Republic Wireless $19 unlimited voice, SMS and data service: Nov 8

superflysocal said:   How will they enforce the "calls handled MOSTLY by wifi"?

Why not just turn off wifi and use the phone like a regular cell phone using Sprint network (especially if Sprint is good in your area)?

I'm sure a rooted Android phone will have the ability to turn off wifi and use Sprint's network.

Just signed up so I could throw this little tidbit in. If you look at Techcrunch link (in the original post) that show's the teaser ad from Republic Wireless, you can easily identify the phone in the ad. The phone that is shown in pieces is an Optimus V or S.

This would lead me to believe the phone cost is going to be far below $300 for at least their low end android offerings. That model LG Optimus is worth about $150 or so, the high end for it would be $200. For those that have never used a Optimus V or S, they are nice little phones. A separate CPU for the actual "phone" part while a mediocre GPU/CPU handle the user interface type stuff. It means even if your running a game like Angry Birds that is taxing what the phone can manage, you still reliably get your incoming calls.

I personally won't switch since I have the no longer available $25 monthly plan from Virgin Mobile. But at $19 a month, this could be a very good deal.

I would guess wi-fi has better sound quality than cell phone , wouldn't you?

At least at my house, I much prefer wi-fi,

superflysocal said:   How will they enforce the "calls handled MOSTLY by wifi"?

Why not just turn off wifi and use the phone like a regular cell phone using Sprint network (especially if Sprint is good in your area)?

I dont think they can enforce, but users would prefer wifi for better call quality. Note that this is Sprint network!

I am in if this plays out. 19 a month for unlimited is great as long as there are no catches. Fees, Taxes etc to up the cost. The teaser rates are what gets you.

esoterica said:   flyhighutah said:   No....... I swear its FREE for you as well LOL
Are you deliberately misinterpreting?

A troll just wants to cause trouble...we should just ignore him/her/it.

Signed up! Thanks for letting us all know!

I am definitely going to be all over this if it has good coverage, and allows for Sprint network based cell calls, with or without wifi calls.

Wifi won't really matter unless the Sprint coverage where you are or travel to is poor.

My tmobile bill has crept up towards the 90 mark for unlimited plan, and I really hardly ever use the data anyways.

What happens if I just don't use wi-fi at all? Maybe they have a limit in the fine print for off wi-fi calling and are claiming unlimited because you can always use wi-fi?

iamhere9 said:   superflysocal said:   How will they enforce the "calls handled MOSTLY by wifi"?

Why not just turn off wifi and use the phone like a regular cell phone using Sprint network (especially if Sprint is good in your area)?

I dont think they can enforce, but users would prefer wifi for better call quality. Note that this is Sprint network!
They don't enforce it now, they are starting advertising it to the techie customers (who reads TechCrunch?), who basically all have a wireless network at home. Even here, there are probably very few who don't have one.
If they get too many customers from the slums where wireless internet is largely absent, they will go belly up the way of Amp'd.

hmm i can't wait to see how this turns out. my SERO is pending approval to be converted to SERO-P

adam-i-am said:   
I'm a little confused... When did Sprint become a second rate carrier? They cover every major highway and city in the country. Sounds pretty damned good for $20 a month to me.

And when you go less than a mile away from any major highway or city...what happens? One cursory look at Sprint's coverage map reveals a network stuck in 1989 like I said earlier. Fine if you live in L.A. but many of us do not.

wam1 said:   cpabster said:   adam-i-am said:   
I'm a little confused... When did Sprint become a second rate carrier? They cover every major highway and city in the country. Sounds pretty damned good for $20 a month to me.

And when you go less than a mile away from any major highway or city...what happens? One cursory look at Sprint's coverage map reveals a network stuck in 1989 like I said earlier. Fine if you live in L.A. but many of us do not.

I'm missing the point ... Why would anyone want to travel more than a mile off of a major hwy., or a mile outside a major city? That's just crazy talk! You're just asking for trouble then. Haven't you seen the movie Deliverance?

I live out in the sticks and believe it or not, I still get great service.

1. I bet you won't get free roaming with this plan... I love my Sprint roaming. So many benefits to having a routine plan. Get free phone upgrades which are GOOD phones not an outdated optimus model. SERO-P is still better with its free text and nights and weekends and roaming.

You guys keep saying that there are hardware differences in these phones but I really doubt that is the case. If it were then surely they'd have to submit the new product to the FCC prior to launching. They'd also have to contract with the manufacturers to build new devices when it is probably much cheaper to say "give us the one that works on Sprint".

The nice thing about Android is that its easy to change the software. They can come up with custom framework changes and apply those to each new phone with relative ease as they are all based on the same software platform. That also means that its probably only a matter of time before clever hackers figure out how to make it work on non-approved Sprint phones.

It seems the so called hardware limit is just a special cooked firmware.
At my iPhone, data always go through cellphone netwok first, if there is wifi, the Internet connection will switch to wifi after a while.
To this 19.99 plan, they just need to change the priority sequence, wifi first, if no wifi, then cellphone network.
They will set VOIP as the first voice calling, and the regular cellphone voice call as the second.

On the android it's should be easy to get it .

I am also wondering about the UMA/CDMA hand-off abilities. I figure many cell phone calls are made through the cell (CDMA in this case) network and then a fair amount of the conversation is finished when on wi-fi (at home, for instance).

Does it have the ability to seamlessly hand off the call to save the minutes?

I imagine they are billing the wi-fi portion of the plan as "Unlimited", whereas the leased coverage from Sprint (they did mention the possibility of other networks down the road) will be capped for minutes, roaming, data usage, etc. The coverage map will also tell us a lot, as Virgin Mobile currently operates exclusively on Sprint's network, whereas Sprint customers can roam onto Verizon's network as well. I have heard that in certain areas the Virgin coverage is much worse than Sprint.

I bet it will essentially be a $150-$200 initial up-front fee to buy the phone, and then essentially like Virgin Mobile, but with HUGE software (and maybe hardware) preference given to wi-fi/UMA). I imagine limits and overages apply to the Sprint portion of their coverage.

Just my thoughts. I'm hoping this can lure me away from my $40 + ~$5 taxes & fees = ~$45/mo SERO-P

kenbenobi said:   I'm eager to hear the full details once it is announced. I may dump Sprint for this deal... I'm sick of paying $70/month...

There has to be a catch....

What about folks who dont have access to the internet?
Or folks that simply dont enter in the passwords to their networks at home or work?
At $19 a month Republic Wireless might run at a loss in these cases.

I imagine Republoc would mandate the user make a certain percentage of their calls via WIFI in order to qualify for the $19 a month rate.
For those who dont, cant or wont use wifi the monthly rate would jump to the industry standard.

As far as i can see it this is the only way you can make this economically feasible.

Sprint needs cash(there apple deal), you never know at what rates this minutes were sold for.
In most of the asian cities a $1 gives you 100 minutes of cell phone calling and $10 can get you unlimited calling
for a month. So economically it is possbile if it was just calling, but here it is data too.

KYBOSH said:   kenbenobi said:   I'm eager to hear the full details once it is announced. I may dump Sprint for this deal... I'm sick of paying $70/month...

There has to be a catch....

What about folks who dont have access to the internet?
Or folks that simply dont enter in the passwords to their networks at home or work?
At $19 a month Republic Wireless might run at a loss in these cases.

I imagine Republoc would mandate the user make a certain percentage of their calls via WIFI in order to qualify for the $19 a month rate.
For those who dont, cant or wont use wifi the monthly rate would jump to the industry standard.

As far as i can see it this is the only way you can make this economically feasible.

tick tock indeed

I'm hoping that the announcement tomorrow is a feasible model (for both republic and customers) at the $19 price level.

I'm paying nearly $40/mo + ~$5 taxes/fees with Sprint SERO-P just to essentially have light usage of an Android device. I'd love to save $22-23/mo net.

Come on republic, I'm rooting for ya!