5G switch

[dlsmith]

i think it's time we went back to POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) and party lines !

I still have a landline, have had it since 9-30-74, and will probably keep it as long as I live. It always works, battery doesn't run down, and besides, I would miss screwing with all the scammers that call on that line.

 

[ACDII]

I still have my Timex Sinclair 2068 Color computer, New In box!

 

[Freeheeler]

What's a G and why would I want 5 of them??

 

[armylifer]

What's a G and why would I want 5 of them??

Grand and 5 grand is better than none.

 

[GreensvilleJay]

My landline is a chrome wall mounted payphone.... 70's , from a hotel lobby.
Still need a dime to make a call, and of course it's a rotary dial....

 

[Henro]

I still have a landline, have had it since 9-30-74, and will probably keep it as long as I live. It always works, battery doesn't run down, and besides, I would miss screwing with all the scammers that call on that line.

We cancelled our "land line" a couple months ago. Do not miss it, but do like the savings we got making the change. Believe it or not, cutting the phone service and returning a couple cable boxes we no longer needed, ended up saving us over $65 per month. With no change in service level that we can perceive.

Reality was that it was not really a land line anyway. It was carried over the Verizon FIOS fiber. In my mind, the net effect was it was no different than WIFI calling which uses the same fiber optic cable. We both do have cell phones though...

Edit: At one time our land line was actually a land line. But over time is was abandoned somehow, and transitioned to an over the internet connection, I believe both back when we had Comcast, and certainly while with Verizon. One of those things that happen and you do not really pay attention to I guess...

 

[Daren Todd]

After 12 hours between tech support and being on hold I got fed up. Tech support was just going in circles trying g the same stupid procedures over and over.

We decided to get rid of straight talk. ATT has a special offer for nurses, doctors, and emergency personnel. Wife's phone will work anywhere and takes priority over standard phone calls in case of emergency.

Mine is just a standard plan. The benefit though is a pretty substantial discount on both phone bills

My new phone came in today. Wife's phone will be here Monday.

 

[skeets]

I have that old flip phone the kid at verzion said he never saw before and the land line. Since I very seldom have the battery charged, Lord ever knows if I can make a call,,, and even if the power goes out the LL still works

 

[PoTreeBoy]

I used to work at a Factory in the early 80's that still used a small switchboard in the reception area. The receptionist must have been in her 60's at that time. Can you imagine some young person who has no idea what a switchboard is trying to route calls! LOL My mom ran one at one of her earlier jobs as well.

Same situation. When the receptionist went on vacation, only one lady from the temp agency could fill in. They put in a direct dial system just before the receptionist retired.

 

[b1pig]

back in February of last year, Verizon failed taking nearly all of the Georgia network offline for most of a day. When service came back online, everyone statewide experienced degraded service. Its been the same since then. In my area, they claim that there is no 5G service. However, my coworkers' phones and the Opensignal app say otherwise.

I have a iphone 8 plus. Had it since fall of 2017 when they first came out. I have a iphone 13 from work. There are times I have 1 bar w/o LTE connection in the middle of a "metro" community, while my work phone sports 3-4 bars LTE and sometimes 5G. It makes zero sense.

The further the debacle, at my job employees are dependent upon cellular devices to connect work computers through out in the field. The cell devices are the MiFi devices they sell and those are NOT 5G compliant. We have no future plan with Verizon on supplying a 5G capable unit for us to test with much less more than 150 devices to put into the field for our employees.

Feels more and more like a sham every day.

 

[johnjk]

We were in Puerto Rico a few weeks back. Considered in network for Verizon. Many a day we had only 3G service and the internet at the condo was out for 4 days. Youngsters were going through withdrawal. I went fishing, hung at the beach and then at the pool. Great way to relax

 

[xrocketengineer]

We were in Puerto Rico a few weeks back. Considered in network for Verizon. Many a day we had only 3G service and the internet at the condo was out for 4 days. Youngsters were going through withdrawal. I went fishing, hung at the beach and then at the pool. Great way to relax

I discovered the hard way that Verizon is considered in network in PR only if....
I originally took the prepaid plan with about 3GB of data which worked perfectly in the mainland and hell of a lot better than ATT at home, since I had no longer any connection.
I went to PR to visit my mom and sister after they reopened air travel after the initial Covid peak. During those days, you had to fill out some forms for Covid and vaccine status for the Health dept. of PR. Not only that, they would text you everyday to ask if you were not sick.
"I had not read the Verizon fine print" that required to obtain a "travel pass" in order for my phone to work in PR and pay an additional fee of $10 a day while I was in PR. When I got to airport in PR, I had no call, text or internet capability. I had to borrow a phone to call my sister to pick me up.
It took me more than a day on my sister computer and phone trying to reach Verizon to fix the mess. The Health dept. was about to send the cops after me for not replying to their daily texts.
It turned out that it was cheaper to switch to the Verizon prepaid unlimited plan than to use the travel pass. So far that has worked well on subsequent trips with no extra charges even though they tell you that you are roaming while you are down there.

 

[johnjk]

I discovered the hard way that Verizon is considered in network in PR only if....
I originally took the prepaid plan with about 3GB of data which worked perfectly in the mainland and hell of a lot better than ATT at home, since I had no longer any connection.
I went to PR to visit my mom and sister after they reopened air travel after the initial Covid peak. During those days, you had to fill out some forms for Covid and vaccine status for the Health dept. of PR. Not only that, they would text you everyday to ask if you were not sick.
"I had not read the Verizon fine print" that required to obtain a "travel pass" in order for my phone to work in PR and pay an additional fee of $10 a day while I was in PR. When I got to airport in PR, I had no call, text or internet capability. I had to borrow a phone to call my sister to pick me up.
It took me more than a day on my sister computer and phone trying to reach Verizon to fix the mess. The Health dept. was about to send the cops after me for not replying to their daily texts.
It turned out that it was cheaper to switch to the Verizon prepaid unlimited plan than to use the travel pass. So far that has worked well on subsequent trips with no extra charges even though they tell you that you are roaming while you are down there.

Good point. We are on one of their legacy unlimited plans. I still call before traveling to make sure I am covered. If not, the personal cell stays on Wi-Fi only. For business we have found it cheaper to just buy a sim for the area you will be in and go that way. Our team from Europe does this for US visits unless they are T-Mobile. They roam everywhere for free. No service in my neck of the woods but then again, I only get 1-2 bars from any carrier.

 

[will721]

My phone doesn't even have a sim card. I ordered a new unlocked s21 ultra off ebay. I have tmobile. When it arrived I dropped in the sim card from my s10 that I had previously, but it wouldn't connect. Apparently it was incompatible, likely due to age and lack of 5g compatibility. Did some poking around online and found out you can use a digital sim on unlocked phones. Registered the phone with Tmobile and been running ever since.

Personally I dislike 5g. I don't live in town and due to its nature the signal doesn't reach nearly as far from towers. That's the trade off of course but my home just so happens to sit right at that limit, thank god for starlink. But I also like to travel to not so populated areas on the bike and that keeps my phone constantly fighting itself for what it wants to connect to. I can shut off 5g, but once I'm back in town 4g has degraded so bad its almost unusable. So its either play with settings constantly or just go with shitty signal.

 

[ACDII]

Well, I just found out last week that Verizon has upgraded their towers by me and I now have 5G UW and can get their internet service for $25-$35 a month for 2 or 3 years, unlimited. Considering that my current provider, Rise is constantly going down, and when not down is usually dropping packets or triple digit latency, I am going to switch.

The $35 a month has up to 1G download speeds. I ran a speed test on my phone with 1 bar 5GUW in my basement and am getting 214Mbps download and 4.4Mbps upload. Then I went upstairs with 3 bars 5GUW and the download went to 421Mbps and upload to 12.5Mbps.

Rise broadband, same phone connected to my wireless network 43Mbps down 5.1 up. Rise is costing me $90 a month. Guess who is switching.

 

[lugbolt]

they're all terrible

what generally happens is that companies (in this case cell providers) get so big, that they look solely at NUMBERS. Let's say out of 100,000,000 customers, 75,000,000 are using newer phones that are already 5G capable. So what about the minority? 25,000,000 out of a hundred, that's just 25%. 25% is going to have to upgrade. But it's just 25%, 1/4. No big deal. Except 25% of 100 million is 25 MILLION people. THAT is how larger corporations work, they don't care about the little guy they care about NUMBERS because they are so large that it's the only way they know how to manage things.

When the kubota dealer I worked at changed from a mom & pop store to corporate in 2018, I saw all this happen. Gone were the mom and pop values. They (old boss) honestly and genuinely wanted to help everyone regardless. When they retired the new guys came in and were cutting out things that a small number of customers were coming in for, because it didn't directly generate enough income to justify the trouble. BUT what they didn't understand, was that Joe C. Customer comes in, buys a $700 push mower, likes it but later on decides that he might want a $5000 zero turn. Or gets old, and decides he wants a new $50,000 cabbed tractor. All because he remembered how they took care of him during and after the sale, of his cheap push mower. Those corporate guys didn't see that, and it hurts them. And honestly, hurt me to see em treat people like that.

Return customers are great until you run them off and there are billion ways to run em off and only a few ways to retain them. Corporate businesses often step past that fact and focus on the bigger numbers which is unfortunate, but in their way of thinking, necessary.

 

[PoTreeBoy]

they're all terrible

what generally happens is that companies (in this case cell providers) get so big, that they look solely at NUMBERS. Let's say out of 100,000,000 customers, 75,000,000 are using newer phones that are already 5G capable. So what about the minority? 25,000,000 out of a hundred, that's just 25%. 25% is going to have to upgrade. But it's just 25%, 1/4. No big deal. Except 25% of 100 million is 25 MILLION people. THAT is how larger corporations work, they don't care about the little guy they care about NUMBERS because they are so large that it's the only way they know how to manage things.

When the kubota dealer I worked at changed from a mom & pop store to corporate in 2018, I saw all this happen. Gone were the mom and pop values. They (old boss) honestly and genuinely wanted to help everyone regardless. When they retired the new guys came in and were cutting out things that a small number of customers were coming in for, because it didn't directly generate enough income to justify the trouble. BUT what they didn't understand, was that Joe C. Customer comes in, buys a $700 push mower, likes it but later on decides that he might want a $5000 zero turn. Or gets old, and decides he wants a new $50,000 cabbed tractor. All because he remembered how they took care of him during and after the sale, of his cheap push mower. Those corporate guys didn't see that, and it hurts them. And honestly, hurt me to see em treat people like that.

Return customers are great until you run them off and there are billion ways to run em off and only a few ways to retain them. Corporate businesses often step past that fact and focus on the bigger numbers which is unfortunate, but in their way of thinking, necessary.

"A satisfied customer is the best advertising" has been forgotten.

 

[johnjk]

We have Verizon service and rarely get more than 2 bars of 4G. T-Mobile? Too far out in the sticks for them to cover us. They drop coverage just past the Honda campus. ATT has better coverage but at over $50/mo more, not worth it for two extra bars of 4G. I would have to go back to the world of data caps if I went with ATT broadband via cell in my area and it wouldn’t be 5G. Now if I lived a couple miles closer to Honda, I could have 5G from all carriers and cheap internet from Spectrum.

 

[lugbolt]

"A satisfied customer is the best advertising" has been forgotten.

In the corporate big business world, there is truth to that. The rest of the truth to that is that they define "satisfied customer" differently than mom & pop places usually do.