Total Wireless: What Are the Pros and Cons?
- Plans include 5 year price lock guarantee
- 5G UW coverage and priority data access
- Family plan discounts
- Free phone offers
- Phone deals for new and existing customers (with Total Rewards)
- Sold in national retail, and Total Wireless stores
- In person customer support available at over 2k stores
- No plans geared towards low-usage customers
- No truly cheap plans available for single lines except when there are new customer deals
- Customer support outside of branded stores does not have a good reputation
- Total Wireless provides a good value for customers that need an unlimited plan with coverage on the Verizon network, particularly for families and for single lines if you can get a new customer deal.
- The main trade-off compared to Verizon and other providers is that their customer support may NOT be very good
Phone Plans
Data Only Plans
How Total Wireless Plans Work
Total Wireless was first launched in 2015 and was one of many brands formerly owned by América Móvil under the Tracfone umbrella. In September 2020, Verizon announced that it had agreed to purchase Tracfone and all its related brands, including Total Wireless, from América Móvil for about $6.9 billion.
On September 21, 2022, Verizon Wireless shut down the Total Wireless website and rebranded it as Total by Verizon, introducing new plans. However, on July 11, 2024, Verizon recognized this as a mistake, reversed course, and reverted the brand back to Total Wireless. Despite the name change, the plans and logo were not identical to the original Total Wireless. A new logo was introduced, and the phone plans from Total by Verizon were tweaked as part of the rebrand back to Total Wireless. Some tweaks included adding premium priority data to a couple of plans and an additional plan with 5G Ultra Wideband coverage. All plans were also given a five-year price guarantee.
This post will provide you with a thorough review of their plans and what it has been like for me as a subscriber, to help you decide if this is the right carrier for you.
Total Wireless Phone Plans And Hidden Details Explained
Total Wireless offers just three phone plans, each of which includes truly unlimited high-speed data. While plan features vary, the most significant difference is with the Base 5G Unlimited plan. This plan does not include 5G Ultra-Wideband (5G UW) access, so if you’re on it, you won’t get the fastest data speeds available on Verizon’s network. During periods of network congestion, data speeds on this plan will slow down even more compared to subscribers on Total Wireless’s other two unlimited plans. The two flagship unlimited plans include priority data, meaning their users’ data is prioritized over those on the Base 5G Unlimited plan and other customers using the Verizon network as well.
| Base 5G | Total 5G Unlimited | Total 5G+ Unlimited | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price 1-Line | $40 | $50 with autopay ($55 1st month) | $60 with autopay ($65 1st month) |
| 2-lines (price per line) | $40 (no discount) | $42.50 | $47.50 |
| 4-lines (price per line) | $25 | $27.50 | $30 |
| 5G Ultra-Wideband | No | Yes | Yes |
| Premium Priority Data | No | Yes, Unlimited | Yes, Unlimited |
| Hotspot | 5GB | 15GB | Unlimited* |
| Free roaming 30+ countries | No | Yes | Yes |
| International Data | 0 | 10GB | 10GB |
| Disney+ | No | Free 6-months | Yes |
*hotspot is limited to 5Mbps and only one device can connect to the hotspot at a time
Taxes and fees are included in the price of every plan.
Features Common To All Total Wireless Phone Plans
All Total Wireless phone plans come with the same set of basic features.
- Unlimited calling to over 85 international destinations
- Unlimited texting to over 200 destinations
- Free talk, text, and data roaming in Mexico and Canada
- Get $200 to put towards your next 5G phone after 12 monthly plan payments when you subscribe to Total Rewards. Get $100 after 6 months.
- Free phone offers for switchers
Please note that Total Wireless’s terms and conditions now contain the following provision about their unlimited plans:
“If the amount of a single mobile line’s total monthly data use in a Plan cycle exceeds the average amount of data consumed by the top 0.5% of users on the network during the preceding six-month period, we may reduce data speeds to your device to 1.5Mbps for the remainder of the cycle.”
Review
Activating Total Wireless and Porting In
Activating my service was mostly smooth. I ordered two plans with physical SIM kits from the Total Wireless website during a promotion offering the Total 5G Unlimited plan for $15 per line when you switched from a T-Mobile-owned prepaid brand. I also created an account when I ordered.
Total Wireless does offer eSIM activation but it may only be supported with iPhones and Samsung Galaxies.
When my SIMs arrived I went back to my account through the website and clicked on “activate” to begin the activation and port-in process. You can do the same thing using the Total Wireless app if you’d like which largely mirrors their website. I clicked “T-MO Prepaid” because I was porting from T-Mobile Prepaid
I did the number port late in the evening and ended up having an issue. Total Wireless’s system automatically created a ticket stating there was a problem processing the port. The ticket asked me to contact their customer care center. I did not contact them at that time, and to my surprise, they called me early the next morning to notify me of the issue and explain exactly what the problem was. My T-Mobile Prepaid line had port protection enabled. They offered to start a three-way call with T-Mobile to resolve this, which I declined. They also offered to call me back later in the day once I had the port protection the issue with T-Mobile taken care of. So, we scheduled a time to do that. After I had T-Mobile disable the port lock, Total Wireless quickly ported my number over when they called me back.
I did have an issue getting one of my lines to work after activation. It turns out one of the SIM cards had an old Total Wireless APN attached to it. I texted APN to 611611 and they pushed out the correct APN to my Pixel 7 and then it immediately connected to the network.
Another problem I had is that my account did not immediately show the promotional rate of $15/line for renewal. Total Wireless support claimed this may update on its own in a week or two and if not to call back for help. I ended up having Total Wireless’s corporate office fix the problem.
One other issue I encountered is that RCS was not working when I ported my number in. However, it resolved after about 24h on its own and my number was automatically reverified for RCS. This is probably how RCS works in general when you port between different carriers. Unfortunately, I could not get Visual Voicemail to work.
Account Dashboard
Total Wireless’s account dashboard doesn’t appear to be as robust as other providers. After using the service for a few days it hadn’t even updated my high-speed data usage properly which you can see in the screenshot below. It’s as if my phone is turned off. There’s also no calling or texting records. It did update my hotspot usage though when I tried that out.
Turn Off Tracking and Ad Targeting
One thing you may want to do after signing up is to head on over to the “Communications & Privacy” section of the dashboard. Under the communication section, you may want to opt out of Total Wireless emailing and texting you special offers and surveys. Under privacy, you’ll probably want to opt out of them tracking and targeting you with advertising. After opting out of the privacy and communications settings it may take up to 10 days for the changes to be processed.
How Fast Can You Stream Video?
Total Wireless’s terms and conditions specify that videos may stream at a resolution of 480p by default. The terms say that subscribers can contact customer support to have the limitation removed. Subscribers have found support’s ability to help mixed, with some having success and others not (1, 2).
When I signed up with Total Wireless’s Total 5G Unlimited plan, my video streams were capped by default at about 4.5Mbps on LTE and about 9Mbps on UW. The UW data speed cap is fast enough for 1080p HD streaming while it may not work for 4K streaming. The LTE speed cap is also good enough for 720p to 1080p streaming. I tested the streaming speed cap using the website fast.com, which is powered by Netflix. You can see my test results in the screenshots below which I did with a Google Pixel 7. Each test was repeated 3 times.
What About Data Speeds?
I did run a few speed tests shortly after activating and they are below. But speed tests should be taken with a grain of salt for a variety of reasons. One person’s speed tests will be very different from another’s.
Here’s a list of reasons why:
- Geographic location: Data speeds vary from location to location. Someone living in a rural area may have a different experience than someone living in an urban area
- Different phones: Data speeds vary by phone. Different phones have different modems in them that affect how fast you can upload and download
- Radio bands: Networks have different radio bands that they operate with. Your phone isn’t always connected to the same radio band. Some radio bands offer faster speeds than others
- Time of day: Your data speeds can vary based on the time of day. During times when the network is more congested, speeds will be slower
- Server speed: The server you are connecting to also affects your data speeds. If the server you are connecting to, to run your speed tests isn’t operating efficiently or isn’t capable of operating as fast as another server, this will show up in your speed tests.
- Cell location: How close you are to a cell tower will also affect your cell signal strength and data speed capabilities
With those disclaimers out of the way, here are a few speed tests I conducted while connected to 5G UW.
According to Total Wireless’s broadband labels, you can expect the following data speeds with their plans. Speeds vary based on what network you are connected to and your plan has access to.
- 5G Ultra Wideband (5G UW) – 215- 702 Mbps download, 14-75 Mbps upload, 37-56 ms latency
- 5G Nationwide (5G) – 34-149 Mbps download, 6-37 Mbps upload, 42-63 ms latency
- 4G LTE (LTE) – 9-69 Mbps download, 1-13 Mbps upload, 51-82 ms latency
How To Port Out Of Total Wireless
To port out from Total Wireless, you need to know your account number. Your account number is your phone's IMEI number which can usually be found in the phone's system settings. The account PIN number by default is 0000 unless you set it to something different. Porting out from Total Wireless may also require you to contact to them to ask them to release your phone number.
Total Wireless
This wireless plan's guide is part of BestMVNO's comprehensive coverage of Total Wireless. See BestMVNO's coverage of the latest Total Wireless news or visit the links below to sign up for service, or configure your APN settings.