Tuesday, June 26, 2012

All is well and working

There have been several things happen since my last post that need to be updated.  First and most importantly for me, I used  Absinthe 2.0 to jailbreak my iPhone 4S running iOS 5.1.1.  You can find any number of help pages on how to do the jailbreak, so I won't go into much detail there.  Once the jailbreak is finished, you will see the Cydia app on your screen.  That's where you can download from a wide variety of apps for jailbroken devices.  The one I was most interested in was MyWi which DOES let you use your iPhone as a mobile hotspot for a cellular data connection with Consumer Cellular.  It just allows you to use your WiFi only iPad anywhere you can get a cellular signal, but no WiFi.  Keep in mind that you will be consuming bandwidth from your data plan with any cellular data you download, so WiFi, when it's available, is always cheaper.

At this point, I have an iPhone 4S, unlocked and jailbroken, on a CHEAP Consumer Cellular voice and data plan.  But, I still am using a temporary phone number that I got from CC to test out my iPhone during all the hacking.  Now I want my original phone number back.  No problem.  Give Consumer Cellular a call and ask them to port over your phone number from your original carrier, which in my case was AT&T.  They'll send you a new SIM card in the mail which arrives promptly.  You'll still have to cut that SIM card down to the mini-SIM that the iPhone uses.  Stick that new SIM in and, nothing works!  You will have to call CC to activate the phone. NO CHARGE for activation--another nice thing about Consumer Cellular.  You'll need your account number from your old carrier to do the activation.  After activation, I did find that I had to go back to the settings in My Account on the CC Web site to check the box for Web (Data) for the new (actually old) phone number that had just been activated.

Now I have done everything I needed to do to get my iPhone 4S working with Consumer Cellular, EXCEPT to terminate my contract with AT&T.  I had purposefully waited until my phone number had been ported over and I was sure that everything was working before I took that last step.  With AT&T there is an early termination fee which is $325 minus $10 for each full month of your Service Commitment that you have completed. If you've already done the math and selected a plan with Consumer Cellular, you'll see that it won't take long to recover that cost in monthly savings. My wife and I have the Anywhere 100 plan plus data for $35 a month. That's for BOTH phones, sharing the minutes, and and data and messenging. But that's just our plan for this month. If we use more voice minutes and/or more data some other month, we'll change our plan for that month to avoid overuse changes and then change it back to the cheaper plan the next month. Use, decide, and pay on a month-by-month basis.

Because Consumer Cellular piggybacks on the AT&T network, my connection is just as reliable as it was when I was paying ATT&T's outrageous monthly fees. No AT&T tower close-by? No problem; your phone will seamlessly switch to the strongest available signal and you don't pay any roaming charges. It's like free local calls to anywhere in the US from anywhere in the US.

What's stopping you?

10 comments:

  1. There are a few gotchas your are not talking about because you had not been using the service for a long time. Don't get me wrong, I do like the CC service overall, but here are a few issues that most people never talk about:

    1. Every minute counts - this is straight talk with CC - I started with the 700 minutes family plan to share between me and my wife. The first month it seemed just adequate, then it started escalating, where now I am already on the 1,800 minutes plan. Mobile to Mobile, week-ends and evenings, it does not matter each phone for each minute coming in or out counts against your package minutes.

    2. Viewable voice mail is out the window. When you press the voice mail button it takes you to voice mail where you have to enter your pin. It's like going back to the stone-age. Maybe some people can get this to work, but I have not had any success.

    3. In many places, it's as if searching over broadband is hampered - I will be in a location and try to initiate a search and it will always come up that no internet connection is available. Never had that with AT&T proper. I have their data plan.

    So, in retrospect, CC is good for people who don't use the phone for heavy calling and data. No contract is a good thing also ...

    Ron.

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    1. Ron-
      You are correct on point #1 as far as every minute counting. But, like every phone plan with whichever carrier, one size does not fit all. My wife and I share 300 minutes and some months downgrade to 100 minutes, because neither one of us has an ear glued to the phone. Each user has to take into consideration what the usage will be each month, but with CC, you can also change your minutes up or down from month to month. Try that with any of the big boys (or girls).

      I’m not sure what you mean by viewable voice mail. I guess that’s a feature I haven’t used. When I have a voice mail message, I just press the button on the bottom row of the phone window and my voice mailbox is automatically dialed and I listen to my messages. And that doesn’t count against your minutes.

      On point #3, the only thing I’ve noticed similar to what you describe is when I’m in a large stadium or gathering with a lot of other phones, it seems that I lose an Internet connection while others around me are still connected. I can’t really explain that since CC piggybacks on AT&T’s network.

      Your last sentence is a good summary and relates to what I said earlier. There are a lot of plans out there and consumers need to shop around. I still save A LOT of money on CC over AT&T.

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  2. I'm glad to find this blog, as I've just switched from a Verizon pre-paid plan to Consumer Cellular. I have not officially discontinued my Verizon plan yet ($2./day on the days I use it, averaging $25./month). This is my first time on att, so wanted to compare coverage. So far, so good. I've never had a 'smart phone', but always thought I'd get an iphone when it came to Montana. When I discovered how costly the requisite data plans were, iphone slipped into the luxury category. I knew I'd never be a big data user, but am interested in the convenience of carrying one gadget, and one that has a respectable camera, for times when I don't want to carry my pro, but do want to have a camera option. CC offers the refurbished 3G iphone, which would serve perfectly well in most ways, except the camera, so that's my 'hook'.

    I take it that you are still doing well with the iphone on CC, that everything works well enough? (I'm also Mac all the way, so the idea of an integrated syncing is another appeal for me.)

    One other question; if I get an unlocked iphone (4S - $$$!) I don't need it to be jailbroken to use it with CC, do I? My impression was that the unlocking made it usable on any network, and that jailbreaking allows you to download other (apps that the iphone otherwise could not use. Is that right?

    Thanks for sharing your experience. Your reports of the benefits of no contract, and being able to increase/ decrease the plan as needed is also part of the appeal for me.

    marde

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  3. I’m totally satisfied with my voice and data service with CC. Piggybacking on the AT&T network makes all that possible. Just be aware that with CC, you can’t get 4G service even if it’s available in your area. With me, that’s not an issue; we don’t yet have 4G service in our area and I don’t travel enough to areas that do have 4G to really miss it.

    I’d recommend that you carefully check out your purchase options. There are quite a few unlocked iPhone 4S's on eBay and I think that you can still get a new 4S from big box stores. The down side of getting a new phone is the required 2-year contract, but as I think I mentioned above, I terminated my contract with AT&T after a few months, expecting to be charged the early termination fee. To this day, they’ve never billed me for that fee.

    Make sure that you get the AT&T model of iPhone 4S even if you buy a used phone. They are the only ones that have both GSM and CDMA antennas. To use CC, you must have that GSM capability.

    The phone will need to be unlocked to use Consumer Cellular. Unlocking opens your phone to other networks. You’ll just stick in a new SIM card from CC. I also chose to jailbreak because I wanted to use my iPhone as a hotspot for my iPad which is WiFi only. You’re correct that jail breaking just opens your phone to more apps that aren’t offered in iTunes.

    Any other questions, just post them here and I’ll try to help.

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  4. Hi there,
    First of all, thanks for sharing your information :-)
    I am helping a friend switch from ATT, she has has an iPhone 4 s, can you tell me what method you used to cut down the sim card?
    Thanks in advance!
    Mickey

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  5. I don't know if you're monitoring this thread anymore, but I'll see if you can help since CC cannot. I have a iPhone 4 on Consumer Cellular. Since CC doesn't support visual voice mail, how are you notified that you have a VM message? I do not get any notification that I have VM, not visual (since they don't support it) but I never get any notification at all. What am I supposed to see?

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    1. I believe you are expecting something that an iPhone 4 is not capable of doing. My experience was with an iPhone 4S, and there were a lot of changes made between the 4 and the 4S.

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  6. There is a voicemail notification on the lock screen and a small red dot near the voicemail icon. The red dot has a number inside if there are a number of voice messages waiting. The interface with voice mail is more like a traditional cell phone with a keypad interface rather than a list of callers.

    A list of callers is available under "recent" and missed or recent and red-text

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  7. Hey will my Iphone 4s through ATT with bad esn work on CC. We just got our cards and need to know

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