Cell phone Type and Service

[THOBIC]

Hello,

My service with Verizon is out of date. I would like to ask the follow questions of everyone.

1. Know what kind of cell phone you use (Android, Apple, Window)?

2. What Provider do you use?

3. How much data do you use?

I am thinking about going to T-Mobile maybe, but am open to other choices.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[SWharton]

We have Samsung 7 on ATT and a ZTE on Visible, Verizon. Both are Android.

We have had zero problems with either, plans on both are unlimited everything. We use Cricket on the Samsung as our primary phone and, as mentioned, Visible on the ZTE, also unlimited everything. Both can be used as hot spots.

Our daughter and son-in-law have T-Mobile and it is so-so away from major cities. We were just up in the mountain NE of Phoenix and only Verizon had service, though ATT worked randomly, nothing from T-Mobile. When they would visit us in Williamsburg, VA their T-Mobile never worked.

[GlennWest]

Verizon and AT&T is the best. If traveling a lot that is all I can recommend. As far as phones I don't buy high dollar phones.

Edited July 22, 2020 by GlennWest

[filthy-beast]

Iphone 11 on AT&T, but data is on a jetpack through sprint with unlimited data.

 

[dogyard]

Agreed that Verizon/AT&T provide widest area of coverage, especially in less populated areas.  I switched from using a Verizon LTE tablet for a hotspot to using a Verizon JetPack with Netgesr MIMO antenna - for $20/month I've found this keeps me connected in all but the most remote places.  I've abandoned Weboost RV booster as MIMO antenna seems to provide better results consistently.  The rapid evolution/improvements in cell (and soon satellite) technology keeps me from piercing the roof and hard wiring anything yet.

[dartmouth01]

Most of my plans are grandfathered and no longer available, but I use a VZ Samsung S9+ phone with and older unlimited plan, 2 ATT mobleys on the old car connect plan, and a Tmobile plan in an older Samsung S7.  We are long term stationary in a volunteer position with a toddler so we have the TV on quite a bit and it  we burn thru almost a TB a month amongst all the devices.  I use a Pepwave router to quickly switch between them.

[lappir]

7 hours ago, dartmouth01 said:

Most of my plans are grandfathered and no longer available, but I use a VZ Samsung S9+ phone with and older unlimited plan, 2 ATT mobleys on the old car connect plan, and a Tmobile plan in an older Samsung S7.  We are long term stationary in a volunteer position with a toddler so we have the TV on quite a bit and it  we burn thru almost a TB a month amongst all the devices.  I use a Pepwave router to quickly switch between them.

That's a lot of data and way too many plans for me to manage. I'm on an unlimited Verizon plan and am happy with it with my single phone. I do wonder about adding a line and just leaving it at home to be used strictly for internet use but really don't have that need just yet. If I decide to get a pet I may want to monitor the home from a distance to ensure there is nothing amiss causing a unhealthy environment. My cell connection has always been much better than any "Park" WiFi signal, even those who say "It's OK to Stream, we have upgraded our system." 

Rod

[Kirk W]

13 hours ago, THOBIC said:

1. Know what kind of cell phone you use (Android, Apple, Window)?

Pam has an I-phone 11 and I have an early I-phone SE

13 hours ago, THOBIC said:

2. What Provider do you use?

We are with AT&T and have been for 20 years but we are considering a change. We will probably be going to the plan from Visible very soon as they look to be much less expensive.

13 hours ago, THOBIC said:

3. How much data do you use?

We currently have 16Gb, that is shared between two phones. With our AT&T I-phones we each use our own phone's hot-spot for wifi to our computers and most months we run pretty close on data. Our plan does have rollover so when we don't use it all, we get any remainder for the next month. One of the reasons that we are considering a move to Visible is that they are unlimited data for $40/month, per phone. With two phones it would cost us $80/month which is significantly less than we pay now.

[LindaH]

1 hour ago, Kirk W said:

One of the reasons that we are considering a move to Visible is that they are unlimited data for $40/month, per phone. With two phones it would cost us $80/month which is significantly less than we pay now.

It's even less if you join a party:

Visible's Party Plan

[fly2low]

I am on FirstNet.  $45/mos, unlimited.  It is an AT&T plan for first responders - police, firemen, ER personnel.

[dewilso]

$25 a month, unlimited everything, I’ve used more that 200gb streaming YouTube TV, not a problem.

[bigjim]

25 minutes ago, dewilso said:

$25 a month, unlimited everything, I’ve used more that 200gb streaming YouTube TV, not a problem.

You forgot to state the plan and phone.

[Dutch_12078]

27 minutes ago, bigjim said:

You forgot to state the plan and phone.

It looks like the Visible (Verizon) plan we have. Unlimited talk, text, and data including hotspot/tethering for $40/mo that drops to $25/mo when you join or create a party with 3 other people that each get their own billing and account. We've hit 200+ gb/mo many times.

[hemsteadc]

What exactly is out of date?

[Bill Joyce]

I agree with  dixonge, in a busy area Visible and other plans that are subject to network prioritization can slow down to unusable.  We are in the Long Beach WA area and on weekends Verizon makes our prepaid mobile hotspot very slow, but our postpaid Verizon phones still work fine and our AT&T mobile hotspot is also going strong.  

[Dutch_12078]

So far, we're only seeing busy time slowdowns with Visible that are very similar to the slowdowns we saw with our former Verizon $65/mo unlimited hotspot plan in the same locations. Our unlimited AT&T hotspot plan also slows down somewhat in those areas where both have good signals. It's rare that the slowdowns cause excessive buffering when we're streaming though.

[docj]

I've mentioned this before, but it is possible to stream all your video while relying ONLY on low-cost MVNO/reseller plans.  We dropped DirecTV 9 months ago and use YouTube TV along with Netflix, Acorn, Prime, HBO, etc.  We're currently using 3 internet connections--Visible, a grandfathered unlimited prepaid Jetpack, and an AT&T hotspot through OTR Mobile,  We use our postpaid Verizon phone hotspots as backups, if necessary.

We accomplish this through what is known as load balancing.  There's a good article about it and connection bonding on the Mobile Internet Resource Center which you can find here:  Load balancing and connection bonding

With our load balanced configuration we rarely get rebuffering delays and when they occur they are only for a couple of seconds.

The cost of having our 3 connections is ~$150/mo but we were already paying for one of them even when we had DirecTV so that we had a source for Netflix and other streaming services. Our current total is a bit less than the total of DirecTV plus one of the connections.

Joel (AKA docj)

Edited July 26, 2020 by docj

[TexasPSDX]

We have the Verizon 55+ plan for 2 phones.  $90/month unlimited talk, text and data.  Use phones as hot spots when traveling.  Have Motorola Droid G7 phones.

[docj]

54 minutes ago, dixonge said:

You mean "only on low-cost **no longer available** MVNO/reseller plans"

To clarify the record, two of the three plans we are using are still publicly available. 

If you choose not to deal with MVNO plans, that is your right.  But I'd rather use hundreds of GB a month compared to the 15-20 GB/mo of data I can get directly from Verizon.  I keep my postpaid Verizon phones as backups to my low-cost data-only plans.

Edited July 27, 2020 by docj

[GlennWest]

51 minutes ago, TexasPSDX said:

We have the Verizon 55+ plan for 2 phones.  $90/month unlimited talk, text and data.  Use phones as hot spots when traveling.  Have Motorola Droid G7 phones.

Is that 55+ plan really unlimited? I checked into it one time and it wasn't. I could not stream tv with it.

[hemsteadc]

OP coming back?

[bigjim]

maybe he/she can't get a signal

[docj]

7 hours ago, GlennWest said:

Is that 55+ plan really unlimited? I checked into it one time and it wasn't. I could not stream tv with it.

i believe that the 55+ plan has a 600kbps hotspot limit which is why you probably couldn't stream with it.  "old people" aren't supposed to understand what streaming is! 😁

[Dutch_12078]

9 hours ago, dixonge said:

You mean "only on low-cost **no longer available** MVNO/reseller plans"

That's been one of our biggest challenges. Every time I read about someone getting all the data they need, they are relying on either a plan that is no longer being offered, or a plan that comes from one of the shaky 3rd party resellers. After reading through *so many* complaint threads online, including the wonderful MIA forums, I decided to skip the headache and stick with direct plans w/ both AT&T and Verizon. At least that way I can avoid most of the throttling...

Did you know the Visible plan that Joel mentioned is a Verizon brand, not a 3rd party MVNO?

[Dutch_12078]

21 minutes ago, dixonge said:

Yes, and still deprioritized/throttled below straight Verizon plans.

Prioritized, yes, throttled, no. The reality for us has been that we've seen little difference in the occasional slowdowns on congested towers than we saw with a previous Verizon direct account with no prioritizing at all. When a tower is congested, the speeds slow down for everyone as the back haul saturates. Nature of the beast. Maybe the slowdown affects us sooner than the non-prioritized accounts, but I have no way of testing that. In any event, the slowdowns rarely seem to have any significant effect on streaming, our heaviest usage. If I wasn't doing regular speed testing for research, I likely wouldn't notice the difference. Maybe an online gamer would be affected, but that's not me...