Interesting, R2K. I blew off Sprint maybe 15-20 years ago and switched to Verizon. Why? Because Sprint's service was awful. Beyond awful. And if you had to call them about it, they made sure you experienced a maximum amount of misery. I had no problems at all with Verizon, but switched to AT&T when we decided to get iPhones. I've hated AT&T ever since. I'd give the reasons why, but don't feel like writing several paragraphs about it. After waiting patiently for Verizon to get iPhones, and now still waiting for the next model, which will come out in a few months, to switch from AT&T, I keep reading things that make me wonder what has happened to Verizon. I guess I'll have to look at Sprint again. Any chance that they'll end up having the iPhone 5?
Well I guess i'm buying phones at full retail price from Verizon from now on. I'm holding on to my grandfathered lte plan. NO ONE IS GOING TO TAKE THAT FROM ME! I have a question though. Has anyone who has a grandfathered data plan and lives in an lte coverage area used their phone tethering as a permanent modem for your home internet? And if anyone has how are the speeds when it comes to online desktop gaming and desktop hd movie playback?
Haven't tried LTE....but even on 4g and playing on a German server in BF3 on PC, I had ZERO lag. And as for streaming, I had no issues either. Was watching netflix, hbogo.com HD etc. This was on Sprint 4g with the old Evo 4g. Can't wait to get the new one.
Google Nexus was the first phone to be offered carrier independent. It certainly wasn't a success by any means, but the attempts have been made. The iphone can certainly be sold independent of the carrier, but consumers have heavily relied on subsidies. What do subsidies cost you? An unlimited talk and text plan with 2 gigabytes of data: Verizon: ($100) $110-115 after taxes, fees and surcharges. Page Plus prepaid: ($55) $51-$53 after dealer discounts Close to 50% of your bill is to pay for subsides. Do the math. That is almost $1300 extra per 24 month contract.
Unlimited wireless data won't work for a long time. There is a finite amount of wireless spectrum, unlike wired broadband where you can just lay down more fiber. This is the reason why there used to unlimited data on ATT and their network went to crap. Wireless networks can't handle it. We won't have unlimited data until probably 6G networks come around.
I still hate that I moved to Sprint from Verizon, have a 4g phone, pay the premium data charge (which I believe everyone has to...stupid), and I rarely ever have 4g coverage. Stupid... Let me sell you this car, but you need to pay a monthly charge for navigation. Oh...but it only works 1% of the time.
Exactly. And I suspect these carriers can handle the "load" just fine. Verizon (and AT&T will surely follow suit soon - they've already expressed interest) are doing this out of greed, plain and simple. They see that people are going to use more and more data in the future as things like Pandora and other streaming apps become even more widely used, and are positioning themselves to cash in on that. (Unless people wise up and suddenly use far less data to stay under these bandwidth caps - similar to the early days of the Internet with AOL, etc.) It wouldn't surprise me if one day even voice and text is transmitted over VoIP - which means that everything sent from/to the device would be considered data. It costs $40 to add a smartphone and $10 to add a tablet. Why such a huge disparity? I don't get it...maybe it's simply "because they can". I'm with AT&T's grandfathered unlimited data plan from back in the day and will try to hang onto it as long as I can.
TBH I'd rather have unlimited data and internet(which is what I have now from my contract 2 years ago) than unlimited talk and text. I already have free mobile to mobile minutes since most of my family and friends use Verizon anyways, and free nights and weekends. Also texting is free mobile to mobile, and there are free messaging apps for smart phones these days anyways to make regular SMS texting practically obsolete.
I DON'T EVEN TALK ON MY FRIGGIN' PHONE! It's my "read the news while dropping a deuce" small brick. Half the time it's like dial up anyways. Verizon is going to **** imo.
Wasn't there a plan for Houston a while ago about having a city-wide wireless thing going on (like in Toronto IIRC)? That would be the t***.
+1. people are too dumb to stop and realize this. they will keep paying whatever they have to to make sure they are cool (aka buy more iphones). the disparity is stupid. in fact there shouldn't be a charge to add tablets! are you using the minutes or texts? NOPE. only data..which you are paying to share anyway!!!
Text is already data. $20 texting plans is absolutely outrageous. Carriers have been making a killing on texting plans like no other. The overhead is very minimal. Eventually voice will goto Voice over LTE and be carried with the data..now whether the carriers will include it in your data package is a different story.
I wonder how data plans will look like when voice moves over to lte in a couple of years. It should become much cheaper. Carriers will no longer have to maintain 3 separate technologies. Also voice will now be data since it is using lte. I wonder if they will have one simple plan that just is data and not voice/data/text. Smart phones will also be for the better when this happens since there will be no need to pack 2 different radios in a phone thus increasing battery life and decreasing form factor as well.
Feel free to dabble into the engineering on how much data can be transmitted wireless. Carriers do a pretty damn good job on what they have now. 15 years ago minutes were very expensive for a very good reason, but over the last decade, carriers have expanded vastly. Data is new and it is very expensive. Billions are poured out to expand to the latest technologies. In time as more intuitive measures are made to transmit data, prices will drop. Ipads can not make phonecalls. Smartphones can make unlimited calls and texts on these plans.
When I had Sprint, it worked great in terms of making phone calls everywhere (They roam off of Verizon), and sending/receiving text messages. The problem with Sprint is that their data speeds are terrible. 3G and Wi-Max
Ummm that is what Verizon is doing now. You add up to 10 devices, and depending on the device, you pay a fee for each one. Then you pick a data plan. Voice and text are unlimited regardless of the device. CDMA/GSM are here for a long time to come. It will be several years before they are even allowed to start decommissioning sites. Carriers will have to start playing nice with each other to allow easy roaming.
If AT&T and/or T-mobile have good service in your area and you don't need LTE or more than 2 gigs of data, I would highly suggest buying an unlocked phone and using an MVNO that runs off one of those networks.
Never going to happen outside of current roaming agreements and current spectrum compatibilities. Especially with the many frequencies of LTE in the world. However, I saw on the Verge somewhere that Qualcomm is making a new chip that would be compatible with multiple LTE networks in the U.S (AT&T/Verizon). That might change that.
