Jim,<div><br></div><div>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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>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!?</div>
<div><br></div><div>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.</div>
<div><br></div><div><snip> "I amusing my phone for almost all personal email" just curious here, but how do you amuse your phone? ;-)</div><div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 10:26 AM, Jim Kinney <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jim.kinney@gmail.com">jim.kinney@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">good bunch of info. <br><br>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.<br>
<br>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 :-).<br>
<br>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!<br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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___!!!).<br>
<br>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. <br>
<br>Hmm. That would make for a fun, tech/sci-fi horror story: The day the bandwidth died. <br><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 9:38 AM, Greg Clifton <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:gccfof5@gmail.com" target="_blank">gccfof5@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Jesse,<div><br></div><div>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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>
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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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. </div>
<div><br></div><div>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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>HTH,</div><div>GC</div><div><div><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Feb 5, 2012 at 3:57 AM, jesse james <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:yoshi_mush_room@yahoo.com" target="_blank">yoshi_mush_room@yahoo.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><br>
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.<br>
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