Month: July 2019

Verizon Pushes Back Deadline For 3G Retirement

Christian

Verizon has updated a web page about the company’s plans for retiring its 3G network. Previously, the web page indicated that (a) Verizon planned to retire its 3G network by the end of 2019 and (b) Verizon would no longer activate devices that were CDMA-only or did not support HD Voice:

Verizon Wireless is retiring its CDMA (3G) network at the end of 2019. As a result, we are no longer allowing activation of CDMA-only devices, including CDMA-only basic phones and smartphones, or 4G LTE smartphones that do not support HD Voice service.

The updated web page suggests Verizon plans to keep its 3G network available to customers until the end of 2020. It also looks like some CDMA-only phones and phones without HD Voice may be eligible for activation until the end of the year:

Starting January 1, 2020, Verizon will no longer allow any CDMA (3G and 4G Non-HD Voice) ‘Like-for-Like’ device changes.

The page also indicates that bringing your own CDMA device to activate on an existing line will be prohibited starting 1/1/2020.

As networks’ change their deadlines, I plan to update my earlier blog post covering each major networks’ plans for phasing out 3G networks.

Location, Location, Location

Christian

In my opinion, major wireless networks can be ranked pretty clearly in terms of their current, nationwide reliability:

  1. Verizon (best)
  2. AT&T
  3. T-Mobile
  4. Sprint (worst)

I get frustrated when network operators make misleading statements about nationwide quality, and I sometimes write articles calling out bullshit claims. That said, a network’s typical reliability throughout the U.S. may be very different from that network’s quality in a given area. When deciding which carrier you should use, it only matters how carriers perform where you want to use your phone.

In the last year, I’ve run speed tests in Boulder, Colorado with a bunch of carriers (using all four of the major U.S. networks). A few days ago, I ran a speed test on a phone with service from Tello, a carrier that runs over Sprint’s network. While Sprint has the worst nationwide network, the speed test found a download speed far faster than I’ve seen in Boulder with any other carrier:

129 Mbps speed test result

As a general rule, service is more expensive on networks with better nationwide performance. If you live where an underdog network performs well, you might be able to get great service at a bargain price.

Sprint – Now Offering Nationwide 5G!??

Christian

Today I was looking at Sprint’s coverage map. By default, the map appears to be displaying Sprint’s coverage profile for 5G data:

Sprint barely has any 5G coverage, so the map surprised me.

If you change the selection in the dropdown menu, you’ll see that the area shaded for “Data coverage” is identical whether the 4G or the 5G option is selected. However, the shaded area changes when “Non-LTE” is selected on the dropdown. I think Sprint may have made an honest mistake, but it has the potential to confuse consumers.

As you scroll in on specific areas, the “Data coverage” entry in the legend disappears and more finely grained categories appear:

It’s odd that users can select specific types of coverage but still see a map that differentiates between multiple types of coverage.

We know AT&T is willing to mislead its customers into believing their 4G service is 5G. At the moment, I’m going to give Sprint the benefit of the doubt. After all, the legend doesn’t even appear until a user toggles its visibility.

DOJ Clears T-Mobile’s Merger With Sprint

Christian

As expected, the Department of Justice made an announcement today approving a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile. While the merger isn’t officially closed, DOJ approval was the largest hurdle T-Mobile and Sprint needed to jump before making their merger a reality.

As far as I can tell, the terms of the merger were consistent with what most commentators were expecting:

  • Most of Sprint’s prepaid business will be divested to DISH1
  • DISH will get Sprint’s 800 MHz spectrum
  • DISH will receive access to the New T-Mobile’s network for at least 7 years2
  • DISH will have the option to take over leases on some retail stores and cell sites

I don’t think mergers between telecom companies have a good track record of benefiting consumers. I hope this merger will be different, but I’m not betting on it. As many others have pointed out, something is odd about the whole arrangement. The divestitures to DISH are ostensibly intended to allow DISH to create a viable, facilities-based carrier (i.e., a carrier that has its own hardware and doesn’t just piggyback off other companies’ networks). If DISH is likely to succeed, it’s hard to explain why Sprint couldn’t remain a viable force. Maybe I’m misunderstanding something important.

I expect the merger-related transitions to take a few years, and I plan to write about new developments as they occur. Should be interesting.

For those interested, here are a few excerpts from T-Mobile’s announcement:

The proposed New T-Mobile, will divest Sprint’s prepaid businesses and Sprint’s 800 MHz spectrum assets to DISH. Additionally, upon the closing of the divestiture transaction, the companies will provide DISH wireless customers access to the New T-Mobile network for seven years and offer standard transition services arrangements to DISH during a transition period of up to three years. DISH will also have an option to take on leases for certain cell sites and retail locations that are decommissioned by the New T-Mobile, subject to any assignment restrictions.
The New T-Mobile will be committed to divest Sprint’s entire prepaid businesses including Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile and Sprint-branded prepaid customers (excluding the Assurance brand Lifeline customers and the prepaid wireless customers of Shenandoah Telecommunications Company and Swiftel Communications, Inc.), to DISH for approximately $1.4 billion. These brands serve approximately 9.3 million customers in total.
With this agreement, Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, and Sprint-branded prepaid customers, as well as new DISH wireless customers, will have full access to the legacy Sprint network and the New T-Mobile network in a phased approach. Access to the New T-Mobile network will be through an MVNO arrangement, as well as through an Infrastructure MNO arrangement enabling roaming in certain areas until DISH’s 5G network is built out.
The companies have also committed to engage in good faith negotiations regarding the leasing of some or all of DISH’s 600 MHz spectrum to T-Mobile.
Evolution of cell phones

Phones & Keeping Up With The Joneses

Christian

People buy a lot of shit they don’t need to impress other people. The phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” often has a negative connotation. I’m not sure that’s entirely fair.

People care a lot about their social status. Status is helpful for everything from getting jobs to finding romantic partners. Like it or not, buying fancy things can improve people’s social status.

Products do a better job signaling social status when they are conspicuous. Product designers and marketers know this. You don’t see sports cars with fancy engines and subtle, Honda Civic-like exteriors. Sports cars are flashy.

Electric cars tend to look like vehicles Martians might drive. There’s no engineering reason why electric cars need to look goofy. However, carmakers know that electric car owners want other people to know which cars are electric. Unique aesthetics send signals.

Recently, there’s been indications that high-end phones aren’t selling as well as they used to. I’ve seen a lot of plausible explanations: innovations have been limited, cheap phones are awfully good these days, and carriers don’t subsidize devices the way they used to. I want to throw out another possibility: fancy phones are way less conspicuous than they used to be.

The first time one of my friends got a cell phone, I was in fifth grade. At that time, just having a cell phone was cool. But my friend didn’t just have a phone. You see, his phone could flip.

Flip phone photo

Even from a distance, you could tell my buddy’s phone wasn’t just any old phone. It was a flip phone.

When flip phones advanced, the fancier ones tended to look cooler. Remember the Razr?

For the next several years, top-tier phones continued to have unique aesthetics. In 2007, the first iPhone was released. At the time, you knew an iPhone when you saw one. Only the iPhone had a screen almost as large as the phone itself.1

A few iPhone generations later, Apple managed to keep its iPhone 4 conspicuous with a sleeker appearance than earlier models.

In the last few years, companies have run out of ways to keep fancy phones conspicuous. It seems like the goal has been to develop phones that (a) are thin and (b) have as much of the body devoted to screen space as possible. Almost every phone these days is rectangular, sleek, and almost all screen. The Motorola G6 Play is a budget phone. It’s still thin, sleek, and mostly covered by a screen:

g6 play

It used to be relatively easy to tell what phone someone was using just by glancing at it. Now that most phones look similar, that’s much harder.

Abstract photo representing wireless technology

New RootMetrics Report – Verizon Wins Again

Christian

Yesterday, RootMetrics released its report on mobile network performance in the first half of 2019. Here are the overall, national scores for each network:1

  • Verizon – 94.8 points
  • AT&T – 93.2 points
  • T-Mobile – 86.9 points
  • Sprint – 86.7 points

While Verizon was the overall winner, AT&T wasn’t too far behind. T-Mobile came in a distant third with Sprint just behind it.

RootMetrics also reports which carriers scored the best on each of its metrics within individual metro areas. Here’s how many metro area awards each carrier won along with the change in the number of rewards received since the last report:2

  • Verizon – 672 awards (+5)
  • AT&T – 380 (+31)
  • T-Mobile – 237 (-86)
  • Sprint – 89 (+9)

My thoughts

Overall this report wasn’t too surprising since the overall results were so similar to those from the previous report. The decline in the number of metro area awards T-Mobile won is large, but I’m not sure I should take the change too seriously. There may have been a big change in T-Mobile’s quality relative to other networks, but I think it’s also possible the change can be explained by noise or a change in methodology. In its report, RootMetrics notes the following:3

T-Mobile’s performance didn’t necessarily get worse. Rather, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon each made award gains in the test period, which corresponded with T-Mobile’s decreased award count.

I continue to believe RootMetrics’ data collection methodology is far better than Opensignal’s methodology for assessing networks at the national level. I take this latest set of results more seriously than I take the Opensignal results I discussed yesterday. That said, I continue to be worried about a lack of transparency in how RootMetrics aggregates its underlying data to arrive at final results. Doing that aggregation well is hard.

A final note for RootMetrics:
PLEASE DISCLOSE FINANCIAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH COMPANIES YOU EVALUATE!

Woman making a skeptical face

Opensignal Released a New Report – I’m Skeptical

Christian

Opensignal just released a new report on the performance of U.S. wireless networks. The report ranks major U.S. networks in five categories based on crowdsourced data:

  • 4G availability
  • Video experience
  • Download speed experience
  • Upload speed experience
  • Latency experience

Verizon took the top spot for 4G availability and video experience. T-Mobile came out on top for both of the speed metrics. T-Mobile and AT&T shared the top placement for the latency experience metric.

Selection bias

I’ve previously raised concerns about selection bias in Opensignal’s data collection methodology. Opensignal crowdsources data from typical users. Crowdsourcing introduces issues since there are systematic differences between the typical users of different networks. Imagine that Network A has far more extensive coverage in rural areas than Network B. It stands to reason that Network A likely has more subscribers in rural areas than Network B. Lots of attributes of subscribers vary in similar ways between networks. E.g., expensive networks likely have subscribers that are wealthier.

Analyses of crowdsourced data can capture both (a) genuine differences in network performance and (b) differences in how subscribers on each network use their devices. Opensignal’s national results shouldn’t be taken too seriously unless Opensignal can make a compelling argument that either (a) its methodology doesn’t lead to serious selection bias or (b) it’s able to adequately adjust for the bias.

Speed metrics

Opensignal ranks carriers based on average download and upload speeds. In my opinion, average speeds are overrated. The portion of time where speeds are good enough is much more important than the average speed a service offers.

Opensignal’s average download speed results are awfully similar between carriers:

  • Verizon – 22.9 Mbps
  • T-Mobile – 23.6 Mbps
  • AT&T – 22.5 Mbps
  • Sprint – 19.2 Mbps

Service at any of those speeds would be sufficient for almost any activities people typically use their phones for. Without information about how often speeds were especially low on each network, it’s hard to come to conclusions about differences in the actual experience on each network.

Image depicting the idea of "change."

Ting Plans to Drop T-Mobile and Add Verizon

Christian

Added 2/18/2020: Ting has found a way to continue offering service over T-Mobile’s network going forward. The parts of this post about Ting’s plans to migrate subscribers away from T-Mobile’s network are no longer accurate.

Yesterday, it was made public that the mobile virtual network operator Ting will soon cease offering service over T-Mobile’s network and begin offering service over Verizon’s network. It was also announced that Ting had extended its existing agreement with Sprint through September 2020.1

Dropping T-Mobile

Based on my understanding of yesterday’s SEC filing, I expect Ting will continue to offer service over T-Mobile’s network to existing subscriber until at least late 2019 and possibly late 2020.2 I’m less sure whether new customers will be able to sign up for service over T-Mobile’s network for much longer.

Adding Verizon

The new arrangement with Verizon is based on a five-year agreement that Elliot Noss, CEO and president of Ting’s parent company spoke positively about:3

“With Verizon, we will be adding the network that in our opinion has the best coverage and performance ratings in the U.S. Our contract with Verizon is better than that with T-Mobile in terms of rates, guarantees and other financial terms, which had negatively impacted Ting Mobile’s past performance. Finally, our dealings with Verizon to this point have been productive and professional. ​​So long-term, we see this as very positive news.”

Going Forward

I’ve previously raved about Ting’s customer support, but I’ve been reluctant to strongly recommend Ting since its rates have been fairly high for access to mediocre networks (Sprint and T-Mobile). If Ting’s rates don’t increase as a result of moving to Verizon’s higher-quality network, I think the case for recommending Ting becomes a lot stronger.

Ting anticipates some friction migrating its T-Mobile subscribers to new networks:4

“We estimate the costs of migration, primarily in the form of SIMs, shipping and device marketing, to be in the range of $3 million this year, and as much as $12 million over the following years. These variable costs are mostly in the nature of the marketing costs needed to move customers from one network to the other, and will mostly be in the form of inducements, device subsidies and/or a form of service credit. There’s not a lot of precedent to provide guidance on which marketing programs will be most effective, and we are also unsure of how many, if any, of our customers will refuse or fail to move. This makes the total migration cost difficult to estimate. Taking on as much as $12 to $15 million in unplanned, one-time costs, over a few years, is a lot for us. That being said, this move is key to putting the mobile business back on a stronger long-term footing.

When Ting drops T-Mobile, it will no longer offer service over a GSM network. I expect the move from T-Mobile (and GSM) to Verizon makes more financial sense today that it would have a few years ago. As operators gradually replace their 3G networks with LTE networks, support for older GSM and CDMA technologies is becoming less important.

Added 2/26/2020: Ting officially launched service over Verizon’s network in February 2020.