On February 24, T-Mobile will update its Magenta and Magenta Plus plans. While the Magenta plan will keep its current name, T-Mobile will rename the Magenta Plus plan “Magenta MAX”. High-priority data Currently, customers on the Magenta and Magenta Plus plan get 50GB per month of high-priority data. Soon, the allotment will double to 100GB […]
Several bits of news about SpaceX’s Starlink came out yesterday. #1 Pre-orders are open Starlink started accepting pre-orders in a whole bunch of countries. If you’re living in an eligible area, you can enter your address on Starlink’s website and get a rough estimate for when Starlink service will be available to you. A pre-order […]
Doug Dawson of CCG Consulting shared an excellent blog post this morning titled The Fantasy of Measuring Speeds. He gives an excellent overview of why two people who live in the same city might experience different speeds despite subscribing to the same plan offered by an internet service provider. Dawson argues that lots of important […]
RootMetrics recently released a teaser of its results from network testing in the second half of 2020. As is usual in RootMetrics’ assessments, Verizon came out as the big winner. In all seven of RootMetrics’ primary scoring categories, Verizon either took first place or tied first place. I didn’t find a lot of big surprises […]
T-Mobile has started bragging about having the best 5G speeds in Opensignal’s latest report. Here’s an excerpt from today’s press release from T-Mobile: I’ve been critical of selection bias issues inherent in Opensignal’s methodology. I continue to think there are serious selection bias issues with Opensignal’s latest 5G metrics. Still, I don’t think my qualms […]
Mint Mobile just announced that it will soon offer more data on some of its plans. The carrier’s prices won’t change. Right now, Mint offers 3 plans with fixed data allotments (all the plans include unlimited minutes and texts): 3GB per month – As low as $15 per month 8GB per month – As low […]
I’m a big believer in a free and open internet. I’m also wary of unchecked corporatism. Yesterday, many people who share my views were rejoicing as Ajit Pai, the FCC Chairman, stepped down. As Pai left his role, journalists published a bunch of hit pieces about Pai and the last several years of the FCC’s […]
For a while now, Verizon has offered a prepaid plan with unlimited minutes, texts, and data. Yesterday, Verizon Prepaid launched a second and more expensive unlimited plan. While the old plan had a base price of $65 per month, the new plan has a base price of $75 per month. Both plans are eligible for […]
The FCC’s C band auction recently closed with a total of about 81 billion dollars in bids. This was by far the highest-grossing spectrum auction in U.S. history. Previously, the largest auction garnered about 45 billion dollars. In the C band auction, about 280 megahertz of spectrum in the 3.7-3.98GHz range was reallocated to cellular […]
Understanding cell phone compatibility across networks can be tough. A common understanding has emerged: some cell phones are CDMA devices while other phones are GSM devices. According to the common understanding, GSM phones work with GSM networks, and CDMA phones work with CDMA networks. The common understanding has never been entirely accurate. For many years, […]