Wednesday, July 12, 2017

GoPhone Becomes AT&T Prepaid

Goodbye GoPhone. This means we'll need to review new AT&T offers and promotions, and there will be some, and it looks like the GoPhone name will disappear and you'll wonder what happened to it.  For now, it looks like AT&T Prepaid will be about the same product, but it also looks like AT&T will be competing a bit more aggressively against other prepaid products, including their own Cricket brand.


We'll alert you if AT&T Prepaid offers some really hot discounts, but we are not permitted to do that directly here on the Wireless Noise news page, so we'll post them among our Daily Wireless Deals and on our Mountain Prepaid site.  Welcome to the next phase of prepaid.

Monday, July 10, 2017

Xfinity Finally Responds

Yesterday we tried to raise some dust by claiming that Xfinity Mobile does not give you Free data access when using their own Xfinity Wi-Fi network.  Our objective wasn't to condemn Xfinity Mobile, it was to expose how poorly the Terms of Service are written and how unprepared they are to respond to new customers.  Today, 3 days after our first inquiry, we received a response that all data access is indeed Free on Xfinity Wi-Fi, and all Talk and Text (in the US) is indeed unlimited.

There are a few weak spots in the Xfinity product such as not being able to bring your own phone (common among "Wi-Fi first" carriers), and the lack of "Wi-Fi Calling".  That means that when using your Xfinity phone outside the US you can only make calls through the local foreign roaming network, not broadband and not Wi-Fi.  The real possibilites remain to be seen in the hands of actual users.


To Xfinity's benefit, the response to their new mobile product has been heavy and that means people like what they see, possibly with some value given to the fact that you must belong to the Xfinity "Club" before you can sign up for Xfinity Mobile.  Also, we have found there are some "public" Xfinity Wi-Fi hotspots which make their own network somewhat more available, but a trip to the park usually puts you back on the Verizon Cellular network.  Comcast gets credit for trying something new and we'll watch how this shakes out.


Sunday, July 9, 2017

Xfinity Mobile: What's Missing?

We have reviewed each page of their web site, read all the disclosures and added up their plans.  We just don't see how Xfinity Mobile can save us money.  The terms say nothing about free Wi-Fi, therefore, you should be charged whether or not your phone is using Wi-Fi or the Verizon Wireless network.  Since you must be a Xfinity Internet customer, you are already being charged for Data.  If you were not an Xfinity Mobile customer, and using any other cellular carrier (or an inactive smartphone), your Wi-Fi data would be Free...right?

Let's say we're wrong about that.  Let's also consider that you can't bring your own phone, you can be "throttled" (after 20GB) on Wi-Fi and all voice calls are completed on Verizon Wireless. What's the point?  We weren't going to give Xfinity Mobile a Mountain Wireless Rating until it had been field tested by fellow users.  Other "Wi-Fi first" services aren't as reliable as cellular-first carriers, but we thought we'd give Xfinity the benefit of the doubt.


If what we read is true (and we'll allow that someone made a big mistake when writing the rules), we're hard pressed to even give them a "2" rating, the second lowest.  Xfinity Mobile charges $65 for their Unlimited plan ($45 promotional price during July).  But if I spent $45 for Straight Talk Wireless, I would get access to "Unlimited" Data (throttled after 8GB) on the Verizon Wireless network, be able to bring my own phone and use my Xfinity Wi-Fi for FREE.  What's missing?  A clue: One of their web pages says, "With access to 16 million XFINITY WiFi hotspots, you can do what you love on your phone without adding to your 4G LTE data usage."  Does this mean Wi-Fi is Free?  No.  We'd ask but Customer Service is closed right now.