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Sprint – Now Offering Nationwide 5G!??

Christian Leave a comment

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 Leave a comment

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 Leave a comment

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

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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 Leave a comment

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 Leave a comment

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.

PCMag’s 2019 Network Tests — My thoughts

Christian 1 Comment

Summary

On June 20, PCMag published its latest results from performance testing on the major U.S. wireless networks. Surprisingly, AT&T rather than Verizon took the top spot in the overall rankings. I expect this was because PCMag places far more weight on network performance within cities than performance in less-populated areas.

In my opinion, PCMag’s methodology overweights average upload and download speeds at the expense of network reliability. Despite my qualms, I found the results interesting to dig into. PCMag deserves a lot of credit for its thoroughness and unusual level of transparency.

Testing methodology

PCMag claims to be more transparent about its methodology than other entities that evaluate wireless networks.1 I’ve found this to be true. PCMag’s web page covering its methodology is detailed. Sascha Segan, the individual who leads the testing, quickly responded to my questions with detailed answers. I can’t say anything this positive about transparency demonstrated by RootMetrics or OpenSignal.

To measure network performance, PCMag used custom speed test software developed by Ookla. The software was deployed on Samsung Galaxy S10 phones that were driven to 30 U.S. cities as they collected data.2 In each city, stops were made in several locations for additional data collection. PCMag only recorded performance on LTE networks. If a phone was connected to a non-LTE network (e.g., a 3G network) during a test, the phone would fail that test.3 PCMag collected data on six metrics:4

  • Average download speed
  • Percent of downloads over a 5Mbps speed threshold
  • Average upload speed
  • Percent of uploads over a 2Mbps speed threshold
  • Reliability (percent of the time a connection was available)
  • Latency

The Galaxy S10 is a recent, flagship device and has essentially the best technology available for high-performance on LTE networks. Accordingly, PCMag’s test are likely to show better performance than consumers using lower-end devices will experience. PCMag’s decision to use the same high-performance device on all networks may prevent selection bias that sometimes creeps up in crowdsourced data when subscribers on one network tend to use different devices than subscribers on another network.5

In my opinion, PCMag’s decision not to account for performance on non-LTE networks somewhat limits the usefulness of its results. Some network operators still use a lot of non-LTE technologies.

Scoring

PCMag accounts for networks’ performance on several different metrics. To arrive at overall rankings, PCMag gives networks a score for each metric and assigns specific weights to each metric. Scoring multiple metrics and reasonably assigning weights is far trickier than most people realize. A lot of evaluation methodologies lose their credibility during this process (see Beware of Scoring Systems).

PCMag shares this pie chart when describing the weights assigned to each metric:6

The pie chart doesn’t tell the full story. For each metric, PCMag gives the best-performing network all the points available for that metric. Other networks are scored based on how far they are away from the best-performing network. For example, if the best-performing network has an average download speed of 100Mbps (a great speed), it will get 100% of the points available for average download speed. Another network with an average speed of 60Mbps (a good speed) would get 60% of the points available for average download speed.

The importance of a metric is determined not just by the weight it’s assigned. The variance in a metric is also extraordinarily important. PCMag measures reliability in terms of how often a phone has an LTE connection. Reliability has low variance. 100% reliability indicates great coverage (i.e., a connection is always available). 80% reliability is bad. Networks’ reliability barely affects PCMag’s rankings since reliability measures are fairly close to 100% even on unreliable networks.

The scoring system is sensitive to how reliability numbers are presented. Imagine there are only two networks:

  • Network A with 99% reliability
  • Network B with 98% reliability

Using PCMag’s approach, both network A and B would get a very similar number of points for reliability. However, it’s easy to change how the same metric is presented:

  • Network A has no connection 1% of the time
  • Network B has no connection 2% of the time

If PCMag put the reliability metric in this format, network B would only get half of the points available for reliability.

As a general rule, I think average speed metrics are hugely overrated. It’s important that speeds are good enough for people to do what they want to do on their phones. Having speeds that are way faster than the minimum speed that’s sufficient won’t benefit people much.

I’m glad that PCMag put some weight on reliability and on the proportion of tests that exceeded fairly minimum upload and download speed thresholds. However, these metrics just don’t have nearly as much of an effect on PCMag’s final results as I think they should. The scores for Chicago provide a good illustration:

Despite having the worst reliability score and by far the worst score for downloads above a 5Mbps threshold, T-Mobile still manages to take the top ranking. Without hesitation, I’d choose service with Verizon or AT&T’s performance in Chicago over service with T-Mobile’s performance in Chicago. (If you’d like to get a better sense of how scores for different metrics drove the results in Chicago, see this Google sheet where I’ve reverse engineered the scoring.)

To create rankings for regions and final rankings for the nation, PCMag combines city scores and scores for suburban/rural areas. As I understand it, PCMag mostly collected data in cities, and roughly 20% of the overall weight is placed on data from rural/suburban areas. Since a lot more than 20% of the U.S. population lives in rural or suburban areas, one could argue the national results overrepresent performance in cities. I think this puts Verizon at a serious disadvantage in the rankings. Verizon has more extensive coverage than other networks in sparsely populated areas.

While I’ve been critical in this post, I want to give PCMag the credit it’s due. First, the results for each metric in individual cities are useful and interesting. It’s a shame that many people won’t go that deep into the results and will instead walk away with the less-useful conclusion that AT&T took the top spot in the national rankings.

PCMag also deserves credit for not claiming that its results are the be-all-end-all of network evaluation:7

Other studies may focus on downloads, or use a different measurement of latency, or (in Nielsen’s case) attempt to measure the speeds coming into various mobile apps. We think our balance makes the most sense, but we also respect the different decisions others have made.

RootMetrics and OpenSignal are far less modest.

Prioritized and Deprioritized Services by Network

Christian 2 Comments

Understanding networks’ prioritization policies can be tricky. Recently, I’ve spent some time digging through the major U.S. networks’ policies. I’ve created a web page for each network listing which services I expect to be prioritized and which services I expect not to be prioritized. Making sense of each network’s policies isn’t always easy, so it’s possible I’ve misclassified some services. Please contact me if you think any information is incorrect or missing.

2021 Update: Over the last few years, I’ve run a bunch of QCI tests to assess priority levels of different plans, and I’ve become more confident about my conclusions. Results from QCI tests can be found here.

“Creating Jobs”

Christian Leave a comment

A lot of numbers have been thrown out about how many jobs will be created or destroyed if the proposed merger between Sprint and T-Mobile goes through. Here are a few examples I found on the New T-Mobile website:

When dealing with complex systems full of feedback loops, nothing happens in isolation. This fact is often overlooked. I’ll occasionally see an article where a nutrition journalist explains that there are 3,500 calories in a pound. Using some simple math, they’ll explain that since a bag of chips has 200 calories, falling into the temptation to eat a bag of chips every day will lead a person to gain about ten pounds over six months. This is of course silly. By the same logic, eating a bag of chips each day could lead a person to gain 800 pounds over 40 years.

People can’t eat a bag of chips without affecting anything else about their body or their behavior. The body is a complex system. There are lots of feedback loops that regulate things like hunger and energy expenditure.

The economy works in a similar manner. Jobs cannot be created out of thin air. Jobs can’t be eliminated in isolation. If the New T-Mobile hires 10,000 people, it’s not reducing the number of unemployed people by 10,000. The emphasis on job creation is especially strange right now. The U.S. unemployment rate is currently lower than it’s been at any other point in my life.

SpeedTalk Mobile Incentivizing Reviews

Christian 2 Comments

I recently purchased a cheap service plan I wanted to trial from SpeedTalk Mobile. During the checkout process, I was shown the following:

This clearly violates Google’s guidelines.1

Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased. (For example, business owners shouldn’t offer incentives to customers in exchange for reviews.)

I also noticed SpeedTalk keyword stuffing in its website’s footer—another questionable strategy:2

I was pretty excited about SpeedTalk. Not anymore.

Alternatives to SpeedTalk

If you’re looking for an alternative low-cost carrier, take a look at my review of Mint Mobile or my larger list of recommended budget-friendly carriers.