There are probably millions of people in the U.S. that could save a lot of money by switching to a different plan offered by their existing cell phone carrier. For example, plenty of people pay for expensive plans with unlimited data, even though they only use a few gigabytes of data each month. Recently, I […]
Google Fi has a lot going for it: amazing international roaming options, fancy network-switching technology, and a simple pricing structure. Despite all Fi’s great aspects, I don’t usually recommend it. For most users, it’s just too expensive. Google Fi typically charges $10 per gigabyte of data. A lot of other carriers offer plans with far […]
With recurring expenses, I often advise people to start small and upgrade later if necessary. The rationale behind the advice is easy to illustrate with internet service. Home internet is often priced based on the max speeds the service provider will deliver. Usually, max speeds are described as some number of megabits per second (Mbps). […]
Earlier this week, I signed up for Comcast’s Xfinity internet at a new apartment. If a subscriber doesn’t bring his or her own modem and router, Xfinity will rent a device for $13 per month. As far as I can tell, the majority of subscribers opt to rent. Renting is a terrible deal. I purchased […]
It recently came out that around 2,000,000 AT&T phones were unlocked by hackers that bribed AT&T employees. Muhammad Fahd and co-conspirators allegedly bribed a handful of AT&T employees to make the unlocks possible. As I understand it, around 2012 lists of IMEI numbers were provided to bribed employees so that devices could be fraudulently unlocked. […]
Several months ago, I published a blog post arguing that Consumer Reports’ cell phone rankings were broken. This month, Consumer Reports updated those rankings with data from another round of surveying its subscribers. The rankings are still broken. Consumer Reports slightly changed its approach this round. While Consumer Reports used to share results on 7 […]
I’ve been reading a ton of articles with commentators’ takes on whether a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile will be good or bad for consumers. Almost everything I’ve read has taken a strong position one way or the other. I don’t think I’ve seen a single article that expressed substantial uncertainty about whether a merger […]
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: The updated web page […]
In my opinion, major wireless networks can be ranked pretty clearly in terms of their current, nationwide reliability: Verizon (best) AT&T T-Mobile 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 […]
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 […]