Can I make ATT Samsung Galaxy S3 work on StraightTalk(My area uses Verizon towers)

[lowridn2]

I have Verizon as a carrier right now but the $$$ is rediculous. I am thinking about switching to StraightTalk and want a decent phone. I can buy an ATT Galaxy S3 from a friend but in my area StraightTalk uses the Verizon towers and is cdma. Is the S3 capable of being used for this? Is there any way to make it work for this purpose....help?

 

[jhawkkw]

Straight talk uses all 4 carrier's towers in an area. What determines which towers you use is which device you use or if you bring your own phone, which sim card you select. If you use an AT&T GS3 and select an AT&T sim card from straight talk, you may be ok. However, since I've never tried it, I don't know if it will deny you if it is sim locked. I would recommend that your friend get AT&T to sim unlock his phone before he sells it to you.

 

[lowridn2]

I am in Northern,Wi. and Verizon is the only option up here. StraightTalk (Walmart) in the area has cdma phones that bump off Verizon towers. They do have the BYOP but will this work with an ATT phone? Can I unlock the S3 and have it work for this or is the ATT S3 only good for GSM network?

 

[jhawkkw]

Correct, the att s3 is only good to use on att or tmobile or any of their MVNOs. Using the att s3 south straight talk will work for their byop program, but it would be best to get it unlocked before hand.
There are indeed some straight talk phones that run of Verizon, but most of them are pretty crappy with the exception of the iPhone 5.

 

[astan]

The AT&T S3 (SGH-I747) only has GSM antennas and cannot work on Verizon which uses CDMA. For 4G LTE AT&T uses a different band than Verzion so it will not work on Verizon.

The Verizon S3 (SCH-I535) has both CDMA and GSM antennas so it will work on GSM based networks like AT&T or T-Mobile as long as you have installed the latest Verizon firmware which unlocks the phone for use on non-Verizon networks. 4G LTE will not work on non-Verizon networks because they use different frequencies(transmission bands).