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Do I need to unlock to use walmart family mobile.

M

msaeger

Member
I currently have the 30 walmart plan from tmobile. I want to switch to the Walmart family mobile plan which uses tmobile's network.

Am I going to need to unlock the phone so I can use the Walmart family mobile sim or won't it matter since it's the same network?

Also they say the data is 3g do they mean the same not really 4g like I have now or something else? I haven't found anywhere that the phone says it's on 3g now just 4g or 2g.
 
1) It should work without unlocking. It's locked to a TMobile SIM. The Walmart Family Plan most likely uses TMobile SIMs (since it uses their network).

2) 2G is voice and text (and VERY slow speed data). 3G and 4G are data. If the Walmart plan is 3G, that's what you're going to get - until TMobile switches all their towers to 4G. (Then we'll all find out if that means you drop to 2G or go up to 4G.) Walmart customers get what TMobile contracted with Walmart for. (Probably pretty much something like "hey, we have all this 3G bandwidth we're not using - let's sell it to someone for a cheap plan".) It's like the hotel and airline cheapie sites - if you don't buy the cheap ticket or the cheap room it sits empty. So TMobile is willing to sell Walmart 3G bandwidth for next to nothing, because that's something more than nothing.
 
Thanks for the info I will try it and see what they do. Hopefully I will get 3g at least I have never saw 3g on the phone so it makes me think they don't have it anymore. Hopefully that doesn't mean I will just get 2g all the time.
 
I activated, sim lock was not an issue. I live in 2g land so I will have to wait until I go to work to see what I get for data speed in the metro area.
 
Another note about this plan too is you get 5gb a month of high speed data. I have read conflicting information about this when I was searching for info but at the current time for 40 dollars a month you get unlimited voice, text, and 5gb of data. You an add additional lines for 25 dollars.
 
So in the metro area I do still show 4g for the connection just like previously on the 30 dollar walmart exclusive tmobile plan. So everything works the same except for 10 dollars more a month I get unlimited talk.

I had to call and get my number ported because I didn't do it at activation and that went surprisingly well.

If anyone on the 30 dollar plan now needs voice switching to this plan worked out great for me.
 
msaeger said:
So in the metro area I do still show 4g for the connection just like previously on the 30 dollar walmart exclusive tmobile plan. So everything works the same except for 10 dollars more a month I get unlimited talk.

I had to call and get my number ported because I didn't do it at activation and that went surprisingly well.

If anyone on the 30 dollar plan now needs voice switching to this plan worked out great for me.
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From everything I read your going to get the same network everyone else gets, they will just throttle your data.

So for example you see the 4g on the phone but if you download anything your speed will be limited, say a normal t mobile customer will have 16+ mbs down yours may be throttled to 4mbs down.:(
 
Maybe but I haven't noticed a difference so far. The speed varied so much before it would be hard to tell. What's the potential speed difference between 3g and hspa+ anyway?

I can't believe they would put that much effort into it really? I think walmart is just having tmobile run the whole thing for them. The my account app from tmobile still works even.
 
msaeger said:
Maybe but I haven't noticed a difference so far. The speed varied so much before it would be hard to tell. What's the potential speed difference between 3g and hspa+ anyway?

I can't believe they would put that much effort into it really? I think walmart is just having tmobile run the whole thing for them. The my account app from tmobile still works even.
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on hspa + here in jacksonville I can actually get 30mb/s download, 3mb/s upload.

I have been told that the walmart plans are limited to a maximum of 6-8mb/s down. I dont know what if any up.

Considering I never tried them because of what I was told I can not verify that.
 
What do you check the speed with? I didn't check it before so I can't say what I was getting then but I can check now.
 
For those that don't need lots of data, you might check out 35orless.com. They have unlimited talk and text but only 500MB of high speed data, though they do have LTE, data roaming and tethering (from what I can tell). They are supposed to start offering more data options in the next couple of months.

The "base" price is $35 per month, and they discount the rate based on the number of new users to sign up - for January they charged $25.50, it appears for February it will cost about $26).
 
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