I don't understand the move. Seems it would be ultimately cheaper(support, potential legal, churn, etc) and harbor more good will to just flag these old accounts and leave them alone.
Most companies I've dealt with in the past just leave these older plans alone to rot, and try to motivate people off of them with new plans, new features, faster speeds, phone deals, etc. Not just arbitrarily deciding to jack up prices because "technically we're allowed to."
I'm 100% convinced that all telecoms are bastards.
Fortunately, regulation seems to help at least a little bit, but you kinda have to be prepared to wage some war - or eat your losses.
(Just lost a phone number that has been my primary for over 7 years; that's after losing another one that I held on to for 11 years... Not to mention all the smaller stuff, like how contracts/extra packages are structured once you go over the month's limit.)
Competition is what helps even more. The Sprint/T-Mobile merger should never have been allowed to happen. Mergers are never good for consumers, despite Chicago School propaganda that says otherwise.
> I'm 100% convinced that all telecoms are bastards.
The one I use literally just increases how much data is included with my plan, rather than increasing the price. I quite like it. (I don't think it's available outside of austria though)
This is one of the reasons I get annoyed at services that require a phone number for an account.
As such, I am never going to switch to Telegram or Signal unless you let me have an account that's not tied to a number. I've lost shit in the past because of this, a phone number is only a temporary identifier.
Isn't there kind of a fundamental issue here that spectrum is a limited resource? How many competitors can there be when youre initial investment has to be a massive amount for a usable section of it
I had an ATT unlimited data plan, grandfathered from way back in 2004 or something. It was wonderful while cellular data was still only available in limited amounts. I only finally moved off it about 3 years ago. ATT never seemed to care much. The only problems I had were when I had to make certain changes to my account, the staff could never find my plan in the system -- on more than one occasion we had actual ATT database admins on the line to resolve things.
I had the exact same situation. I stuck with it through the limited data plan era with my grandfathered ATT plan and only changed it once we got the unlimited data plans again. It was great, the only problem I had was even though the data was unlimited, the grandfathered plan had a 400 text messages limit which wasn’t enough.
Had the same idea from 2004 to 2010 at T-Mobile in Europe before they were bought out by VC. They just canceled the plans and switched me over but due to their special "after 6 years you triple the data and call volume and it never expires" I had booked enough minutes (which were exchangable for data on the new plan) to have free internet for another two. Of course the new contracts all had expiring minutes as soon as they figured that out.
I have one of these old grandfathered accounts from many years ago (< $20 / line for unlimited data, 5gb tethering, unlimited sms, and unlimited voice). What's weird is that they've actually upgraded the plan over time while keeping the price the same. It originally didn't include tethering, and was capped at 3gb of data.
I would hazard a guess that backend upgrades made keeping your plan as-original became impractical if not impossible, but hiking your price up and losing you as a customer was also wholly unappealing because any money is better than no money.
So presumably AT&T did the next best thing for both you and themselves by silently(?) upgrading your plan to whatever was the new minimum of the new hardware while keeping true to the price lock to keep you as a customer.
Is it? When you pay a certain amount at a buffet for unlimited food, they let you eat as much as you want at the buffet, but they don't let you bag it up and take it home. True unlimited costs a lot more.
There are ugly ways to cheat the system by replacing your stomach with a food sack and not chewing.
The buffet analogy isn't very compelling when ordinary people will watch video on their phones for long periods, easily using 3GB+ per hour.
I don't want more data, I just want flexibility.
(If we really want to force a buffet analogy, it's like living in a dorm with a permanent buffet, but you're not allowed to bring buffet food into the lounge or back to your room.)
Except you didn't? You paid for all-you-can-eat-on-a-phone, and 5 GB extra. So it's a dormitory with unlimited dining hall, but you can only take one plate a week outside of the dining hall.
For the provider, the point of this design is that there's only a certain amount that people are willing to download on a phone or eat in a dining hall. For the consumer, they don't have to count their data or their servings as long as they follow a simple rule - they get predictable billing.
That's one point of view, but you just banned unlimited-on-your-phone plans that a lot of people presumably enjoyed. If they change them to simple unlimited plans, you'll be popular. If they only offer limited plans now, you'll be unpopular.
We have a number of mobile services in the UK who explicitly offer routers with WiFi slots for replacing your home broadband with unlimited SIMs. I have used them in the past to replace the wired internet when there has been line maintenance that took out the broadband for a couple of days.
4G alone can get you a nice stable 100Mb/s.
You seem to be defending a shitty deal that happening in North America, without any clear reason.
It's less common for limited data like you have, it's more common for unlimited data. Essentially they don't want people using tethering as a replacement for home internet on these plans
I could have got an unlimited plan, except that it costs more and even with tethering I don't go through more than 40GB so I saved a bit and downgraded to a limited plan. The data limitations was a personal choice.
I don't see any of the providers here in the UK with different amounts for tethering Vs data.
One of the reasons I used to swap out the OS on my android phone. Back then I used CyanogenMod (now LineageOS) and they weren't able to track when I was using tethering and when I was just using my regular data.
AT&T did it by just turning off their old network haha. Then you had to pay to migrate. A friend of mine did this. I just stick with Google Fi which I like for simplicity.
I believe they are losing money on some of these contracts, which changes the calculus significantly. During 2020-2025 some people even got multiple $5/mo plans for added lines, which T-Mobile is now regretting. They've already tried once to force-change some people's contracts (but backed down).
Most people won’t go through the hassle of cancelling. They will bring in a LOT of money, and pay out a few of the pathetic “last bill” refunds.
This whole thing though is like thinking you have wedding vows and not realizing there was fine print. It’s like “forsaking all others, till death do us part” but at the end of the vows it says “and if I break these vows I’ll pay you $75.”
While I was thinking it's a good thing, I just remembered of a tangential question -- home ownership.
Do you think it's fair when someone bought a house long time ago, and hence pay just a small fraction of the property taxes of what newcomers pay, but get the same services (roads, schools, utilities etc) that are paid by property taxes?
That's not how property taxes typically work in most places. An assessor updates the values on some period, taxes go up, and they pay their share. That actually became a huge issue in El Paso. Their property taxes range 2 - 3% of home value, which was fine when everything was worth 150k 5 years ago. Today it's nearly tripled, and some got tax bills in the 5 digits for homes they've had forever. Some states, like FL, prevent that from happening, which sounds nice on paper but is essentially what you describe. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it was intended for retirees so I kinda get it.
If your question is, is it fair people who bought before 2020 have an awesome interest rate and pay way less than newcomers, I'd say no, only because I'm angry I sold in 2019 and regret it!
In most places geographically speaking no, but a number of US states including California and Florida which account for a disproportionate number of homes have passed laws protecting existing homeowners from property tax increases by capping the rate taxes can be raised to well below the rate of housing price inflation.
So as a new buyer you're paying not only a higher price and higher interest rate, but also higher taxes than the people you bought it from.
Higher property taxes generally would lead to lower home prices.
But really, this applies with anything that you purchase. If the sales tax inceases, you may be taxed more for an identical item that was purchased prior to the sales tax increase.
States and cities have a variety of ways to tax people. They don't need to rely on property tax.
>Higher property taxes generally would lead to lower home prices.
this is not my experience - since property taxes are generally related to the desirability of the house and updated periodically (so often years after a price rise in area)
It's definitely influencing my home buying decision. In Philadelphia area, Delaware County property taxes are a significant amount higher than neighboring Montgomery county. I am looking in both, but my budget is about $30k higher in Montgomery county because of the taxes. I would venture a guess that similar houses in Montgomery county generally sell for more than their counterparts in Delaware county.
the claim as I understand it is that the higher taxed houses will decrease in price in order to attract buyers, but property taxes are generally determined by prices, this would mean that house value should increase in Montgomery because lower taxes, and prices should decrease in Delaware because higher prices, and then in a few years the property taxes in Montgomery should increase and the taxes in Delaware should decrease.
I of course am aware that property taxes change over time, but I don't think this kind of strongly observable see-sawing of the property taxes actually exists - so probably more data than just guessing would be useful.
I actually like how FL handles this. They don't stop it from increasing, they just slow the rate of increase. I'd say it's not fair for someone who budgeted appropriately to get forced out of their home for something out of their control, like the historic explosion of house prices.
In time it'll work itself out, assuming they stay long enough, as it still allows increases in a falling or stagnant market.
I get the idea, but I do not like the outcome. It ends up being a largely regressive tax that hits people hardest and often at the worst possible time (e.g. just before or shortly after becoming a parent).
Of course any program if you look only at the beneficiaries is going to look good. We have embraced this attitude that broadly favors the sustaining the already established in their current condition in perpetuity, regardless of the cost to anyone else.
CA lets your kids inherit the tax treatment and allows corporations the same benefit. Once you do those things, it’s off in a whole other realm than normal homestead exemptions.
The rapid run-up of home values in the US has led other states to follow, but they generally have higher caps on increases and limit the treatment to your primary residence.
Both should probably be pegged to the inflation rate nationally each year, which would probably bring them up a few ticks, but otherwise seems reasonable to me. For owner occupied of course, -not- landlords.
> Both should probably be pegged to the inflation rate
Yes I agree...but not the CPI, it should be tied specifically to housing prices. You could even have the state hire appraises to figure out the value of each specific property and peg the rate of increase to that for each property owner.
I know this comment is tongue in cheek, but I still disagree. When you purchase a house, you look at principal, taxes, PMI, and insurance before making a decision. If you're responsible, I guess.
If your little city blows up, and your property value in the market is now 3x what it was, why should you be punished and even forced out if you can't afford the new taxes? New buyers do the same math, and decide they can afford it.. Yes they're paying more, but voluntarily on a likely overpriced asset.
I'm not saying the original owners should just pay less and that's fair, screw the new buyers. I just think the increase should be capped realistically.
The fair way to handle this would be to reduce the tax rate across the board in response to housing inflation. Somehow. Governments around the world are more than happy to see housing prices rise, as are existing property owners, so I am not exactly holding my breath for this to happen.
Tmobile is not a representative government. It is a highly profitable company that arguably acts in a cartel fashion with the other two national providers.
Interesting example. But I can't help to think that, if that was to be the case, but in place of homes appreciating in value to the point they're primarily used as investment vehicle, then local community might be better off with such deal.
While not mentioned in the article, it’s worth mentioning that this also coincided with T-Mobile’s acquisition of Sprint. Specifically, T-Mobile made assurances that the acquisition would lower prices. Instead, within a couple years they exercised their newfound market power to increase prices a fair amount. The merger should have never been authorized.
The end result was inevitable, if the merger was blocked Sprint would have just filed for bankruptcy and the 3 remaining carriers would split it up amongst themselves.
Sprint was effectively on life support and the last CEO’s only job was to pump up subscriber numbers as high as possible to make a deal as attractive as possible. That’s why Sprint had so many “free” deals a year before the acquisition was announced.
The US government made a massive miscalculation on Dish network, when in reality it really should have been split amongst CableCos who are now stealing customers from the big 3 because they have already done the hard part of building infrastructure, while Dish can’t even get off the ground.
I don’t understand why the government couldn’t have done a bankruptcy bailout of Sprint to maintain a vital industry/important competitor in the market. Essentially follow the same playbook as GM and have the government temporarily buy Sprint, rehabilitate it, and sell it back to public investors.
What the government did with Sprint was akin to allowing GM to be purchased by Ford. Whether or not that happens in bankruptcy court is almost irrelevant: a huge business in an oligopoly merging into another is generally bad news and the government should be on top of it.
(Let me also be clear to people who hated the automotive bailouts: they were easily the best possible outcome and hindsight shows they were great policy. The alternative was essentially the collapse of the American automotive industry, allowing the US to follow the fate of the British industry, and on top of that government made a profit on its investment of taxpayer dollars to carry it out)
Sprint was a technological wrong turn. They invested in the next generation platform on multiple occasions. Billions $ into WiMAX left them with a nonpractical and expensive footprint and no mid term speed benefits to really show. Then, after wanting to keep original CDMA infrastructure, they went LTE/GSM anyway. This period meant multiple modems and lower battery life. It was over with no great options.
I think in this regard the government could have basically reallocated spectrum to be roughly equal among the big four and financially it would be a bankruptcy situation.
> What the government did with Sprint was akin to allowing GM to be purchased by Ford.
The government depends on three carriers (ATT, Verizon, Sprint) for its own redundant critical communications (Continuity of government, military communications, etc).
The entire deal was structured in a way where where the wireless subscribers were shed onto T-Mobile and the important guts of Sprint were sold to Cogent for $0, who didn't have the capability or desire to take on the consumer facing business.
Perhaps tax dollars should not be used to engineer economic outcomes.
If you get too big to fail, why avoid failure? It’s about incentives.
How useful or efficient or competitive do you think taxpayer-funded Sprint would be today? What makes you think they would suddenly start being good with an influx of tax money when they weren’t good before free money injections?
> they were easily the best possible outcome and hindsight shows they were great policy
No, just because those are around does not mean there wasn’t a better alternative in bankruptcy. Bankruptcy does not mean the individual company stops making cars, let alone the entire industry collapsing. That’s pure FUD to justify the govt preventing a moribund industry from being purged of legacy companies coasting on their brand.
I think my comparison to the British auto industry is apt. Bankruptcy doesn’t mean the brand goes away but it can mean the domestic industry evaporates into nothing.
You look at companies like Lotus, MG, Land Rover, Jaguar, and even Volvo and you look at a future where their intellectual property assets essentially only exist to help geopolitical rivals. GM and Ford being sold to the Chinese would have been devastating to US industry.
There is no Volvo EV that is built in Sweden. There is no Lotus EV built in Britain. At the end of the gasoline production line run it’s just China producing all their future electric cars when they go fully electric in 5 years.
Don’t forget that automotive parts are a huge employer beyond the auto manufacturers themselves. If Geely buys Ford they’re moving parts supply to China. It’s a whole ecosystem and it’s strategically worth protecting.
Like I said, don’t forget how the government was paid back in full with interest for the bailouts. On top of that the governor gets to keep people employed rather than sending the jobs abroad. It was a no brainer obvious good policy, supported by both parties as well.
The bad unintended consequences are gonna be much bigger this way. Think of communism, it started with good intentions but the unintended consequences of absolute power concentration (who can buy or sell what and at which prices ) caused absolute corruption and inefficiency
The point is for the government to have the ability to occasionally look the biggest wolves of Wall Street in the eye, and say to them, "haha. but no.". Exercising it doesn't require abolishing private property and taking central control of all trade.
Yes, communism is when the government participates in bankruptcy court, makes an investment, and gets paid principal and interest on their loan. That’s exactly what Karl Marx was talking about.
I think the problem is that they’re competing against much bigger players, ATT and Verizon. It’s just not possible to compete against them as a late comer. That’s why there are no new networks, just MVNOs. Starlink maybe can change that. But outside of that technological change, we’re stuck and a smaller player cannot hope to be competitive on coverage against bigger players.
Ultimately what we need is much stronger anti-trust legislation against all kinds of companies that are too big, or aren’t in functioning competitive environments.
There really needs to be more accountability for such promises made during acquisitions. Or no credence should be given to such promises.
This is not at all surprising, and we've seen this happen over and over. Two big companies merge, promise prices won't go up so the merge gets approved, then within a few years, sure enough prices go up.
> How is reducing competition good for competition?
I am not familiar with the telecom market. But blocking mergers doesn’t necessarily increase competition. (For example, breaking up Walmart would reduce competitive pressure on Amazon.)
HN has a diverse set of viewpoints. For any assertion one might make, there will be someone with the opposite viewpoint.
In addition to out-and-out opposition or agreement that sounds vaguely oppositional, a comment might call for a pedantic annotation, a tangential aside or book recommendation.
That Hitchens quote is pithy and snow-clonable but demonstrated an impoverished and static epistemology. It is circular and self-falsifying by respectively assuming the existence of “evidence” independent of the assertion’s observation bias and not obeying its own assertion.
That's to be expected. A typical conversation starts with someone taking a high-dimensional problem, projecting it to their favorite dimension, and saying "the solution is obviously on my side on the number line". Of course you'll get multiple "contrarian" replies ranging from "hey, what about my preferred dimension" to "you know the problem has more than one of them?".
What? Verizon's clear benefit died long before the acquisition, even if their market share did not. The best thing to do would be to foster competition, not actively bless its destruction.
I was on Sprint and T-Mobile bought Sprint. T-Mobile is robotically cruel to customers. T-Mobile is rule-bound and failure to comply results in employees being fired. Here's the difference:
I got a defective phone with sprint: phone replaced under manufacturer's warranty immediately.
Same defective new phone scenario with T-Mobile: no replacement because you didn't buy additional insurance - even though you got the phone a month ago. Sorry can't help. I wish I could help you but I will be fired if I deviate from the rules. Thank you for your understanding. Avoid doing business with T-Mobile at all costs. They are horrible.
AT&T sold me a defective new phone once. They replaced it with a refurb, and marked it in their system that I had purchased it that way. They could not be convinced that I should have a 1-year new phone warranty instead of a 90-day refurb warranty.
Just make sure to keep an eye on your monthly statement. AT&T will arbitrarily decide that you should upgrade your plan and charge you more for it - despite your previous plan being perfectly within your usage.
They were made by LG right before they exited the business and had problems with the screens greening out when they got warm - as in 90°F (i.e. summer in pocket temperatures).
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee - I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, ‘Fool me once, shame on… shame on you. Fool me - you can’t get fooled again.’”
I never thought I'd hear those words. The one time congress split up a company that I recall, it was AT&T because of all their awful practices, and for YEARS I have heard of their crazy fees and fines, and what have you.
T-Mobile was the US branch of Deutsche Telekom at one point AFAIK. The one German guy I know said that basically the whole country gets fucked on pricing and bandwidth, and that American residential Internet is vastly superior. It's not implausible to imagine the shitty behavior from German telecom companies rubbing off on their US subsidiaries.
As far as I can tell prices in Germany are better than in the US, and broadband while not stellar is fine. My home internet is 500/100 speed and costs 35€ (with unlimited data and calls to landline and mobile numbers, for whatever thats worth). My mobile plan is 8€/month for 10GB of data (5G, of course not great availability outside cities, but LTE is not that bad) and unlimited calls and SMS.
> The one German guy I know said that basically the whole country gets fucked on pricing and bandwidth, and that American residential Internet is vastly superior.
Since "American residential Internet" has been the butt of jokes even in rural Europe for the past decade, I wonder how uniquely bad DT must have been for the US connections to compare favorably.
EDIT:
Or maybe it's the most developed nations being way past the peak of quality of life for its population (which I think is a pattern)?
Reminds me of my employer from over a decade ago; at some point they had the bright idea to try and convert our work stations in Poland into fat terminals, with all the data being stored on the servers in UK. Problem is, their pricey London office Internet connection had bandwidth that was something like 1/10 of what I could get on the cheapest residential connection I could find in Kraków. Way less than any of us was used to. And they weren't planning to upgrade. IIRC, the whole idea got postponed indefinitely after multiple reminders that the London office is already so bandwidth-constrained that we'd rather look for another job than be stuck working in the London office in the first place, much less accept our local machines being limited by a link to their servers.
i got caught up in this B.S… literally got the rate locked T-Mobile account because of lifetime rate lock. then last year they sent me “opt-out” notification that my guaranteed rate was increasing unless I send a certified letter or some stupid shit. I dumped them the next week because i don’t have time in my life to play fuck-fuck games with shady companies. I hope there’s a class action lawsuit, I would gladly get on board.
The fundamental problem here is that courts bend over backwards to allow fine print that contradicts the plain reading of how advertisements and services and presented. Unfortunately, the only way it's ever going to change in the US is if somehow a Supreme Court is appointed that's far less business-friendly than it has been in possibly ever.
I'd be more fine with companies behaving like a swarm of locusts if they at least had to put on the box the ways they were going to fuck you over. A monkey's paw printer should have to prominently display "Proprietary ink only! Scanner disables itself when ink is low. While supplies last" on the front.
I’ve been pretty happy with Mint, too, but 1) I’m working on the assumption that we’ve got about a year before major price increases, and 2) probably just a coincidence, but my service has been shit since the purchase was finalized (I’m aware that Mint gets deprioritized when there’s congestion, but it was less of an issue until a few months ago).
I'm currently evaluating both on the same phone, and I have not had that experience. If Helium had as good coverage as Tmo, I would have already switched. Fortunately, Helium usually has coverage when Tmo doesn't, so I may keep both since Helium is quite cheap (and even close to free with discovery mapping turned on).
They’re not owned by T-Mobile, but they’re just an MVNO.
Everyone can save by switching to an MVNO. The first trade off is that the big 3 carriers have essentially a tier list of customers based on what type of service they have for network priority. E.g., postpaid customers are highest priority, big carrier prepaid and big carrier-owned MVNOs are second, and unaffiliated MVNOs are placed based on the specifics of their agreements with the carrier. For example, Google Fi has high network priority because they undoubtedly pay more to use their networks than lower cost MVNOs.
The second trade off is that MVNOs handle customer service and a lot of the customer facing administration. This can vary but is often pretty barebones for lower cost MVNOs.
I think you are better off not saying that. If everyone were to switch to an MVNO then the large carriers MVNOs depend on would not offer as favorable rates to the MVNOs. Reminds me of when Apple licensed their OS and promptly got spanked.
Well, still, MVNOs aren’t for everyone. That statement in particular might have been a broad one by me.
One Postpaid carrier strength is family plans. The per-person cost for 4 people is very comparable to MVNOs and you get better service.
The next is phone financing and subsidies. If you’re the type of person who wants a new phone every 3 years, a postpaid carrier will have some of the more low-friction options for that.
Finally, MVNOs simply don’t offer high usage plans for heavy users. For example, my current postpaid plan gives me something like 50-80GB of monthly tethering allowance before throttling. There isn’t really an MVNO offering that at any price.
So, I think postpaid plans fit a higher income heavy user and/or a family pretty well.
+1 to Helium. I’m currently on Verizon on my iPhone, but got a second phone (pixel) that I got Helium on, grandfathered in to $5/month since I was early on.
I don’t use it super often when out so can’t comment too much on the data service quality, but whenever I do use it, it works fine.
>Monthly price for USA-only unlimited talk/text + 5G/LTE data is $15/5GB, $25/8GB, $35/12GB + taxes/fees.
By global standards, that is hilariously expensive. Here in the UK, I pay $13/mo for unlimited talk/text and 100GB of 5G data. I can get truly unlimited data for less than $22/mo.
By global standards, the United States has hilariously low density and has hilariously high incomes, which means it's significantly more expensive to maintain a network. You're comparing a network that doesn't have 5G coverage in towns 20 miles away from the center of London [1] to one that has coverage over a gigantic proportion of the area that actually contains people at any given time. [2]
Even by US standard it’s ridiculous. AT&T offers a $25/mo prepaid plan with 16gb 5G and unlimited 4G. Not an MVNO but AT&T directly.
The worst part though is TMobile’s predatory billing practices. They lie through their teeth about fees and prices when you sign up and it’s absolutely impossible to understand what the hell is going on with their billing.
That’s not the story I’ve heard. What I’ve read are stories of airlines who regretted the deals and went after those who used them extensively, looking for excuses to revoke them:
Anyhow, the Mark Cuban article says almost nothing about how the airline treated him, it’s just a light human interest story about an unusual and quirky thing a famous person did.
If they only committed to paying the final months bill, that's a very limited upside for customers. Far more limited than what "no price hikes" sounds like. There's basically no penalty for T-Mobile – if they raise prices and people stay, they win, and if someone chooses to leave (which they could do anyway if the price changes), they lose out in nearly the same way as if they hadn't made the promise.
I'm still on one of their prepaid "Connect" plans, and get unlimited talk & text, plus 12 gigs of data, for $35. Since I'm nearly always somewhere with wifi, I can't recall ever having run into an issue due to lack of data. I wonder if some folks could switch over to a plan like this and save money, if they planned media downloads to happen when they're on wifi?
Rather the opposite, I pay $20.99/month for unlimited for _just_ my iPad now on a different carrier because I don’t want to ever think about WiFi again when I’m not at home. Cellular is finally “good enough” that it’s better (faster/more reliable) than most hotel/public WiFi I’ve used in the past year.
I doubt most people know that prepaid exists and is extremely cheap, that they can easily port over their number to any carrier (required by law for a long time), or that they are using a small fraction of their "unlimited" data.
My $25 prepaid plan comes with 16 GB of data, I don't even bother to use wifi on short trips. I used to manage my parents' plan, sometimes they barely use one GB a month.
Aren't all these contracts month-to-month anyways? T-Mobile can change their terms with 30 days notice and most if not all current T-Mobile customers can "just" leave.
The only special gag now is that the average consumer now has "device installment payments" that become immediately due in full when you terminate your side of the deal, and we now tie subsidies to "promo credits" on those payments.
I have a “select choice fam unl 50tt” which I’ve had forever (I buy phones outright to keep it) and still pay $85 for two lines. I don’t see any price increases for my account recently. I have unlimited everything except 5gb of tethering.
If they raise my price I’d be upset but it’s still cheaper by far than any modern plans. Someday my kid will need a phone and I’ll get him a separate account so I don’t get conned into changing my plan!
Okay, they could not be held accountable for contract breach because there is a small print somewhere in a FAQ linked from TOS, but perhaps they could be sued for misleading advertisement? One car reasonably argue that "the price will never increase" is not the same as "if the price increases they will pay the final month".
+1 to EU and Iliad, which arrived on the market in about 2018 and started providing 9,99€/month mobile internet plans forever, but FOREVER for real. I still have that plan.
Yes, there are people I know who are still paying the same price Iliad offered at launch: 5.99€/month for unlimited calls and messages, and 30GB in 4G+. That price was basically half of what all other available providers offered at the time.
Ha. I was on the simple choice iirc, and when they decided they wanted to force an upgrade, they just broke all the data, and the only fix was to change plans.
Recently got away from really unlimited Verizon 4G when they kept upping the fees and nonsense to the tune of $200/month. Spectrum unlimited is really cheap for BYOD, does 5G UWB, and rides the coattails of Verizon. And, unlike Verizon, gives tethering and wi-fi hotspot sharing for free.
If the FCC were functional, it would be nice for carriers to expose priority in the phone icons. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to explain to friends who lamented about “Full bars but no service, weird.” The current iconography is outdated and clearly confusing (read: misleading) to the public.
I think you’re right about this. There should be a special “limited” icon to show when your service is being deprioritized. I think would actually help the carriers as it would tell customer when a degradation of service was due to a congested network vs low signal.
I’m curious, is there some kind of real-life benchmarks available online for this?
I totally believe that a network would deprioritize the mvnos, and I’m guessing there is some pecking order depending on their contract with the network, but I’m curious how it converts to real world usage.
It's not really possible to benchmark real-world. But to see which priority your account is provisioned at just need ability to see lower-level information from the baseband. Deprioritization = QCI 9. Different carriers use different QCI's but 9 is lowest, 6 is usually highest priority. Network Signal Guru is an app for android that will report this information, but it usually requires root (I think the pixel phones do not, qualcomm devices usually do).
The radio layer is where deprioritization happens, not through deep packet inspection (as would be the case for video throttling). Having a strong signal with good RF conditions deprioritization won't be noticed as much, also won't be noticed if the sector isn't busy. If it is busy and you are near cell edge, that's when speeds will fall off (as the radio layer will schedule less time and resources for your device, and the worse conditions means it can't send as much data with those resources allocated).
Bandwidth gets cheaper every year to help offset that, and don't they have that fancy 5G network to tempt people into upgrading?
If they wanted to give a 5 or 10 year guarantee, they could have. They chose to say lifetime. The wireless market hasn't fundamentally changed in the last 15 years (starting in the iphone 3g era), so they don't have any excuses about being caught off guard.
While I agree with you, I also think companies shouldn't advertise in a way that strongly suggests that they won't ever raise their rates. It's a pretty scummy practice.
"was told" means nothing. If you don't have it in writing, they can say anything. One time when i was contacted by sales to offer me a "new better offer" i asked to send it to me in writing and they refused, because "policy".
p.s. this is noname local provider that you have never heard of.
Even if you have it in writing, you need to have the tenacity to hold them to it in court. They can do the fun corporate game of “computer says no” and defy your written agreement as a gamble that you’re not willing to spend time and money suing them.
Most companies I've dealt with in the past just leave these older plans alone to rot, and try to motivate people off of them with new plans, new features, faster speeds, phone deals, etc. Not just arbitrarily deciding to jack up prices because "technically we're allowed to."