In 2011 a small cell phone company disrupted the telecom industry with an interesting WiFi-First mentality. It brought affordable cell phone service to people willing to stay on WiFi as much as possible, even for calling and texting - something the Big Four had not yet figured out how to do.
That small company built a vibrant online Community where customers helped one another with questions about using their phones.
Recently the company was purchased, the mission changed, and the Community was abruptly shut down. A couple of the Community members decided to open this Community as a safe landing for those who wish to continue the conversations and friendships.
And now some guidelines…
In this Community we discuss consumer technology in a friendly and helpful way.
You may disagree with a statement or concept, but do so respectfully and kindly. Name-calling and profanity will not be tolerated.
Keep your posts relevant to the overall purpose of this Community and to the topic in which you post. If you want to take a conversation down a slightly different path, consider creating a new topic rather than hijacking an existing one.
Do not post personal information like phone numbers and e-mail addresses, suggestive photos, or even photos of other people.
Do not post hateful or illegal content. Do not post content you did not author without proper attribution.
SPAM is not welcome here. We will host one referral link topic and the parameters to have your referral link featured there will be explained in that topic.
Moderation will be at the discretion of the Admins and Moderators. If you disagree with their decisions, you may DM them, but public discussion of moderation decisions will be deleted.
As a reminder, our “right to free speech” protects U.S. citizens from a government that would prevent us from voicing our opinions; however, it does not entitle you to say anything, anywhere. We are not the government and we shall remove content that does not meet the standards we have set forth in these Community Guidelines.
These guidelines may be amended at any time.
You are welcome here, and we look forward to getting to know you.
Thanks for starting this. I was quite sad as well.
I was also shocked that Dish chose to close out the program so abruptly and with no acknowledgement of all the efforts of Community members, Ambassadors and Experts.
Thanks for starting this. I was quite sad as well.
I was also shocked that Dish chose to close out the program so abruptly and with no acknowledgement of all the efforts of Community members, Ambassadors and Experts.
@johnny_5, some people have spent hundreds or thousands of hours being on the former forum. I was shocked as well that it ended so abruptly. I didn’t post daily, but I did check the forum quite regularly, and I saw no annoucement of the forums closing. The community forum was one of the best parts of Republic Wireless.
I was wondering if I would be able to “bump” into old members again, and I’m glad to see “familiar faces” like yours, @Jumphour’s, @rolandh’s, @Scottathew’s, @SuperT’s, and even @southpaw’s!
Well, high again everyone. I was rather shocked and frustrated too at the sudden shutdown. I’m honestly not even sure what I’ll do in the long run for cell service, but I’m glad to continue connecting to folks here again.
I went to the RW Community like I have for so many years and read the closure notice. I was just crushed, A couple of days ago I had thought about calling Southpaw but figured she would be at work and then, as with so many ideas of mine, the notion just evaporated.
Imagine my joy when I discovered she was putting this group together. It was really nice reading through the comments and recognizing everyone who is here, Leave it to Southpaw,
Not only do we have a place to work together solving cell phone problems but this community isn’t owned and operated by any particular provider. I think I can mention Mint Mobile without my post being hidden! Oh, and my SO just loves her service with Mint.
Hi @BillG! I’m glad you found us. I was pretty sure you’d find your way here, but was planning to check in on you this weekend if I hadn’t heard from you by then. Work is keeping me busy, but I’m trying very hard to keep it to 40 hours a week, and you know that’s hard for me!
I think I can mention Mint Mobile without my post being hidden! Oh, and my SO just loves her service with Mint.
Maybe once, maybe twice, if/when it’s relevant, but please not every time you post. Why not write us an objective review of Mint in our Reviews category and get it out of your system?
I’m so glad I stumbled on this group! Thank you, @southpaw. Even though I moved on from RW last July, I still checked in on the forums frequently just for the camaraderie until all of a sudden the graduates of the Kevorkian School of Business now running RW shut it down. Greetings to everyone here!
Thank you for setting this up Southpaw! Hope things are well with you.
We’re a Mint family now on iOS devices…two things I never thought were going to be in my future. But change comes to everyone. So far so good, like someone else said, I do hope DISH doesn’t buy Mint or I will have to look for another provider soon. And this site should come in handy, if I ever needed to make a change!
iPhone is a much more homogenous experience across service providers because Apple has complete control of the software on the device. Unlike on Android, there is no carrier input into iOS device firmware.
oh my - hello old friends! so we are back in the saddle again, eh?
now I wanted to drop a bronies meme in here to call attention to an ancient bit of subculture… but maybe I’ll just leave this note rather than fill this new forum with terrifically odd images that might cause confusion…
[[pretend there is an out of context bronies meme here, causing confusion]]
there we go
oh and let’s see - to keep myself somewhat on topic i’ll sort of document my history with RW:
I joined in the first wave of RW signups back in 2011 with the Optimus S. wow that feels like a long time ago
I frequently visited each incarnation of the forums to post a combination of (hopefully) useful things mixed with absolutely silly things
We had kids after joining RW; through the social side of RW we ended up with RW onsies and perhaps “RW” being among the earliest of ‘words’ my kids learned… which is kinda fun.
someone around here even hand-crafted a particularly special android macrame in RW green for my kids and it’s still a prized toy after all these years.
We have two lines of service with RW today, both (of course) on the “everything you want” plan (i think? i should log in to double check).
Both lines of service use minimally supported phones (Moto Z4) that lack wifi calling, wifi texting, and at least one LTE band used by the backend carrier…
Lack of wifi calling with these phones is odd because the same phone model could be activated directly on the backend carrierWITH support for wifi calling, but it’s not allowed through MVNOs.
The changes in RW 5.0, the new management, and the new backend carrier have motivated me to consider switching to iPhone, if only to ensure that the carrier gets very little option to prevent my use of wifi calling just because I’m on an MVNO
oh, and long LONG ago in the RW forums after working through some particularly common growing pains with other users I ended up publishing some (rather basic) android apps to help folks. DriveFi was the most popular one. It detected when you were driving and turned off your wifi till you weren’t driving anymore. It stopped the phone from trying to connect to wifi along the road, like when you drove past a public library with open wifi you had connected to in the past. These apps weren’t particularly fancy, but they were made by a RW user, for RW users, and I’m still kinda proud of them. DriveFi was de-listed by Google after I stopped updating the various documents they required (e.g. privacy policy).
I guess that’s me in a nutshell - it’s really appropriate that I typed a lot here as I have always been rather long winded and this might serve as a warning/reminder to others…
According to the back end carrier for RW 5.0 (AT&T), the Moto Z4 is not supported for WiFi calling on its network. In fact, I don’t see that it’s supported at all but many “unsupported” phones will work on AT&T’s cellular network. Oh, since this Community isn’t sponsored by any company, we have no limits on identifying RW’s current cellular partners. For RW 5.0, the cellular partner is AT&T. For legacy My Choice, the cellular partner remains T-Mobile.
oh my - i could have sworn… well i’m wrong. i edited and added a strikethrough where i was wrong. sorry for that. maybe it was VoLTE? i recall ordering these phone (old stock from ebay; we REALLY wanted to keep our moto mods running) and thinking “oh yeah, that’ll work great since at&t supports it”. maybe i was completely off base the whole time though.
Thank you for creating this forum. I was sad to learn the Member Community shut down. While I was not a frequent participant, I benefited greatly from the community. I am vision and hearing impaired and it was on the Member Community that I learned about InnoCaption, a wonderful service that captions phone calls for the deaf and hard of hearing. I was a RW user since the beta days. I am happy to see the community survived RW’s destruction.
So happy to see this place. Just today I found out about Dish disappearing the RW community there and found out about this one on reddit. Yay! Friendly, familiar faces, including @southpaw !! B)
Whew!
