Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

T-Mobile Wireless – Family Plan (A Year Later)

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In December 2015 I posted that I had left Verizon Wireless for T-Mobile. It’s now December 2016 and almost a year later. In short I’m still pretty happy with the switch. The big concern in switching to T-Mobile was cellular coverage, thankfully I don’t travel too much but in the first two months of 2016 I definitely got around, more than I usually would in six months or a year. In that short time I’ve traveled to New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Newark Delaware, Reno Nevada, San Jose, Santa Clara and Dallas Fort Worth. While some of those cities were just stopovers for connecting flights I didn’t have any problems with coverage in any of those locations. I did end up needing to enable data roaming while I was in Santa Clara for Networking Field Day 11. The family is generally happy with their devices. Interestingly enough the oldest has become somewhat of a critic of Apple now that she has an iPhone 6, apparently she’s found a few software bugs and related issues and occasionally misses her Motorola Moto G. I was originally excited about T-Mobile’s Binge On program only later to learn the disappointing facts behind the program. I’m really happy for two reasons;

  1. I’m essentially paying the same monthly fee I was paying for two smartphones on Verizon with five smartphones on T-Mobile [Note: I purchased all the smartphones up front],
  2. I don’t have to worry about the girls going over data or text messaging limits and ending up with some crazy overage billing.

Interestingly a lot has changed in the past year – Verizon and AT&T have gotten much more competitive with their plans and fees, not so much that I would entertain switching back… but if you really like Verizon or AT&T you can likely make the numbers work much easier than you could have a year ago.

I also recently returned my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 to Samsung for repair under the manufacturer’s warranty and was really pleased with the whole process. Samsung repaired the phone and returned it to me within 6 calendar days. That was an awesome customer experience!

If you’re looking to shave a few $$$ off your monthly mobile bill then you might want to give T-Mobile a call.

Now what to-do with my exploding cable bill? Is it time to cut the cord? That’s my next hurdle with Verizon FiOS and Comcast.

Cheers!

BLU Advance 5.0 – Alternate Android Smartphone

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Last week my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 started mysteriously rebooting itself throughout the day and evening. Eventually it booted up to what appeared to be the Android bootloader with the message, “Could not do normal boot ddi : mmc_read failed”. I reached out to T-Mobile and Samsung support and was advised to perform a factory reset. Unfortunately the factory reset didn’t help the problem much, the phone would still reboot a couple of times a day without warning. I suspected the eMMC flash on the phones motherboard was starting to fail. Apparently it’s a known issue with the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. Thankfully the phone was just under a year old so I arranged with Samsung support to return the smartphone for warranty/repair service. With the shipping and warranty service it would probably take between 7-10 business days after I shipped the smartphone before it would return. So what was I going to use in the interim. At a minimum I needed voice, texting, and email service from the device. I was just looking for something to hold me over until my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 was returned. I quickly found the BLU Advance 5.0 which was retailing for $59.99 on Amazon. I removed the SIM from my Galaxy Note 4, installed it into the BLU Advance 5.0 and I was up and running without issue. Almost one week later I must say that I’m genuinely impressed with the relatively inexpensive Android smartphone. The smartphone only has 4GB of space so you’ll need to be selective regarding the apps that you install. I’m primarily using the handset for voice, texting, email (Microsoft Outlook) and occasionally Audible and Google Maps for those long commutes. This is a great alternate Android smartphone if you are traveling or even for a teenager. It’s much easier on the pocket to lose a $60 smartphone than a $500 smartphone.

Cheers!

T-Mobile’s Binge On – Net Neutrality – User Perspective

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I’m a pretty happy T-Mobile customer and I recently had a conversation with an IT colleague regarding T-Mobile’s Binge On service.

T-Mobile’s Binge On is a service that allows access to specific content without that content counting toward the user’s monthly data cap – zero rating. The service does optimize the video for 480p (DVD quality) which isn’t too bad given the general size of most smartphones and tablets. That said there is a discussion going on within the community that T-Mobile’s Binge On violates net neutrality. I didn’t originally agree that Binge On violates Net Neutrality since the service is completely optional, you don’t need to use it if you don’t want. It’s pretty clear that T-Mobile is being a disruptor in the cellular market. As a customer with three teen aged daughters the service is a big hit with them.

You can realize my surprise when this IT colleague told me that T-Mobile is actually throttling all video traffic regardless of whether or not the content provider is participating in the Binge On program. I quickly found the article from Jeremy Gillula titled, EFF Confirms: T-Mobile’s Binge On Optimization is Just Throttling, Applies Indiscriminately to All Video.  After this revelation I now feel that T-Mobile is violating net neutrality rules by impeding traffic from content providers that aren’t participating in the Binge On program when the Binge On feature is active on the phone and not communicating that fact to their customers.

It appears to me that T-Mobile wasn’t being truly transparent in this case. And of course the feature is optional but it is enabled by default, but of course it is enabled by default. It wouldn’t serve T-Mobile anything if it was opt-in and not opt-out. In a story from Jon Brodkin titled, T-Mobile’s Binge On: When throttling may not break the rules, John argues that because the feature is optional that it may not violate net neutrality.

Are you a T-Mobile customer? What do you think about Binge On?

Cheers!

T-Mobile Wireless – Family Plan

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I was recently shopping for a new wireless carrier, one that could provide 5 lines for the entire family without bankrupting me every month. It doesn’t help that I have three teenagers, the oldest of which is occasionally known to blow through her current pre-paid plan only a few days into the billing cycle. I had been a Verizon Wireless customer for the past 7 years but I just couldn’t make the budget fit with any of the Verizon plans. I looked at Ting, Sprint, AT&T and finally T-Mobile. Ting looked like a great option at first but after thinking about how to micro-manage the data and texting habits of three teenage girls I decided there had to be better option. samsung-galaxy-note-4-t-mobile

After running all the numbers time and time again I landed on T-Mobile.

I purchased a pair of Samsung Galaxy Note 4s for myself and my wife and then I ordered a pair of Motorola Moto Es for my twin girls. My oldest daughter has been using a Motorola Moto G for the past two years and had been asking for an Apple iPhone,iphone6-silver not wanting to be the tech father that pushed his kids to non-Apple solutions I ordered an Apple iPhone 6 for her from T-Mobile. I had looked around at various refurbs/second-hand from sites like Amazon and Gazelle but choose to purchase new seeing how she’s taken pretty good care of her Motorola Moto G.

My experience with T-Mobile has been fairly good to date. I will call out David the sales order representative that I spoke to while placing the order with T-Mobile. David initially tried to tell me that the 2GB plan was for “flip phones”. I politely told David that I wasn’t in need of an upsell and my daughters would be fine with 2GB data plan. After that point David was very helpful and successfully placed the order.

With Verizon I was paying ~ $130/monthly for 2 lines with 2GB of data each, 500 SMS text messages and 700 minutes shared between the phones in the plan. That equates to about $3,120 over the course of the two year contract plus the $299 I paid for the Motorola Moto X when I first purchased it (buy one get one free). So all total I paid Verizon just over $3,400 for 2 lines. With T-Mobile I’ll be paying ~ $110/monthly for 5 lines with 2GB of data each, unlimited SMS text messaging and unlimited minutes. That will equate to about $2,880 over the course of two years plus the ~ $2,100 I paid for all 5 phones (2 Samsung Galaxy Note 4s, the Apple iPhone 6 and the 2 Motorola Moto Es). The benefit here is that I have my entire family on a single plan (no more pre-paid phones) and I’m free to jump ship (to any GSM capable provider) since I purchased the phones outright.

Update: I just received my first bill.. $144/monthly with all the taxes included… that’s $34/monthly in taxes and fees, 23% of the bill.

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