[ale] Metropcs 4G LTE vs AT&T DSL (ot)

Sun Feb 5 15:36:49 EST 2012

On Feb 5, 2012 1:20 PM, "Greg Clifton" <gccfof5 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Jim,
>
> Granted, we may well not live in the best of all possible worlds.
Verizon, where I had been "since the silicon cooled off" or for at least 10
years lost my 5 member family plan (at about $160/mo) over their "no smart
phone without an additional $15 or $30/mo data plan" policy. So long as
alternative [non-contract] carriers provide "good enough" coverage I have
no intention of going back.
>
> I think that there are legitimate reasons for the carriers to offload to
WiFi. Who among us doesn't have WiFi at home and at the office? How many of
us have had reception issues at home or at the office or both? Obviously
the carriers can't provide 100% 5 bar coverage of all terrain and inside
buildings. In the case of TMobile, the ability to offload to WiFi provides
a much better coverage footprint. This should allow for a more satisfactory
customer experience without going to the expense of provisioning enough
cell towers to "fill in the gaps" in their coverage. Also, from home or the
office it allows you to use your cell phone, with all your contacts
readily accessible, without eating up your minutes if you do have a metered
plan. For that reason I think it is a win-win. As to your comment about
"stealing" service from others, that is a related but separate issue. As I
understand it, you do have to join your phone to whatever WiFi network(s)
you wish to use, so it gets down to a matter of conscience as to whether
you "steal" or not, like the question of whether you pay for shareware or
not. Also, if you were in an area with poor coverage and had pay per
minute/hour WiFi available would it be worth it to be able to use your
phone? For some people, yes, some no, but at least it gives you the option
to use the phone rather than no option to do so. This frees me up from
being locked into an exorbitant Verizon contract, which undeniably provides
the best coverage nationwide. Wouldn't most of us agree that More Choices =
More Better!?
>
> It also must be said that the carriers are pushing the TV services. Most
of them offer some sort of streaming video (for an additional fee, of
course); Cricket even has a plan with unlimited music downloads included in
the monthly charge ($55/mo BTW). There must be an element of classical
supply and demand, but my take is that some customers want it and the
carriers want to provide it because it boosts their profits. Just
speculating here, but as virtualization has boosted server utilization from
something like 18% up to more like maybe ~80% all this video traffic
probably pushes the wireless network utilization up to more like maybe 50%?
Obviously the carriers would love for everybody to pay for gobs of
bandwidth that they never use, but the next best situation for them would
be for gobs of people to use SOME of the available bandwidth, for which
they can be charged extra $, so that they are getting "optimal" utilization
of their network capacity for some value of optimal.
>
> <snip> "I amusing my phone for almost all personal email" just curious
here, but how do you amuse your phone? ;-)
>
By leving out rndom lettes :-) drives the spll chekr nuts!

> On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 10:26 AM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> good bunch of info.
>>
>> My take is all the carriers want you to _buy_ their service but not
_use_ their service. On one hande they will happily sell a phone with
required big data plan fee and then turn around a whine about how much
bandwidth their customers are using and then come up with ways to cut down
on the access.
>>
>> From a technology standpoint, people want more and more data all the
time. From a social standpoint, most of this data is little more than "TV"
(and this group has had several discussions of the quality of that :-).
>>
>> I bought into Verizon with my droid (first gen). That little phone is
still running on the original battery. They keep trying to get me to
upgrade. A rep I spoke with swore that as long as I keep my service with
them, my unlimited data will remain "unlimited". My wife also has a plan
from the same time frame. My Verizon bill (4 phone, 2 data plans, large
text message package on one) is truly a horror!
>>
>> I really am unimpressed with moving the data flow off the carrier and
onto local wireless. It seems to be a crutch/workaround for carriers not
investing enough to provide the services they offer. They are, in effect,
stealing carrier service from other people and as many area wi-fi hotspots
re moving towards a pay-as-you-go structure, the end result is just to
screw the customer a bit more as they have to pick the added cost of access
at a coffee shop even though they pay for access from their phone provider.
>>
>> I amusing my phone for almost all personal email now as the only laptop
I use is work provided. I put NOTHING personal on that unless I have to use
a larger screen to see something. (BTW: the Lenovo ThinkPad W520 is
__AWESOME___!!!).
>>
>> I keep wondering how much longer we can continue to push for larger
bandwidth data uses before we hit some physical limit on multiplexing
carrier signals. Maybe if the cell tower range were smaller and there were
many more of them. I'm thinking street lights as cell points with
power-line data feeds as multiplex sources for the common carrier crap like
cell-phone TV. You can just pick up a feed and do some local caching for
small time shifting.
>>
>> Hmm. That would make for a fun, tech/sci-fi horror story: The day the
bandwidth died.
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 9:38 AM, Greg Clifton <gccfof5 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Jesse,
>>>
>>> I just spent the better part of a day researching various prepaid phone
services, not with an eye towards tethering, but what I learned may still
be helpful in your decision.
>>>
>>> First, not all LTE is created equal, and Verizon's version is faster
than Metro's, they run at different frequencies and are NOT compatible as
the CDMA technology is. Be sure and check the coverage map for the area(s)
you will be using the phone and don't plan to use it while traveling (by
car/bus/train) except in a few large metropolitan centers (they have
zoomable maps of all the cities where they offer LTE on their web site).
Also note that Metro has no EVDO (3G) service, so if you don't have
functional LTE service, you'll be running at 1X data rate on the Metro
network. Roaming with Metro depends on Verizon (or perhaps Sprint) service
and if you are out of a home area for 3 months (even less if you are using
data heavily) Metro will "pull the plug," killing not only your phone but
also your phone number. In other words, if you are roaming and costing them
$ they cut you off forever. The technician at the company owned store on
Steve Reynolds Blvd told me this just a couple of weeks ago. So you loose
your phone # through Metro (not sure if you could get it back on a
different carrier, didn't have the presence of mind to ask) and they
essentially brick your phone. Since Verizon and Metro operate their LTE
networks at different frequencies (I haven't looked at AT&T) the phones
can't be taken to a different carrier. This question came up because I have
a daughter at GCSU in Milledgeville which is in the "Extended Home
Coverage" area and I was looking into getting the $5 off for each line on a
"family plan." When the tech told me that, it pretty well put the stake
through the heart of that idea.
>>>
>>> Second, if you do much multimedia streaming you would have to go with
their $60/month plan and you can get DSL for less than that.
>>>
>>> Third, I think all the mobile carriers that offer "unlimited" web will
be going to a throttled service sooner or later.TMobile was the first
carrier to reduce your speed until the next month once you hit their data
limit, IIRC. I am currently on the Virgin Mobile $25/month plan (300minutes
+ unlimited everything else) and I received both an email and a snail mail
notification recently that they are going to a throttled unlimited service
effective next month.
>>>
>>> Fourth, I assume you intend to use the phone as a phone when not in
tethered mode and are going without a land line. An alternative, but at the
cost of another plan, that might server you well if you do travel to any
large extent, you might consider one of the data only services. If you are
a Kroger shopper, you may have noticed their iWireless offerings (which is
Sprint service). My wife is on an iWireless LG Optimus S phone and gets 20
minutes added to her bucket for each $100 I spend at Kroger on top of the
minutes we pay for monthly, and the minutes roll over (which is rare for a
prepaid plan). Sprint is known to have a very good data network that covers
most of the USA (esp. along the interstates) and you can get the data only
service through iWireless for ~$40/mo IIRC. This would be EVDO data, so not
as fast as LTE, but WAY faster than 1X and you would have coverage in most
population centers as well as between, assuming you were travelling via
Interstate Hwy.
>>>
>>> Fifth, another thing that carriers are doing is offloading to WIFI when
you have WIFI available. I know that TMobile is doing this and I saw a
Clark Howard clip saying that Metro is doing it too, but I haven't found
any mention of it on their website. There is also Rebublic Wireless which
is in Beta right now, but is developing a business model of providing
"unlimited" service for $19/month. The phone is set to prefer WIFI over the
wireless network (Sprint) so that you are using WIFI most of the time ["or
else"]. As WIFI hot spots become more ubiquitous I think this sort of
business model will become common at least for voice traffic, but maybe
also for data traffic.
>>>
>>> HTH,
>>> GC
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 3:57 AM, jesse james <yoshi_mush_room at yahoo.com>
wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Does anyone know if one of the MetroPCS 4G LTE phones could be
replacement for basic dsl. I was thinking of getting rid of my dsl and
getting a Samsung Indulge($200) and just tethering my laptop to it.
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Ale mailing list
>>>> Ale at ale.org
>>>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>>>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>>>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Ale mailing list
>>> Ale at ale.org
>>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> --
>> James P. Kinney III
>>
>> As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to
consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they
please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.
>> - 2011 Noam Chomsky
>>
>> http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ale mailing list
>> Ale at ale.org
>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20120205/f77201a4/attachment.html