chgoeditor

After all of my digging & questions, one relevant fact escaped me: GoPhone mobile doesn't offer data for smartphones running anything above 3G. My old and new HSPA+ phones were no-gos. And since one of my motivations in switching was to get a state-of-the-art phone yearly, I wasn't interested in settling for an also-ran prepaid 3G smartphone.

As I started looking at the alternatives, someone on HowardForums mentioned Straight Talk again--which I'd ruled out initially because of the coverage maps. Turns out that the maps on their site only tell part of the story, and the StraightTalk coverage for AT&T-compatible Android phones is virtually identical to the coverage map for post-paid AT&T service. So I'm going with ST.

Thanks for all of your help along the way!

Global_Hi_Flyer

StraightTalk would be a no-go for me as it prohibits tethering or use as a modem. That's a deal breaker.

chgoeditor

I know there was a lot in the news this week re. cell phone companies easing anti-tethering laws. I've tethered once in my life, so it hasn't been an issue either way, though I could see it being useful if ST permitted it.

Just to close the loop on this, I got the new phone a couple days ago (Galaxy Nexus), SIM card arrived yesterday and porting took 4 minutes from start to finish. Pretty painless.

Global_Hi_Flyer

My G Nexus is on order. As is a T-Mo prepay SIM. I want to test-drive their 3+G (4G) network before I irrevocably give up my grandfathered Blackberry plan & transfer it to the G Nexus.

If it's not satisfactory, I will move over to ATT and replace my hotspot (only) plan with one of their combined plans that allows tethering, port my TMo number over & live over there. While I detest ATT's customer service, with the FAN discount it actually works OK price-wise.

I have to tether for a variety of reasons. ATT's 3G service stinks (to put it mildly) at my office - it's as bad as Sprint - but at my rural property ATT has the very best signal of *any* provider, even better than Verizon.