I’ve found that deciding to change from my contract plan is not quite as easy as just going into Wal-Mart or getting online and buying a new phone and moving on.

If you get a Straight Talk phone with the letter C, it is a CDMA technology and uses Verizon towers. If it has a G after it, it is the GSM technology and uses AT&T towers. GSM can be used worldwide on other phones, CDMA cannot. But on Straight Talk you can’t easily use the phone internationally anyway.

For my uses, in the West, Verizon works best so I want a phone with the letter C after the model number. For other people,especially in the East, AT&T might have better coverage so they would want a phone with the letter G. Look at their coverage maps to decide.

Phone availability online and at a Wal-Mart store, is based on specific activation areas (not service areas because those are the same no matter what phone you have).

For example, for L.A., 11 phones are offered online. For a town in Oklahoma, 8 phones are offered.

The only complaints about Straight Talk that I have found in researching hundreds of sites are:

1.) Some problems with activitation delays.Sometimes BIG problems with that.

2.)Problems for people who buy cards monthly or load minutes manually, with phones being inactivated. I would have an automatic payment, to try to avoid that.

3.) Some problems with unexplained phone service disconnection and subsequent loss of the former phone number. That would be a terrible thing for me!

4.) Almost everyone complains about customer service being slow, hard to understand and not helpful. A few say they have not had too serious a problem. No one has said it was really easy!

5.) Using the Internet and email is very slow on most phones. One site said the average download (aka, open up a web page) speed is less than 1mbps. My little netbook, on a network, is 70mbps and I think that is slow sometimes.)

As a factoid: Straight Talk is owned by Trac Fone, which is owned by Movil America, which is owned by Carlos Slim, of Mexico City who is the world’s richest man as of January 2011. ($53.5 billion dollars.)

I still haven’t hit “checkout” on the Straight Phone site, but I’m getting closer…I think.

Well don’t just say that they are bad and to buy other inexpensive plans, without giving some examples of other service providers.

Thats the problem also complaining, but never offering a solution.