Today, Ookla announced that it acquired RootMetrics. I’ve long argued that RootMetrics has the best methodology for assessing the quality of cellular networks at the national level. Further, I’ve argued that Ookla’s traditional methodology is lousy. Since Ookla primarily relies on tests initiated by users, the company’s data is subject to biases that RootMetrics’ drive […]
Yesterday, US Mobile launched a beta version of eSIM plans. Initially, eSIMs are only available with US Mobile’s service over Verizon’s network (the Super LTE network according to US Mobile’s parlance). Device Compatibility At the moment, only a handful of devices are will work with US Mobile’s eSIMs: iPhone SE (second generation) iPhone 11, 11 […]
Update: The acquisition is officially complete. In September of 2020, Verizon announced plans to acquire TracFone and its roughly 20 million subscribers. A while back, the deal was cleared by the FTC and the DOJ declined to hold back the process. The acquisition got its final green lights from the California Public Utilities Commission last […]
Today, T-Mobile issued a press release announcing that it will delay the phaseout of Sprint’s legacy 3G/CDMA network. The phaseout had been set to occur on January 1, 2022, but it has now been pushed back three months to March 31, 2022. In the press release, T-Mobile takes shots at Dish but does not mention […]
Verizon’s flanker brand Visible has had a rough time the past few weeks. First, a security issue caused trouble for a large number of subscribers earlier this month. Then yesterday, reports of a service outage started to surface. Several Reddit posts and dozens of comments mentioned the outage. I’m not sure how much of Visible’s […]
Reddit user u/tronic862016 recently reported Tracfone’s brand Straight Talk is offering eSIMs for some customers using phones in the iPhone 12 and 13 series. The Reddit user shared this screenshot to a post on Reddit’s NoContract community: Straight Talk may merely be testing out eSIM rather than going for a full-blown product launch. As far […]
Earlier today, Visible shared a few tweets with updates on the security issue I posted about yesterday. Here’s the important bit: Taking Visible at face value, it looks like the attacker is exploiting information leaked in an unrelated data breach. Consequently, I’m not sure it’s entirely accurate to say Visible was hacked. I’m not sure […]
Visible, Verizon’s flanker brand, recently underwent some kind of security issue. Over the last day or two, subscribers have been posting in Visible’s Reddit community reporting hacked accounts, fraudulent orders, and loss of account access. A Visible staff member shared the following update on Reddit: I’m unsure what’s meant by “a small number of member […]
For over a year, Peter Adderton, the founder of Boost Mobile, has been dropping hints about MobileX, a new cellular carrier he’s starting. Adderton has suggested MobileX will take a novel and consumer-friendly approach, but details about MobileX’s plans have been sparse until today. This morning, Mobile X Global announced that its U.S. brand, MobileX, […]
Earlier this week, Comlinkdata announced that it will acquire Opensignal, a company that collects crowdsourced data about the performance of cellular networks. A few years ago, Comlinkdata acquired Tutela, another company crowdsourcing performance data. It’ll be interesting to see whether Comlinkdata continues to operate Tutela and Opensignal as more-or-less independent brands. I’ve previously argued that […]