Total Wireless from Page Plus Cellular

For the last several years we had three cell phones on Page Plus Cellular. We need to stay on the Verizon network because it is the only service we get at my rural home. We purchased the $29.95 plan (unlimited talk/text and 1GB 4G Data) through pincheap.com, orginally for ~$27 per pin, but more recently for $29.80 per pin. This included all taxes but the pins needed to be bought and paid for each month. My teenage son and wife would used barely any data and my teenage daughter would regularly blow through all of her data.

Total Wireless is a similar service to Page Plus Cellular and they are both owned by América Móvil, which operates several of the Verizon MVNO’s. Total Wireless is also affiliated with Wal-Mart. The plan that interested me is the shared plan for three devices at a cost of $85/month or $80.70/month with autopay. Like on Page Plus, we get unlimited talk/text, BUT 12GB of shared data per month as opposed to 3GB of total un-shared data on Page Plus. An individual plan on Total Wireless cost $35/month for unlimited talk/text and 5GB data. This price drops to $32.30 per month on Autopay.

Total Wireless offers much more data for slightly more money and runs on the same Verizon network for less money than Page Plus. This was a no brainer for me to try but I did not want to spend $85 for a shared plan plus $10 each for a Total Wireless sim card plus the hassle of porting the phone numbers, just to find out I didn’t like it for one reason or another. Therefore, I decided to try it out on a single iPhone and I bought the following:

Total Wireless Bring Your Own Phone SIM Kit – $10.00 from Wal-Mart Superstore. At the time of this writing, they SIM kit was not available at regular Wal-Marts.
Total Wireless Individual Plan – Unlimited talk/text plus 5GB 4G LTE Data – $35.00 plus $1.65 E-911 fee.

The SIM kit included two credit card sized plastic cards that hold the SIM cards. The cards have different SIM numbers on them. Only one would fit in the iPhone and during activation I had entered the wrong SIM number and I was rejected.

The instructions to activate are pretty clear but I’ll outline all my steps to port your cell phone from Page Plus to Total Wireless.

Gather all pertinent information from Page Plus such as phone number you want to port (same as account number), PIN associated with Page Plus phone number. If you don’t have the Page Plus PIN associated with your phone number, you can get it by contacting Page Plus. I used the chat feature and had to provide information such as when my phone was activated, or when the last time I added funds to the account. A temporary PIN was then sent to my phone and after telling the CSR the temporary PIN, I was asked to assign a permanent PIN to that cell phone number.
The MEID from the cell phone you want to bring to Total Wireless. On an iPhone you can obtain this by dialling *#06#. I put this information in a text document before trying to activate so I can simply copy/paste from the text document activation web form.
Navigate to totalwireless.com and click on the activate/reactivate link on that page. Follow the instructions. I was concerned about how long the porting of the phone number from Page Plus would take but it was less than 10 minutes on a Saturday afternoon.
Once the phone stops working on Page Plus, you will need to remove the old SIM Card and replace it with the new Total Wireless SIM card. I turned my iPhone off to replace the SIM Card and once I powered on again the phone indicated that it was activating the cellular network. After a couple minutes the message stated that the cellular network was activated. At this time I was able to send/received texts and make/receive phone calls. This whole process took only about 15 minutes and was straight forward and actually pretty easy.
YouMail visual voicemail was broken after making the switch from Page Plus to Total Wireless. You can see how to active here.
After the port and activation from Page Plus to Total Wireless, cellular data did not work. From Total Wireless web page FAQ’s:

What should I do if I am unable to access the internet or send pictures via text messages on my iPhone after it has been activated in TotalWireless?

Next steps are for BYOP iPhones only:

1. Check the device iOS version.

Connect to Wi-Fi and go to Settings > General > Software Update.
If the device says Your software is up to date, go to Step 2. If not, the device will show Download and Install.
Proceed with the update for the device to receive the latest Carrier Bundle (TFW).

Check if phone has the latest Carrier Bundle (TFW).
1. When the latest Carrier Bundle (TFW) is installed, the letters TFW will be displayed on the top left side corner of the phone (next to the signal bars). Then chose from the scenarios below:
  1. Carrier Bundle (TFW) installed: turn off Wi-Fi, open Safari to ensure the data connection is working. If it isn’t working, go to Step iii.
  2. Carrier Bundle (TFW) NOT installed, go to Step 3.
  3. With Wi-Fi off, test a few websites to ensure the data is working.
  4. If data is still not working, call Customer Service.
Check if an APN profile already exists by going to Settings > General > Profile and chose from the scenarios below:
1. If the device HAS the Data Profile tracfone.vzwentp.
  - With Wi-Fi off, test a few websites to ensure the data is working.
  - If data is still not working, Call Customer Service.
2. If the device has a Data Profile OTHER THAN tracfone.vzwentp.
  - Select it and delete it. You may need to enter your Passcode.
  - Continue with the next Steps if the device doesn’t have a Data Profile set.
3. If the device DOESN’T HAVE a Data Profile set.
  - Connect to a secure Wi-Fi network.
  - Open Safari and visit ivzwentp.tracfone.com
  - Follow the prompts to install the update.
  - When finished, exit the browser and turn off Wi-Fi.
  - Re-boot the phone.
  - With Wi-Fi off, test a few websites to ensure the data is working.
  - If data is still not working, go to the next step.
If issues persist, call Customer Service.