T-Mobile plans to buy U.S. Cellular’s almost 5 million subscribers, all of U.S. Cellular’s stores, and some of U.S. Cellular’s spectrum. The deal is expected to close in mid-2025 and will likely involve a final price between 4 and 5 billion dollars. While I’m often not a fan of consolidation in the wireless industry, the […]
For the last year, Coverage Critic has been chaotic. Google traffic used to account for 95% of my visitors. Today, Google traffic is down 95% from its peak. Initially, I used the drop in traffic as an excuse to put my head down and build out my coverage map. It’s now better than ever. However, […]
Starting April 10, internet service providers and cell carriers will be required to display Broadband Facts labels modeled after the FDA’s Nutrition Facts labels. Here’s a sample label from the FCC’s website: Capturing Performance The labels are great. They surface important information in a manner that’s easy for normal consumers to understand. Pricing-related details are […]
Visible just made three upgrades to its Visible+ plan: Hotspot speeds doubled (now 10Mbps) Smartwatch support is now included with no extra charge One free Global Pass day per month The plan’s regular price of $45 per month is unchanged. However, these upgrades may lead Visible to run fewer promotions that bring the plan’s cost […]
T-Mobile just increased the data allotments on its original Connect plans. $15 Plan – Increased from 3.5GB per month to 5GB $25 Plan – Increased from 6.5GB per month to 8GB These plans were originally introduced to appease regulators during the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint. While T-Mobile committed to increasing data allotments on the […]
Earlier this week, US Mobile announced a closed beta for a new, multi-network offering. Here’s the core excerpt from the announcement that Ahmed Khattak, US Mobile’s CEO, shared on Reddit: OS-Level Switching As far as I can tell, US Mobile plans to rely on the cellular data switching capacities that are available on multi-SIM devices […]
US Mobile launched a new phone plan that offers unlimited minutes and texts along with 10GB of data per month. The plan is only available with annual billing for $180 per year (equivalent to $15 per month). Plan Details Subscribers on the new plan can opt for either Verizon or T-Mobile’s network. In US Mobile’s […]
Here’s how T-Mobile used to describe its old Price Lock guarantee (thank you, Archive.org): As of today, new subscribers can receive something that’s still called Price Lock, but the terms are different: The old Price Lock was purportedly a passive guarantee. Subscribers allegedly didn’t need to do anything to keep the rates they started with. […]
I’ve released a new version of the coverage map with a few updates: Restrictions that prevented users from zooming out have been lifted Coverage reporting around bodies of water and shorelines has improved UI changes were introduced for Alaska and US Territories Roads are more visible The rest of this post is a deep dive […]
Today, I released a significant update to the coverage map. Update 1: New Data For All Networks The updated map incorporates the most recent round of data from the FCC’s Broadband Data Collection program. The new data came out last month and represents networks’ coverage as of mid-2023. The recency of data improved by about […]