Ultra Mobile’s PayGo plan on the T-Mobile network had been somewhat attractive at $3.00/Mo for up to 30 minutes talk or 30 texts or any combination that added up to 30; thereafter, it was $0.10 per minute or text.
Now they’ve made it considerably more attractive at $3.00/Mo for up to 100 minutes talk or 100 texts or any combination that adds up to 100; thereafter it is now $0.03 per minute and $0.01 per text.
You have to go into a T-Mobile store to purchase a PayGo SIM card and pre-pay the plan for a month; thereafter you recharge the “wallet” from a credit card online (but you can only do that in multiples of $5).
Downside is that they don’t itemize calls or texts, and under the 30 minute plan I’ve seen minutes disappear when no calls or texts had been used and they have no explanation other than T-Mobile doesn’t give them an itemized list.
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That’s great news!
This is all working properly then with Ringo (besides the problem in the last paragraph)?
Robert
Yes, works fine. I gave up on Ting and am using PayGo, but it still only connects to T-Moble on UMTS, not LTE. Since I’ve seen some reports around here saying that some folks have gotten LTE from T-Mobile, then apparently they just don’t offer it in my area on the bands supported by the SIM7600A. It’s also entirely possible that it’s connecting via LTE when I’m away from my home, but I can’t carry a laptop around to do serial debug to know that. When you implemented SIM Debug, you should have made it print the response from the module on the screen, not just to the serial debug port.
@frankprindle it might be possible to do the debug from an Android phone or tablet if you have an OTG adapter to connect your serial adapter.
Far better than that, since I already have costomized firmware, I can just modify the firmware to print the reply to the screen like it should have all along. A few lines of code at the most, but it’s time I don’t have available right now. I’ll put it in my queue.
So I finally got around to making this mod so I could see if I could connect to Ultra Mobile/T-Mobile PayGo via LTE when away from home in a very strong signal area. The mods were made to firmware file main.cpp. I’ve attached the modified main.cpp - just look for the 2 lines I added with the comment string FCP on them. It only took these 2 added lines to display the result of the SIM7600 module command.
The bottom line is that I drove around so that I was near 3 different cell towers. The signal was always either all-bars or one less than all-bars. Under no circumstance would my phone connect to LTE on Ultra Mobile (T-Mobile PayGo). Here are the results of two commands that both show that my connection is only UMTS/WCDMA, not LTE:
AT+CNSMOD?
+CNSMOD: 0,4 [4 means UMTS, 8 means LTE]
AT+CPSI?
+CPSI: WCDMA,Online,310-260,0x8785,46484751,WCDMA-PCS 1900,246,637,0,7.0,103,22,11,500
So, no LTE for me.
Here is the modified firmware source file main.cpp, but this BBS doesn’t allow uploading a .cpp file, so I’ve changed .cpp to .inf. Just change the .inf back to .cpp after you download it.
main.inf (57.9 KB)
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@frankprindle I was able to run these commands on my Ringo, it looks like mine also only connects via UMTS/WCDMA for Ting.
And so the mystery remains that user TheWebMachine posted on June 10th that he WAS able to achieve an LTE connection on T-Mobile/Ting (although he was having other issues getting calls through). I quote his post below. I’m not looking for an answer (I’m ok with the UMTS as long as T-Mobile continues to support it), I’m just noting the conundrum regarding VoLTE.
AT+CNSMOD?
+CNSMOD: 0,8
OK
I appear to be connecting to LTE with Ting.
AT+CSQ
+CSQ: 19,99
OK
I appear to have alright signal…not perfect, but certainly not THAT bad. Here is another useful command to run to see more details about your current connection information. In fact, it’s probably the most comprehensive single status command…but the output format changes a little depending on network type:
AT+CPSI?
+CPSI: LTE,Online,310-260,0x7C97,15555074,89,EUTRAN-BAND4,2300,5,5,-144,-1094,-753,11
OK
According to the documentation:
If camping on a lte cell:
+CPSI: <System Mode>,<Operation Mode>,<MCC>-<MNC>,
<TAC>,<SCellID>,<PCellID>,<Frequency Band>,<earfcn>,<dlbw>,
<ulbw>,<RSRQ>,<RSRP>,<RSSI>,<RSSNR>
So, here in North Texas, LTE is showing up and connecting with a Ting or T-Mobile SIM, but as I noted in my other threads, calls can’t be made or received (in app or manually via debug). SMS does work* (*I’m still hunting the “sending hang” issue in software, as manual debug commands send and acknowledge without fail every time 
).
Another downside to PayGo is that, unlike major carriers and unlike Ting, they charge (minimum 1 minute) for incoming calls that are not answered and outgoing calls that are not answered or busy. So if, for example, you get a lot of spam calls and ignore them, you’ll still get charged for each one. Now that they’ve dropped prices from $0.10/minute to $.03/minute, it’s not as big an issue, but buyer beware.
See this page: PayGo Charge Clarification