Verizon Unlimited Data Plan for Jetpacks

[docj]

8 hours ago, jbh said:

Although low SNR would usually indicate to me the problem, while at Bushnell I could count on 20+ Mbps overnights with the same low SNR. Odd. The nearest Verizon tower is about five miles away, across a big lake and orange groves.

Have you measured the download speed in the midnight to 5 am time period?  If you're being limited because of network congestion, it shouldn't be evident at that time of day.  The few slowdowns I've had with my prepaid plan have all been of limited duration.

[jbh]

  I haven't measured it here, however I've been able to successfully record streaming HD TV all nights this past week between 01:00 and 05:00. Not remotely possible in daytime.

[docj]

Do you have a phone that is also on the Verizon network?  Have you thought to measure the phone's download speed at the same time you're having issues with the Jetpack?  If the phone is on a postpaid plan, like most are, then that would help determine if the download speed issue is related to it being a prepaid plan or if the network is seriously overloaded, in general.

[docj]

I discovered an interesting behavior with my unlimited Jetpack plan today.  This is the my monthly "anniversary" day and I have the plan set up for automatic payment in order to get the $5 discount.  But, at around noon, the Jetpack stopped connecting to the internet even though neither its display or its online admin screen indicated there was an problem.  I power-cycled it and it began working normally.  

My assumption is that the prepaid plans function as stand-alone "blocks" of usage and, therefore, there is no way to "slide" from one month's usage to the next without a reboot.  I'd be interested to see if others experience this same issue.  You'd probably never notice it if you turn off your Jetpack when not using it.  I don't bother to do that; I have its charger set to cycle on and off so it doesn't overcharge the battery but I see no reason to shut off the device itself.

Edited January 8, 2019 by docj

[Big5er]

Joel, mine has been on for 3 payment cycles and never been off yet.

 

[docj]

12 hours ago, Big5er said:

Joel, mine has been on for 3 payment cycles and never been off yet.

 

Interesting.  My "issues" continued throughout the renewal day despite the fact that my online account stated that payment had been received for the next month, etc.  What was odd was that when these outages occurred the Jetpack's display screen was totally normal and showed that I had an LTE connection.  But none of the devices on my internal network could access the internet until I rebooted the Jetpack.  Of course it could have been a local Verizon issue, but my phones didn't seem to be having any problems.  I'll see if it reoccurs next month.

[Big5er]

7 hours ago, docj said:

What was odd was that when these outages occurred the Jetpack's display screen was totally normal and showed that I had an LTE connection. 

Bad jetpack????

[docj]

10 minutes ago, Big5er said:

Bad jetpack????

Please don't say that!   It's out of warranty and I don't want to pay $200 for a new 8800! 😪

[chirakawa]

1 minute ago, docj said:

Please don't say that!   It's out of warranty and I don't want to pay $200 for a new 8800! 😪

I don't have one, but I've been reading on HoFo that some 8800's are flawed and drop signal inconsistently. 

[DanZemke]

docj,

I also have a Verizon 8800 that occasionally stops providing data too.  My symptoms appear to be like yours. 

No data provided to any connected device, but connection maintained with multiple devices.  Rebooting the 8800 fixes it. 

I use my 8800 every day, and in my case, the failure to provide data is not correlated with my billing cycle.  Alas, I have not been able to perceive a pattern. 

It smells to me like a code bug, rather than a hardware problem.  Unfortunately, one that will be difficult to track down.  I've resigned myself to accept required reboots a few times a month as a minor annoyance.

[docj]

1 hour ago, DanZemke said:

I also have a Verizon 8800 that occasionally stops providing data too.  My symptoms appear to be like yours. 

 

I have a 7730L, not an 8800, and the 7730's not supposed to have that problem!  It never did before, but previously I didn't rely on it the way we do now.  It's possible that the problem always existed but I wasn't trying to use ~150GB a month off of it.

[Darryl&Rita]

We only have one renewal under our belt, but our 7730 did the same thing on the last renewal. Mind you, we paid it in store, in cash, rather than auto-pay.

[edatlanta]

13 hours ago, docj said:

Please don't say that!   It's out of warranty and I don't want to pay $200 for a new 8800! 😪

I have 2 7730's post pay and 1 8800L prepay and the oldest 7730 quit picking up a good signal.  1-2 bars vs 4-5 (-114 eBm vs -80 dBm).  This happened for the first time a couple of weeks ago and a reset fixed it.  Yesterday it happened again and a reset did nothing so I contacted Verizon via chat. 

The agent did some checking on their end and had me reboot the 7730L a couple of times and called it bad.  She asked if it was damaged at all and I said no it was pristine and it is.  She offered a new 7730L for $150.00 vs the normal price since it was out of warranty.  I asked about getting the 8800L for the same price and it took a few minutes, but it was approved and it is in the mail now.  I have the 8800L on a prepay account and absolutely love it.  It seems more robust then the 7730's that I have.  Both of my 7730's have static IP's which will transfer to the replacement 8800L.

There does seem to be some negotiation for a better deal for replacements, but I had to push a little.  When you live and die with wireless internet you can't have too many jetpacks I guess.  

[docj]

30 minutes ago, edatlanta said:

The agent did some checking on their end and had me reboot the 7730L a couple of times and called it bad.  She asked if it was damaged at all and I said no it was pristine and it is.  She offered a new 7730L for $150.00 vs the normal price since it was out of warranty.  I asked about getting the 8800L for the same price and it took a few minutes, but it was approved and it is in the mail now. 

Thanks for the info.  If I have to go that route I'll remember to ask for "the deal of the day!" 😀

[mkc]

Chris and Cherie have been tracking the 8800's drop out issue for a while now.  If you are an rvmobileinternet.com member you can follow and contribute to the discussion in their forum.

[chindog]

For you guys with the 7730's that are having issues, it could be that the battery is going bad.  I was having some problems with mine, and when I took the battery out, I could see it was slightly bulged out.  I got a new battery, and the problems went away.  The Verizon stores didn't have the batteries, but I found them at Walmart.com.

[docj]

47 minutes ago, chindog said:

For you guys with the 7730's that are having issues, it could be that the battery is going bad.

My battery did go bad several months ago and I bought an OEM replacement on Amazon.  The problems I reported all went away the day after the renewal "anniversary".  I still think that had something to do with it.

[Darryl&Rita]

3 hours ago, chindog said:

For you guys with the 7730's that are having issues, it could be that the battery is going bad.  I was having some problems with mine, and when I took the battery out, I could see it was slightly bulged out.  I got a new battery, and the problems went away.  The Verizon stores didn't have the batteries, but I found them at Walmart.com.

Brand new unit, brand new battery. Also, not using the battery, running off USB power supply. The battery will only be installed when we want to take the JetPack roving with us.

[dirtyboots]

For what it's worth...

I also have been on the 'new' Verizon unlimited plan for 2 monthly cycles.  The first time I can't say which came first, as the auto-pay did not activate, so I was just toast at 10:00 pm until I could get to a Verizon store the next day. Paid in cash and all was well.  The next renewal, I had already paid the day before (at the store in cash) so was watching to be sure it was a smooth transition to the new month.  Nope.  As with others, the jetpack screen showed all was well....my computer didn't.  I had no connection to internet.  Shut it all down figuring another trip to the Verizon store.  Next morning fired it up and it worked just like it should!  Have no idea how long it took to get it's cycle arranged, but I'm thinking it's not a hardware issue.

Will head into the Verizon store next week, but it's just a reseller, so not sure if they'll have any answers.  Might be a couple weeks before I head back where there is a corporate store.  Thanks to all who have given experiences in this thread. 

 

[jbh]

  Lately I've been doing the CG wifi thing since my 8800 gives a poor data rate at my location for whatever reason. Anyway, I checked it this morning with Speedtest and got about 100kbps download and 2.5mbps upload. If the problem was entirely low snr would this be possible?

  BTW, I've never had it shut off unexpectedly.

[docj]

12 hours ago, Darryl&Rita said:

Brand new unit, brand new battery. Also, not using the battery, running off USB power supply. The battery will only be installed when we want to take the JetPack roving with us.

My 7730L was "very unhappy" when I tried running it without a battery.   Did you employ any hacks to get it to operate without one?

[Darryl&Rita]

22 minutes ago, docj said:

My 7730L was "very unhappy" when I tried running it without a battery.   Did you employ any hacks to get it to operate without one?

Nope, plug and play.

[docj]

On 1/12/2019 at 11:28 AM, Darryl&Rita said:

Nope, plug and play.

Well, mine won't  work without one and attached is a post from VZW customer support stating that it's not designed to work without one.  Maybe the firmware was changed in more recent versions of the device.

 

 

Edited February 14, 2023 by docj

[Darryl&Rita]

2 hours ago, docj said:

Well, mine won't  work without one and attached is a post from VZW customer support stating that it's not designed to work without one.  Maybe the firmware was changed in more recent versions of the device.

 

Could have even been dumb luck. I don't remember the sequence, whether it was running before I pulled the battery, or it was powered up on the cord. The next time we take it outside, I'll experiment with it.

[Al F]

On 1/8/2019 at 2:41 PM, docj said:

I discovered an interesting behavior with my unlimited Jetpack plan today.  This is the my monthly "anniversary" day and I have the plan set up for automatic payment in order to get the $5 discount.  But, at around noon, the Jetpack stopped connecting to the internet even though neither its display or its online admin screen indicated there was an problem.  I power-cycled it and it began working normally.  

My assumption is that the prepaid plans function as stand-alone "blocks" of usage and, therefore, there is no way to "slide" from one month's usage to the next without a reboot.  I'd be interested to see if others experience this same issue.  You'd probably never notice it if you turn off your Jetpack when not using it.  I don't bother to do that; I have its charger set to cycle on and off so it doesn't overcharge the battery but I see no reason to shut off the device itself.

Yesterday (1/13/19) was my renewal day and in mid morning my 6620 jetpack started showing "no internet secured" on my laptop.  Rebooting the jetpack and it would work for several minutes and then I would loose the internet. Rebooted 3 times and same thing. No messages or indication of a problem on the jetpack.   Switched to my ph hotspot and then came back to the jetpack in a few hours and all worked OK.

We'll see if this repeats next month.