Straight Talk Now Activating Verizon LTE Smartphones, SIMs Begin Shipping

The next Verizon MVNO to begin allowing activation of Verizon LTE smartphones following Page Plus is Straight Talk, which quietly began allowing activation of Verizon LTE smartphones on its CDMA BYOD service within the past couple of weeks.

Straight Talk compatible Verizon LTE SIMs are also available to order from the virtual operator online for $6.99 as a part of the CDMA Network Access Code activation package, though the first batch of SIM cards will arrive in 7-10 days according to Straight Talk, owing to the heavy postal activity due to the holiday season. This makes Straight Talk’s CDMA BYOD service more competitive against Page Plus, as it offers throttled data access for $10 less per month compared to Page Plus which offers the same amount of data for $55 monthly with the drawback of a hard cap.

Straight Talk launched its first Verizon LTE compatible smartphone in the ZTE Rapido earlier this year, and like the E71 SIM swap trick of the past, many users discovered that the SIM in the phone was not bound to the device and could be swapped into Verizon LTE smartphones. However, along with that discovery, it was also confirmed that Verizon throttles LTE speeds on MVNOs to a maximum of 5Mbps down/2 up, which are identical to the speeds that Page Plus currently offers for its own service. However, after the first 3GB are used on Straight Talk, the service is throttled at a much slower speed than the defacto standard of 128Kbps and is instead throttled at 64Kbps.