mine on this subject:

I never gave much thought to this, but according to this recent New York Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/t...t-free-finding-a-phone-and-plan-that-fit.html the coverage offered by AIO Wireless is not the same as that offered with AT&T's "regular" plans, even though it uses the same network. The same seems to be true for all the carriers who offer both prepaid and pay as you go plans.

Check out the article; it is an interesting read. Specifically concerning AIO, it says, "...and the company uses AT&T’s network, though the coverage area is smaller than it is for AT&T’s contract plans."

Interesting! I tried to compare coverage maps for AT&T with AIO. I chose several out-of-the-way zip codes. I noticed that on the AT&T map there are several choices. I get different coverage for "data" than for "GoPhone". Does that mean that pre-paid plans get less coverage than contract plans? The AIO coverage maps are closer to the GoPhone.

 

[soma4society]

As a former T-Mobile customer who has switched to AIO I can tell you the coverage experience is pretty much night and day. I made a cross country trek with two phones and both services (my T-Mobile had yet to be cancelled, and was still active on my iPhone 4s) and it was just unreal the number of places that tmo had little to nothing signal wise, but my new S4 GPE with AIO was at full signal--and often with H+ or LTE. Even in areas I considered remote. Realize I'm just an N of 1 here but it's my experience, and it left me thankful I'd switched. I have never been throttled on AIO (i have 5 gigs for $65/mo), but I do sometimes force my phone onto edge to conserve battery life, and I think that's comparable. So a previous poster had it right. Pandora, Stitcher, etc...you'll be fine. Forget about video though. Overall, I'm very pleased with my AIO experience. Good luck!

Posted with my Google Edition S4, which I love...maybe a little too much.

 

[N4Newbie]

I also switched our N4's (wife's and mine) from T-Mobile to AIO, primarily for the way better in-building coverage. With T-Mo, even the fairly small grocery store where we often "pick up a few things" had great coverage outside and none at all inside. The same case with most of the building I work in, the local Home Depot, the shopping mall, and I could go on and on.

I don't do a lot of cellular data as I have Wi-Fi in all the places that matter (like home and office), so AIO's much poorer data performance compared to T-Mo's is not an issue for me. I have an N5 on the way (should be here tomorrow; WooHoo!) and hoping that the N5's LTE will enable me to double my data speed on AIO - according to their web site, non-LTE is capped at 4mbps and LTE is capped at 8mbps. That will be more than enough to ramp up my web browsing ...