"User begins blocking T-Mobile from future consideration."
I'm not using an ISP that prevents me from accessing perfectly legal Internet services. No matter how they want to brand themselves, today's telcos are ISPs, no more, no less.
When shopping for cell phone providers, our considerations are 1) complete Internet access, 2) coverage, and 3) cost. T-mobile could charge $5 a month for unlimited usage, but if they can't satisfy requirements #1 and #2, then #3 is moot.
Verizon is the only network that is reliable in my area. I've had great luck with visible, which is a spin-off on their network. Cheap as hell too - $25/mo for unlimited everything.
Note that Visible is an MVNO subject to deprioritization. I’m on the lowest Verizon Unlimited plan which is subject to the same and my service is nigh unusable when my broadband internet goes out or I’m in a really large crowd (e.g. music festival)
Yes, adding in a second data point as well. Verizon directly is great in this one area nearby, but using Visible in that same area was painful for anything data related. Would show full signal bars with Visible, but actual data rates were throttled and/or strongly deprioritized.
You genuinely get what you pay for when you spend the extra dollars for the direct carrier relationship with AT&T and Verizon. All of the MVNO's as well as their own prepaid plans will not compare if the towers are busy.
I don't use Private Relay, but I do have Verizon. I just tried enabling it (with WiFi disabled, obviously) and had no issues. Do you have a source to back up your claim that Verizon blocks it?
That's really strange. Are you on an old grandfathered plan of some sort? It has to be either that or a bug, because it's pretty clear that Verizon is not blocking Private Relay in any large scale manner.
> our considerations are 1) complete Internet access, 2) coverage, and 3) cost.
Anyone know how Google Fi compares on this criteria? I've been considering switching over for Fi's better security [1], but curious what Fi users think of the service. Since it piggybacks on other networks, does it inherit any of their service restrictions or other problems too?
Internet Access - err... it works? I am able to stream Netflix and YT without being locked to 480p.
Coverage - it's basically TMo coverage.
Cost - Fi is a bad deal if you plan to use a lot of data. It's almost 10$/GB (in the worst plan) or around 70$ for an "unlimited" plan, however it can get cheaper with a group (https://fi.google.com/about/plans/) . For me, its a great deal; I'm always close to a WiFi and rarely need mobile data. My bills ended up being around 25$. I'd say Fi's killer "feature" is it's international roaming charges... though I doubt that will be useful anytime soon :')
In the US, at least, Google Fi is essentially a T-Mobile MVNO. It was previously T-Mobile, Sprint, and U.S. Cellular, but T-Mobile bought Sprint, and U.S. Cellular divested a fair amount of its network.
I saw conflicting reports about whether Google Fi was affected by T-Mobile's reported text message censorship. I don't know where it stands on this iCloud Private Relay issue.
I'm not using an ISP that prevents me from accessing perfectly legal Internet services. No matter how they want to brand themselves, today's telcos are ISPs, no more, no less.
When shopping for cell phone providers, our considerations are 1) complete Internet access, 2) coverage, and 3) cost. T-mobile could charge $5 a month for unlimited usage, but if they can't satisfy requirements #1 and #2, then #3 is moot.