Category: Mobile Phone Service

Consumer Cellular Increases Data Limits

Christian

Yesterday, Consumer Cellular announced an increase in the data allotments it offers at different price points. The table below outlines the changes:

Monthly data costPrevious allotmentNew allotmentPercent increase
$50.25GB0.5GB100%
$102GB3GB50%
$205GB10GB100%
$3010GB16GB60%
$4020GB25GB25%

I spoke with a Consumer Cellular support agent who confirmed that these changes would automatically affect existing customers. For example, a customer who was paying $10 per month for 2GB of data will now be allotted 3GB of data per month at no extra charge.

It’s great to see a carrier improving customers’ plans without charging more or requiring customers to proactively opt-in to the changes. In some ways, it’s a bold business move. Customers who were paying $30 per month for 10GB could now downgrade to the $20 per month price tier and still receive 10GB of data. That said, I don’t expect a lot of customers will actually downgrade in response to the new pricing structure.

Sliding Data Limits

Christian

If you’re looking to reduce your data use, I highly recommend using what I call sliding data limits. Start each month by setting a data limit that’s well below the amount of data you’re allotted. Each time you hit your limit, reset it to something higher. Each time you change your limit, increase it by a smaller amount.

For example, let’s say you have 7GB of data allotted each month:

  • Start the month with a limit of 3GB
  • If you hit the 3GB limit, increase the limit to 5GB
  • If you hit the 5GB limit, increase the limit to 6GB
  • If you hit the 6GB limit, increase the limit to 6.5GB
  • Etc…

With this approach, you’ll be able to keep tabs on your data use and prevent overages with minimal effort.

Setting data limits

Android phones have a built-in feature for setting data limits. Unfortunately, iOS does not offer a comparable feature. iPhone users aren’t totally out of luck though. Many wireless carriers allow subscribers to set up data limits or usage alerts from their online accounts.

In Android 10, you can set limits by going to:
Settings > Network & internet > Mobile network > Data warning and limit

Your phone may account for data use a bit differently than your wireless carrier. If you’re allocated 7GB of data each month, you may want to conservatively set limits as if you’re allotted 6.9GB of data each month.

Hitting data limits

If you hit a limit you’ve set, data access will be cut off. You’ll probably be prompted with an alert like this one:

Mobile data is paused notification

Data warnings

With Android phones, it’s possible to set data warning alerts rather than strict limits. With alerts, you’ll receive a notification when you’ve used a certain amount of data. Further data access will not be automatically cut off.

You might want to use both limits and warnings at the same time. For example, if you start a month with a 3GB limit, you might also want to set a 1.5GB warning to give you a better sense of the rate at which you’re using data.

Why Are Major Carriers’ Websites So Bad?

Christian 4 Comments

In my experience, major wireless carriers have terrible websites. It’s hard to figure out all of the plans major carriers offer and the prices of those plans. Finding details about plans’ policies and limitations is often tricky. In contrast, a lot of small, MVNO carriers have easy-to-use websites.

Among the major carriers, I’ve spent the most time using Verizon’s website. While doing things that Verizon suggested I should be able to do online, I’d regularly be served error messages indicating that I should call Verizon’s telephone support.

A recent Reddit thread titled Why is the official Verizon website so bad? touched on the same topic. Commenters indicated that bad websites are par for the course with the major carriers. Here’s the top-voted comment in the thread:1

AT&Ts website and app are far worse. I promise you.

So why are major carriers’ websites so bad? I think part of the explanation is that mobile phone service in the U.S. is a confusopoly. Incompetence doesn’t explain why it’s difficult to find clear descriptions of carriers’ policies and limitations. Carriers make some information hard to find because keeping that information in hard-to-reach areas is in their interests. Carriers often default to showing website visitors a subset of their plans. Visitors often need to search to find prepaid and budget plans. Carriers know that price-sensitive consumers will be more likely to put effort into searching while price-insensitive consumers may spend more than they need to for premium service.

I don’t think my argument that mobile phone service is a confusopoly is sufficient to explain all of the ways in which major carriers websites are bad. It’s hard to see how some of the issues I’ve experienced could serve carriers’ interests. For example, Verizon’s website went down last week. I don’t think the outage was good for Verizon.

Maybe all of the complexity large carriers deal with contributes to their websites being so bad. Subscribers with major carriers are on all sorts of different plans with different policies, features, etc. On the other hand, lots of companies deal with complexity and still have good websites. Financial institutions offer complicated services; their websites seem to work a lot better than major carriers’ websites.

I’m not sure what to think. If other explanations make a lot of sense to you, let me know in the comments.

Why Are Family Plans Cheaper?

Christian

Wireless carriers often offer service with a lower price per line for customers on multi-line plans. For example, here’s how Verizon prices its Start Unlimited Plan:1

  • 1 line – $70 per line
  • 2 lines – $60 per line
  • 3 lines – $45 per line
  • 4 lines – $35 per line
  • 5 lines – $30 per line

The cost per line with five users is less than half of the cost per line with only one user. I can think of a few reasonable-seeming explanations for why carriers price their plans this way.

Reduced logistical costs

There may be higher overhead costs per subscriber on single-line plans than on multi-line plans. For example, carriers incur costs when sending bills and processing payments. Even if a multi-line plan has five lines, there is only one bill that needs to be paid each month. Similarly, support costs per line may be lower for multi-line plans. Offering support to an account with five lines probably does not take 5x the effort it takes to offer support to an account with only one line.

Different price sensitivity

Multi-line plans tend to be purchased by families. People may be more price-sensitive when shopping for family plans. Maybe people are often willing to pay top-dollar for an individual (single-line) plan but unwilling to pay top-dollar for service for a whole family.

Looking at it another way, shopping around for deals makes more sense as the price of a service increases. The total cost of a family plan tends to be higher than the total cost of a single-line plan.

Inconsistent use

Not everyone uses their phones in the same way. When my family shared a plan, my sister and I used a fair amount of data. My brother used a little bit of data. My parents barely used any data. On the flip side, I barely used minutes; many of my family members talked on their phones regularly.

When buying a single-line plan, it’s often easy for people to find a plan that’s well-matched to how they use their phone. When family plans require all subscribers to be on the same plan, some people will be forced into plans that are mismatched with their levels of use. I expect it’s common for families to put everyone on an unlimited plan because one or two family members use a lot of data. As a result, lots of light data users end up on multi-line, unlimited plans. In contrast, light data users purchasing single-line plans rarely end up on unlimited plans.

I expect the average person on a single-line, unlimited plan from Verizon uses more data than the average person on a multi-line, unlimited plan from Verizon. Subscribers that use Verizon’s network more heavily contribute more to Verizon’s expenses. As a result, Verizon charges single-line users a higher rate per line.

If everyone in your family uses their phones in about the same way, consider yourself lucky. Your family may be able to get an unusually good deal on wireless service.

Visible Continues To Throttle Some Phones

Christian 8 Comments

When the wireless carrier Visible first launched, Visible throttled data speeds to a maximum of 5Mbps. In June, Visible announced a removal of the cap for new and existing customers:

Starting today, and for a limited time, we’re removing the 5 Mbps data speed cap for our current and new members at no added cost…everyone who gets to experience uncapped speeds will get to keep them — again, at no additional cost — as long as they are a member.

Last week, I started trialing Visible’s service. Speed tests I ran all found download speeds of about 5 or 6 Mbps. Whether I had a strong LTE connection or a weak one, I experienced about the same download speed.

Summary of several Visible speed test results showing download speeds around 5Mbps

Each of the tests showed a weird pattern. After initiating a test, speeds would briefly shoot up well beyond 5Mbps (red arrow) before stabilizing around 5Mbps (green arrows).

Speed test result showing speeds stabilize around 5Mbps

Shortly after experiencing these weird test results, I found a Reddit thread where other Visible subscribers mentioned similar problems. Here’s the original post by Reddit user n0ki:

I now have 2 phones moved over to Visible. Both phones max out at 5mbps. After spending an hour or so with chat support and going through all their troubleshooting, I finally convince her that even though my account shows its not capped, that is is acting like it is. She finally decides to “reset” the cap and that resolves the issue.

I reach out to support on my 2nd phone and explain I’m having the same problem and what the solution is. They want me to spend another hour going through all the same troubleshooting steps.

Frustrating that it’s currently advertised as unlimited but all these new accounts still seem to be capped at 5!

Most of the people experiencing the issue were using the Visible R2, the same phone I experienced an issue with.

I went ahead and reached out to Visible’s support. After a live chat conversation that took about 20 minutes, I was experiencing much faster download speeds:

Speed test result finding a download speed of 17Mbps

While it’s unimpressive that Visible seems to still be throttling some subscribers, I’m inclined to believe the issue is due to an honest mistake on Visible’s end.

Image of a hard hat and a construction cone

Verizon Website Outage on 9/23/2019

Christian

3:20PM MT update: The outage is has ended.

VerizonWireless.com appears to be down at the moment. If you’re having trouble accessing the website right now, the issue is not on your end. As far as I can tell, the problem is not related to the browser or device visitors are using to access Verizon’s website.

At the moment, I’m being served a “Page is unavailable” message on all of the web pages I’ve tried to load:

Earlier, I was presented with a different error message:

The outage appears to be unrelated to the locations users try to access Verizon’s website from. I continued to receive error messages when accessing Verizon’s website from other locations via a VPN.

The outage appears to have started by about 1:30MT and hasn’t been resolved at the time of writing (about an hour later). Android Central and at least one Twitter user have also picked up on the outage.

Stay tuned.

Google Fi’s Unlimited Plan – Is It Worth It?

Christian

Yesterday, Google Fi launched an unlimited plan. While Fi labels the new plan as “unlimited,” it has a couple of limitations potential customers should recognize:

  • Video streaming will be limited to 480p quality.
  • After 22GB of regular data use on a line, data speeds will be throttled to 256Kbps.

In my opinion, 480p quality (sometimes described as DVD-quality) is perfectly fine. However, plenty of people disagree with me and like to watch videos in higher resolutions. I see the reduced speeds after 22GB of use as a more serious limitation. 256Kbps is slow enough to make some online activities frustrating or impossible.

Google Fi customers can now choose between Fi’s old, Flexible plan or the new, Unlimited plan:

Fi’s Flexible Plan

The flexible plan uses the following pricing structure before taxes and fees:

  • $20 for unlimited talk and text on the first line. $15 for each additional line.
  • Pay-for-what-you-use data charged at $10 for each gigabyte of use. Data charges are capped after a threshold amount of data use that varies with the number of lines on the plan (6GB for a single-line plan).

The flexible plan has slightly different policies:

  • After 15GB of use on a line in a single month, speeds are capped to 256Kbps.
  • Video can be streamed at 1080p quality.
  • International calls from the U.S. incur reasonable, per-minute charges (subscribers on Fi’s unlimited plan can make calls from the U.S. to over 50 countries at no additional cost).

Fi’s Unlimited Plan

Google Fi’s unlimited plan is priced based on the number of lines used:1

Number of LinesCost Per Unlimited LineBreak-even Point
(Gigs per line)
1$705.00GB
2$604.25GB
3$503.33GB
4$452.88GB
5$452.90GB
6$452.92GB

Fi Flexible Vs. Fi Unlimited

If you expect the average data use across lines on your plan will consistently fall below the appropriate break-even point listed in the table above, you should probably subscribe to Fi’s Flexible plan. If you expect data use to be above the break-even point consistently, you should probably subscribe to Fi’s Unlimited plan.

If you’re unsure about your data use or use very different amounts of data each month, choosing a plan may be harder. Google Fi’s Unlimited plan allows 7GB per line more of regular-speed data use each month (22GB vs. 15GB). If you expect you’ll always use less than 15GB of data per line, you may still want to consider Fi’s Flexible plan. Since the flexible plan has caps on data charges, Fi’s Flexible plan will rarely be much more expensive than Fi’s Unlimited plan:

Number of LinesTotal Cost (Unlimited plan)Max Cost (Flexible plan)Difference
1$70$80$10
2$120$135$15
3$150$170$20
4$180$205$25
5$225$240$15
6$270$275$5
If you expect to use under 15GB per line and occasionally (but not always) have data use that exceeds the break-even point, Fi’s Flexible plan is likely the best option.

You can view the math behind the tables in this post here.

VerHIDEzon – Brought To You By T-Mobile

Christian

T-Mobile just started a satirical ad campaign criticizing Verizon. T-Mobile’s CEO, John Legere, kicked the campaign off with this tweet:

Tweet from T-Mobile's CEO

The ad campaign criticizes Verizon for its decision to charge a premium for 5G service without publishing a map of areas where 5G service is available. The website for the campaign, VerHIDEzon.com, has some entertaining content:

We believe in charging a premium for 5G, without telling you where you’ll have coverage.
Why do we do this? Because we’re VerHIDEzon, and we do whatever we want…Every day we wake up with one goal in mind: charge our customers as much as possible.

T-Mobile makes a good point. It’s silly for Verizon to charge for 5G service without publishing information that indicates the extent of Verizon’s 5G coverage. Still, I find the campaign kind of odd. Neither company has much 5G coverage at the moment. Almost no one is using 5G-compatible phones yet. It may make business sense for T-Mobile to run the campaign today, but more time will need to pass before 5G has a lot of relevance for typical consumers.

Representation of the concept of a limit

Google Fi’s Unlimited Plan Has Limits

Christian 3 Comments

Last month, I published a blog post titled Unlimited Plans At 2G Speeds Are Bogus. I argued that wireless carriers that throttle data speeds to 128Kbps after a threshold amount of data use shouldn’t call their plans “unlimited.” Doing things on the internet at 128Kbps is often frustrating or impossible. Beyond that, imposing a maximum speed implicitly limits the amount of data a subscriber can use in a month.

In a follow-up post, I was critical of Atlice Mobile for labeling a plan as “unlimited” while imposing a bunch of limits that it did not clearly disclose. Google Fi seems to be following in Altice Mobile’s footsteps. Today, Fi Launched a new “unlimited” plan. Subscribers on this plan only get to use 22GB of data at regular speeds:1

If you use more than 15 GB of data in a cycle on the Fi Flexible plan or more than 22 GB in a cycle on the Fi Unlimited plan (less than 1% of individual Fi users as of Jan. 2018), you’ll experience slower speeds (256 kbps) above those respective data thresholds until your next billing cycle begins.
While I expect Fi is accurately reporting that less than 1% of users as of January 2018 exceeded 22GB of use, the statement might mislead people. Until now, Fi didn’t try to entice heavy data users with an option it labeled as an unlimited plan.2

256Kbps is slow

Data at 256Kbps will be more usable than data at 128Kbps, but many online activities will still be impractical. I don’t think continuous video streaming will work even at fairly low resolutions. Many web pages will load extremely slowly. As mentioned earlier, imposing a max speed of 256Kbps does limit the maximum data subscribers can use. Even if a subscriber manages to transfer a full 256 kilobits every single second after using 22GB of regular data, she’ll still have a theoretical limit of about 100GB of data use each month.3

Market pressures

While I haven’t always been a fan of Google Fi’s prices, I have thought of Google Fi as being a company that’s offering wireless service in an unusually transparent and consumer-friendly manner. I’m sad to see Google Fi caving to marketing pressures. That said, I realize the pressures are real. So let me make something clear: most people are not heavy data users; most people do not need unlimited plans. If enough consumers recognize that, there will be less pressure for companies to offer silly, not-really-unlimited plans.

Image representing high-tech metrics

How To Find QCI Values

Christian

QoS Class Identifiers (QCIs) play a role in the implementation of prioritization procedures on LTE networks.

I rely on the app Network Signal Guru (NSG) to find QCI information. The QCI-related features of the NSG app only work on rooted Android devices with appropriate Qualcomm chipsets.1 Rooting devices presents security risks. I don’t recommend rooting any device without doing some research first.

When NSG is running, users can scroll through a number of screens with network performance metrics. If you’re connected to an LTE network, one of the screens will be titled “EUTRA Sessions.” The screenshot below comes from a test I ran using Google Fi’s service over T-Mobile’s network:


My Google Fi service had a QCI of 6 during regular data use. I also ran a test with service from Mint Mobile (an MVNO that uses T-Mobile’s network). During my test, Mint Mobile had a QCI of 7.

Making sense of networks’ prioritization procedures can be complicated. Network operators are usually not transparent about their policies. Disclosures and legal information published by the major networks provide some sense of each network’s policies, but the disclosures generally don’t shed as much light as I’d like.

To get a better understanding of networks’ policies, I maintain a list of QCI test results here. If you also use Network Signal Guru and would like to contribute your observations, let me know.