Please please be cautious before falling for the Walmart sales pitch that the “Straight Talk” cell phone plan is unlimited and will provide you with all the access you need. You may find it will work for you, but before you buy into it, become very familiar with T-Mobile in your area. (T-Mobile’s ability to provide acceptable service varies from area to area.)

T-Mobile leases excess service from providers that have towers (especially Verizon). In our areas of Florida or Michigan, T-Mobile has no towers of their own. Unfortunately, in our area with Verizon being increasingly popular, there is nothing left-over for T-Mobile customers.

I don’t subscribe to Straight Talk, so how do I know there is a problem?

The Simplisafe system we use for our home security uses T-Mobile for their wireless connection. We had problems because calls wouldn’t go out from our base unit to the monitoring center. After talking with Simplisafe at length, they admitted that T-Mobile can’t provide appropriate service. Simplisafe is now providing the ability to use Verizon direct (replacing T-Mobile). As a result, it’s working much better.

I also questioned a Walmark employee who admitted that “unlimited” isn’t doesn’t accurately describe Straight Talk. It’s unlimited in that T-Mobile won’t cut you off, but Verizon doesn’t give T-Mobile customers the type of service they provide to their directly subscribed Verizon customers. When the system is busy Verizon slows down the T-Mobile users to a snail’s pace. It can take 15 minutes to get connected only to find you can’t load websites, nor email messages.

There may be some areas of the country where the arrangement works for the Straight Talk customers, but check it out carefully. It may work some of the time, but not all. Yes, it’s a low cost service. If you can live with part-time connections, and you want to risk it, at least you’ve been warned.