Voyager's unlimited voice and text is $24 - $29/month after fees and taxes. There's also a $15 activation fee.

The summary is: The Best U.S. Prepaid Voice and Text Deals. It doesn't include Lycamobile yet. I'll add them once they have a bit more of a track record and i know if they charge any taxes and fees.

Yea Voyager also doesn't have data Lycos does.

No, T-Mobile network only.

Doesn't sound too good but they are new so hopefully things will improve.

I called the CS twice around midday Pacific time and the calls went through.

Based on your statement that you are being charged for voicemail deposits (which shouldn't happen) I guess you are on pay as you go. How much did you top up awith and did you get 90 days of service> Any taxes or fees?

I called CS via their regular#, not 612 because TMobile reception in my area isn't great. I share your hope/expectation that these problems will be ironed out when they get their act together. Yes, I'm on the Pay2Go and started out with $5 to check out the service. No taxes/fees so far.

There has to be a catch somewhere with those prices, otherwise at those prices they will be losing money.T-Mobile wholesale rates are more than what Lyca is charging, however they are straight fees, meaning no monkey biz, they dont charge "fees" and "VM deposits" ETC,ETC. will have to wait and see.

What are T-Mobile's wholesale rates? If they are more than than 2¢/minute, 5¢/text and 5¢/MB no MVNO would be able to offer unlimited talk, text and data for under $100/month.

Besides, Lycamobile's prices are not much different than PTel's (2¢/text, 5¢/minute and 10¢ MB)

I don't know what wholesale fees are, but I know for sure ( I work one of the carriers)that roaming fees between operators in Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. are $24 per 1000 minutes charged by the SECOND, not full minute.

If I understand you correctly the US operators pay Rogers and Telcel, etc. 2.4¢/minute for international roaming in Mexico and Canada. And then T-Mobile and AT&T charge the prepaid customer between 29¢ and $1.79/minute when to roam in Mexico and Canada. That'a markup of 1200% to 7400%! No won't the mobile business is so profitable.

Probably, if not you can do it on the website.

Lyca supports porting a number in.

I don't think so, Lyca's network SIM ID is 891960,which is unique to them. T-Mobile USA and its MVNO's ID is 890126.

I believe locked phones check the SIM's MCC and MNC, not the SIM ID. T-Mobile is MCC=310, MNC=260 If Lyca's is the same it should work.

No, a Lycamobile SIM does not work with a locked T-Mobile Card. I tried that. It does work with an unlocked T-Mobile phone. If you have a 4G capable unlocked T-Mobile phone, Lycamobile gets you 4g data in the coverage areas.
Other feedback:
- I have ordered 2 SIMs so far and they arrived within a week.
- I ported my number from ATT to Lycamobile within 24 hours. I called customer service, we walked through the details and that was it. You do need your account number from you previous provider and I got it from ATT within 2 hours by email.
- The turning off Vm by using *185# (Lyca FAQ) didn't work for me either; instead typing that in triggered order of the $19 MBO plan which I did not want.

Where did you read that Lyca customers could access T-Mobile's LTE network? If may be true but I haven't seen that documented anywhere.

yeswap here is the link about them having t-mobiles lte network, http://www.prepaidmvno.com/2013/03/19/lycamobile-launches-us-mvno-on-t-mobiles-network/ if it doesn't show up where you can just click on link just copy and paste it

Thanks for the link. I hope it's true. The site is UK based and seems pretty reputable but there's no explanation or justification just the cryptic "Interestingly, the New MVNO has access to T-Mobile’s LTE network.".

They refer us to Lycamobile's homepage and a press release, neither of which say anything about LTE.

At this point I haven't seen any reports of T-Mobile prepaid or MVNO users successfully using the LTE network

My experience is the same with calling. Emailed them yesterday, no response yet. The basic calling & SMS is working but the rest of the system is not production ready. The better move fast or the current pioneers will move.

According to Lycamobile's web site, Calls to Puerto Rico are:
To landlines 2¢/minute
To mobile phones: 15¢/minute
SMS: 12¢/each

Its not. Puerto Rico is considered International roaming,calls to PR are 1 cent a minute, and incoming call while in PR are free.

Thank you guys for the information. The reason I ask is because i saw the rates that Dennis Bournique wrote on the website, but also saw this written in the terms and conditions and got me confused:"Whether roaming internationally or making and sending international calls and messages while in the U.S. (or Puerto Rico), you will be charged international rates (including for voicemails left for you and for data usage)".

There is a quite a bit of missing, contradictory and likely inaccurate information on the Lycamobile website.

Phone support, when you can reach them, doesn't seem to know much about the product either.

This is pretty typical on new MVNOs when they first launch. Hopefully things will get a bit clearer over time. At this point I wouldn't rely on the accuracy of anything on the Lycamobile site.

I might be going a little out of topic here but I am thinking of trying the Ultra mobile service soon. I believe Puerto Rico shows up in the coverage map so that is a big plus for me. I wanted to know if you would recommend trying them out.

Ultra got off to a rocky start too but they seem stable now. I do recommend them

Hope it works out for you. $19/month sounds like a good price to me for unlimited talk and text.

I just tried their sim with my locked T-Mobile BB 9700, it requires an unlock code, so the answer is no, it wont work with a locked phone.(at least not BB)

Front line support people are typically poorly paid and given very little training. You can't expect them to know much of the technical details on the system or product. For weeks after they launched, PTEL's support people where telling customers that their SIMs would not work in T-Mobile locked phones which turned out to be wrong.

I'd rather have someone say that they don't know than be given an incorrect answer.

I was put on hold after asking the question if a locked T-Mobile phone would work (I assume he didn't know and asked others, who also didn't know), that's why I said "They don't know". To elaborate: I was also told, you can put a LycaMobile SIM in the phone and try to activate it, then you will find out if it will work.

Here's the latest update. I am from Seattle, I got my SIM 3 days ago and activated it with the $19 monthly plan, got a new local number( I didn't want to risk porting my number with a new company). I am in Vancouver BC now, the free incoming Intl calls does't work (it goes straight to VM).

Interesting. In a few weeks I'll be in Haiti with my Pay2Go and will see how I fare. Will bring a know good SIM with me too though :)

Nice list although it includes a number of companies that aren't MVNOs including Boost, Cricket and MetroPCS or out of business; Zapp, Mingo and Tuyo.

So is there a risk of losing your cell number when a MVNO goes out of business? or are they required to port them to a new carrier?

It can happen but usually doesn't. Of the three MVNOs that folded last year, users were able to port their numbers from Tuyo and Mingo but not from Zapp.

T-Mobile doesn't allow the call forwarding feature on any of it's mvnos, not even its own prepaid plans get call forwarding.

Forwarding a call from your Google Voice number to your mobile number works on all operators. So what Joseph suggested (port your number to GV and have GV forward it to your phone) will work with Lyca.

What doesn't work on T-Mobile prepaid and most T-Mobile MVNOs is forwarding your cell phone number to Google Voice. However it does work on PTel and Solavei.

I am surprised Ptel does not list conditional call forwarding as a feature. They would make double revenue on Pay-go forwarded calls, but I guess it would cost them more on the unlimited plans.
You pay for the incoming call time, *plus* the time on the forwarded call to GV or another number (normal).

Based on the comments here, I wouldn't trust anything from Lyca right now, will check back in a few month and see if all advertised and said from them is true. Time will tell.

I use Google Voice, most of the time it works great, but there are times when a call will not forward to my cell. I also use it at home, got a OBi box (OBi110) which allows me to use a standard cordless phone to make and receive FREE unlimited GV calls to US and Canada. So its like a MagicJack, except better.

The cool thing is the GV/OBi setup allows me to have a PayGO plan with usage of 20-100 minutes a month.

How does GV/OBi allow you to use less cellular minutes?

When at home I don't use my cell phone, I use GV/OBi, I give out my GV # which rings both cell and OBi phones, if I'm not at home I answer my cell (if I want too).

When I do talk on my cell, I keep it short and say "hey, I'm on my cell, if you want to talk about the weather I will call you when I get home".

If I want to text, most of the time I do it from my computer with GV, less so from smart phone (over WiFi) from GV app, both are free and unlimited.

I dropped GV because I do not like the way G records info from your calls and uses it to sell adds to companies.
I dropped GM for the same reason, since they scan all of your email for info to sell.
I mostly use other search engines because of the way Goog tracks your site and link visits and sells that info (I installed Do Not Track but still wonder...)
They say 'Do No Evil,' then collect all kinds of info about you. It's creepy.

To me creepy is when a bee or wasp crawls up your shorts.

You can only buy 1 pin at a time with promotion coupon.

They are not a start up company. they have 20 million customers in 16 countries. They won't be going defunct

I ordered a SIM online Mar 20 and another one by phone on Mar 26. I haven't received either SIM as of today Ap 12.

I ordered a SIM on Mar 23, and do not have it as of April 12.

Have not received my SIM either, maybe they don't have the numbers (cell phone #'s) to give out?

Probably but I don't really know. Suggest you call them

They are probably rounding up each data session to the next penny.

A data session ends 30 seconds to a few minutes after data stops flowing. So every time you load a small mobile web page or get an email, Facebook or Twitter, etc. notification you get charged a penny, even if that session only used a few KB.

Lyca isn't the only one to do this. Page Plus also rounds up each session to the nearest penny when billing overage data on monthly plans. Truphone rounds each session up to the next multiple of 2¢ (100 KB).

PlatinumTel CDMA doesn't round up, they accumulate bytes across sessions until you have used a 1/10 of an MB and then charge a penny. I don't know how any of the other operators handle data session billing.

Rounding up makes data more expensive, especially if you data usage is mainly push email and status notifications.

I recently got my lycamobile SIM and have been testing it with $5 credit. I also noticed the rounding of data usage Dennis explained. MMS was a no go. I have showed 2G-3G on my phone.

I'm with T-mobile right now. Even though Lycamobile is cheaper for voice, I might go with Ptel, so I can still get MMS. It might be offset by the fact that Ptel doesn't round up data like Lycamobile does.

Lyca rounds data up to the next kb, according to their website. Their call records go to $.0000 four decimals but they only show a charge in the first two. Many charges for data show as $.0000. The balance on my PayGo account is also carried out to four decimals.

I can scan for mobile networks, and Lycamobile and AT&T show up. I registered on AT&T but data seems to be limited to EDGE speeds of 200kbps or less. Screen still shows Lycamobile.
Maybe this is why Lycamobile does not work with my locked Tmobile BB or Nokia, roaming. The terms and conditions address roaming.

I'm amazed that roaming on AT&T worked. Did you notice if it was billed any differently than data on T-Mobile? Also, did you trying making a call while on AT&T?

All the references to roaming in terms seem to refer to international roaming.

Hard to tell about the data billing.
It looks like I was charged either 22c, or 1c or 2c for three speediests after I registered on AT&T. I did not try a call. The tests were done between 7:13 and 7:14pm, and then I did two more tests (faster results) between 7:16 and 7:17 after re-registering on Lycamobile/Tmobile.

Lyca charged me $.22 for 7.5 minutes clocked at 7:12:36, before the tests started (minor time error? This could be the start of the session when I launched Speedtest and found the closest server), and then $.01 for 2 minutes each time at 7:20, 7:22 and 7:32.
I do not know whether there is a time lag between using data and the time that Lyca shows the data was clocked (billed?). The next charge more than 1c was at 8:39, when I was charged 12c for 7.5 minutes. Unfortunately Lyca seems to show most small data sessions as $0.0000 and then after a few of those it charges $0.0100 or a larger amount. So I can't easily match charges with my use.

A couple of times yesterday when I registered on AT&T, that network was listed in bold type on my phone. Today when I tried again to make test calls, AT&T was listed, but in lighter text than Lyca GSM and WCDMA (Tmobile uses this for 3G on some phones). When I clicked on AT&T, the phone said it was registering on AT&T, and I saw an X over the signal strength meter while this happened. Then I get a message saying "Network with Limited Service Found. Do you want to initiate a network search? When I say Yes, I usually get the same results, when I find AT&T and click register. A couple of times it just shows Lyca WCDMA. If I say No to network search, it asks me whether I want to enable data roaming, which I must do to use mobile data on my phone. At this point, I may be registered on AT&T with "limited service." I can make a call. However both the screen display and phone status menu show the network as Lycamobile, so perhaps the registration with AT&T fails.

22¢ (3.7 MB @ 6¢/MB) sounds about right for a speed test.

Those .00 data charges could mean that Lyca isn't rounding up after all but is accumulating sub-1¢ sessions until they add up to a penny. That's the way PlatinumTel data logs look when the phone is idle with background data and Gmail sync on. A bunch of 0 data sessions each of which I think represents a Gmail push notification. Then after several 0 sessions a single 1¢ session is recorded and then the pattern repeats. PlatinumTel is known not to round up data.

As for AT&T roaming, the X and "limited service" messages sounds like you aren't registering successfully on AT&T. That it worked yesterday may have been a fluke.

Thanks, Dennis. When I have time, I will text Lyca in a rural area that does not have Tmobile service and report back.

Please do update us on whether you manage to successfully port a number to Lyca.

Incoming SMS apparently are free, which is a nice little unadvertised perk.

For >other< people who are want to port in, I saw a note on their porting page:

"Please note: Lycamobile has porting arrangements established with the majority of USmobile network providers. Please ask a Customer Services Representative which networks are enabled for porting when you call."

Nope - the porting is not completed, but this time the request did not get cancelled. Custome Service represetative told - my case may take 5-10 days , because I am porting from Black Wireless. Will check back in 10 days.

When this post was written Lyca was saying that the $19, $29 and $39 promotional rates would end April 30. The 30th was a month ago and the reduced rates are still around. Since then Lyca has removed all mention of the of an end date so it looks like the promotion has been extended.

This is prepaid and there's so Lyca could end the promotion at any time. If they do end it they could grandfather the lower prices for current users or not. We won't know until it happens if it ever does.

I was able to search and find that it was imessage on iphone 3GS that was causing the SMS to 44xxxxxx numbers. So turned imessage off now. Still scratching to find out why cellular data was used in iphone when connected to wifi.

I don't know about iOS but with Android WiFi will sleep after the phone is idle for a while. If a push message is sent to the phone when WiFi is sleeping, cellular data will be used.

Initiated port from Metropcs on 6/7 but nothing happened until we called lyca on 6/11. After calling port was completed right away. Signed up for $19 unlimited talk and text plan as otherwise I would be watching clock and call history too much. So far we like our iphone 3gs with lycamobile. Hoping rate will not go up for $19 plan. Cellular data is off unless needed. Not sure if we will like it if it is $29 for unlimited talk and text. Keeping fingers crossed.

I had to request mine three times before I got it. It took about 10 days.