I find it absurd I have to count gb on a monthly basis to not get charged data overages in this decade. I literally use my phone lightly and one wrong mistake can throw my entire family plan into a tail spin. I manage 7 lines and it's a full time job. Every change on my plan seems to throw Verizon into a major rework of my bill and subsequent phone calls to have the changes reverted. I'm all too familiar with creating customer service tickets, miscalculating promotional data, complaining and receiving credits. I feel like I might know Verizon's plans more than Verizon. It's enough to make me not want cellular data.
Comcast has a mesh network in California I literally have free wifi (as a paying Comcast customer) anywhere I go. Definitely not a plug for Comcast as they are effectively broadcasting paying customers internet to freeloaders like myself. Morality of that is another debate though
One thing to consider. Google's Project Fi, while having limited phones, has excellent and reasonable plans for how mobile phones should work.
You don't really pay for overages, you just buy blocks of 1GB of data ($10/GB), unused bits of that GB are prorated and roll into the next month, the phone coverage is a combination of T-Mobile, Sprint and I think U.S. Cellular and Wi-Fi. You can change your prepaid data allocation at any time, there's no contract. My base phone bill every month is $30 ($20 for service and $10 for 1GB of data) x 2 so $60/mo. If you choose to pay for your phone over 2 years it costs the same as buying the phone (they don't charge interest or anything else).
Voicemail uses google voices transcription tech, etc. We switched a while ago from Verizon, got a Nexus 6P (I think the Pixels are next in line), and the coverage has been about the same. Call quality is a smidge lower though. And oddly for Google, support has been very good, you talk to humans, they're friendly and answer quickly.
Management of the line is done through the user's google account and is very straightforward.
Try USmobile.com They're awesome! it uses the t-mobile network, but at half the price. You can pick and choose which options you want, and you can't go over on the data, because it turns off if you reach the limit. :)
Our bill for 2 people went from 110$ per month with At&t to 28$ a month on USmobile.
Doesn't xfinitywifi use a separate channel to avoid impacting the subscriber's service? Or are you talking about something else? (xfinitywifi isn't really a mesh network).
Xfinitywifi broadcasts on the same channel as the customers network, along with a 3rd hidden SSID they won't explain. (Current theory is its for their security systems, who knows.) It absolutely impacts their shitty routers performance, and causes wireless congestion. I work support for some consumer wireless equipment and there are lots of times where the only improvement is disabling xfinitywifi. I don't understand why anyone supports this- it may be ok for a middle of nowhere town, but in any reasonably populated building it literally doubles the number of wifi networks, which is a nightmare when you have a big apartment building and 2.4G interference.
Technically I'm not too sure... I know by default every router you pay Comcast to lease broadcasts the xfinitywifi network by default. I am constantly connected... I was even stopped at a traffic signal on xfinitywifi yesterday
An entire article with numerous anecdotes, and they couldn't mention the one simple way to check data usage on the phone? Both Android and iOS let you see exactly which apps used data, although only Android lets you break it down by period; iOS you'll need to "reset" then use it for a while.
Those anecdotes are pretty much worthless without that information.
I'm surprised the Verizon statement didn't mention to check that.
More menus, buttons, options, configuration etc.
Apple in minimalism. Don't make me think etc. Ideal world wouldn't have data limits, so they don't put in data limits as they design for the ideal world.
As a non-American always buying non-rebranded and unlocked phones, this was my first thought as well.
But if I put on my tinfoil hat, how much crap has Verizon put on their phones? I'm not sure how likely, but it's not impossible to either have an app use up your data, or alter the data stats.
I suspect that any Androids approved by Google (which they need to be to have the play store preinstalled) aren't allowed to mess with the data collection, but the agreements aren't public so I don't know for sure.
(I think one was leaked in the Oracle lawsuit or something?)
Verizon hit my personal "never do business with them again" shit list a few years ago, for this and related bullshit.
Non-malevolant data providers are difficult to find.
The abysmally poor monitoring, control, and cost-management options offered subscribers all feed into this directly, and dovetail nicely with a previous conversation on the morality of technology. A technology which is financed by a major vendor, and is designed to maximise that vendor's profits (or worse: an entire opposed-to-the-subscriber economic sector) will be inherently biased against subscribers.
Highly obvious data usage tracking, stop-loss financial settings, a soft degredation, the ability to specify what specific traffic, types of traffic, and/or sites are available or supported, etc., would all help this out.
As an example on the last point: I've looked at 4GL WiFi hotspot devices. None of these that I've found supports configuring a firewall or blocklist on the device itself. For some strange reason, the telecoms and advertising-oriented providers of such devices don't find it in their interest to offer such capabilities.
I am increasingly utterly disgusted with the tech world. Some fun toys, yes. But so gratuitously user-hostile.
You'd think this was part of a Wells-Fargo sales enhancement strategy.
as far as ethics and 'don't screw the consumer' go, I think t-mobile is the best you can do. And for me, offering something with integrity is what's important.
it's an interesting idea. but it still has data caps, overage charges, locks you in a 2 year contract and sits on top of verizons' cdma. the company is also apparently a traditionally structured hierarchical autocratic corporation.
with regard to that, all the carriers have a benevolence wing (https://twitter.com/verizongiving for instance). So I guess cynically one can say this is just traditional capitalism with a different foot forward for a different demographic ... There's a very real ngo-industrial complex and they seem to highlight that that's where the money goes.
The SPLC for instance, has many members who make $100s of k a year in legal fees on behalf of the SPLC on top of their $300k salaries. They were also sitting on over $200 million of unused cash and made it an endowment that they invested in the market with ... these people involved in these charities have taken the donations of their members to propel themselves into the 1%. Splendid.
> "My son, like most young adults, is pretty phone savvy so I was sure he knew what to do."
That sort of statement is never a good sign.
> "Shinn insists her late husband's phone isn't used for anything other than looking at phone numbers of missed calls or dealing with incoming calls. How, she asks, is her late husband's phone using data?"
It's checking an email account or something?
> "When he reaches his data limit each month, he immediately shuts off his data. Yet every month for the last four months, his data exceeded his limit. The totals: 6.00900; GB 6.00200; GB 6.01100 GB; and 6.00400 GB."
The "you're over limit" is probably not sent at the exact femtosecond you go over it?
> "Verizon insists that many customers' problems hinge on the infamous "Wi-Fi Assist" button, Van Dinter said. With iPhones, this is automatically "on" under the iOS9 operating system, which was introduced a year ago."
Verizon's probably right. I saw my data usage go up dramatically with that.
> Why are people's phones using data in the middle of the night when the phones aren't being used and are turned off or are on do-not-disturb?
Because do-not-disturb prevents alerts, not usage, and phones check email etc. 24/7.
> If the times of the data pings aren't necessarily accurate and are really only within a six-hour window, how is it that the phone call time stamps on my bill are accurate to the minute? Verizon says data is tallied and reported in chunks.
The article cites "6.00900; GB 6.00200; GB 6.01100 GB; and 6.00400 GB". Even if the phone's handling it, a megabyte or two could easily be explained by the occasional dropped HTTP request that Verizon sees but the phone doesn't count.
I recently got two iPads with a data plan on Verizon. I'm absolutely paranoid about overages. First thing I did, right out of the box, was pick through all the data-related settings. Wifi assist? No thanks. I'm paranoid enough about it that I turn cell data off unless I'm on the road.
Thus far, three months in, I can say I'm not dissatisfied with the service. I'm not thrilled about the data rate, but the "competition" sells the same thing at about the same price.
Does US not have pay-as-you-go plans at all? I have a pay as you go sim in UK, top it up automatically every month ~$20 and that gives me 4GB of data. It gives me peace of mind because I literally can't spend more than what I topped up, it's guaranteed no surprises at the end of the month.
They do, and they are slowly improving, but there are a lot of flaws in the system. From what I read that is getting better in the last few years, but there is still a lot to be desired. It has been a few years since I lived in the states, though.
I was paying more than that with a prepaid "plan" with less data, for example. The service is generally more expensive - I just happen to be a light user so it worked out for me. But if I call an 800 number or answer a phone call? I get charged. Plans subsidize the cost of the phone: Pre-paid does not, and the selection is generally full of refurbished phones and models 1-2 generations out of date. Most didn't have the option of the newest phone if you were on prepay. It used to be that some prepaid services wouldn't work on other networks or would charge so much it wasn't feasible (verizon wouldn't work on at&t network).
Some companies simply don't offer international calling or texting on a prepaid plan: I had an issue where the company suddenly started charging extra for international texts because Norway suddenly wasn't on their list of included countries - and that was the entire reason I paid for that bulk texting.
I also found the customer service to be lacking. One company refused online customer service for prepaid customers: More than one had special, seemingly second class call centers for prepaid customers.
Simply put: I think the pay-as-you-go is probably a better setup there than in the states.
We do. I pay $30/month for 100 minutes (rarely used anymore) and 5GB LTE. If I have a busy month where I use a lot of minutes, I can add another 100 for $10 from my phone.
Only real complaint is that I can't do something similar for data. I have yet to go over 5GB in a month since I use WiFi at home and at work which covers probably 90% of my data usage. Still, I'd like to be able to do something similar to buying more minutes where I authorize another $10 payment from my phone and add another block of 1GB.
I think that's the biggest issue I have with these overages people deal with. Whereas my plan just drops me down to some useless rate like 128k/sec if I go over, they get nailed with huge charges.
All these bigger carriers need to do is cut you off and offer you the option to refill. They could even charge a premium over what you normally pay for data because perhaps you really need to stay connected. But it's one thing to use up the 5GB you bought for $30 and then have to pay $10 for another 1GB when you run out on the 25th. It's another to just let you keep racking up charges that are both exorbitant and often unknown to the customer until their bill is $100+ more than usual.
We do, but the services offered in the States aren't on par with what we hear about from Europe and Japan.
Our carriers are fighting the fact all that customers want from them is a "dumb pipe" to the Internet, and have structured services and handset purchases around funneling customers into long term contracts and complicated plans.
It's been getting better over the last few years, but "buy just a SIM and get a chunk of data for a reasonable price" plans still tend to have worse geographic coverage and lower throughput speeds.
I dropped Verizon about 3 years ago for Net10 Wireless. Net10 offers "unlimited" data even on their cheapest plan, which is basically full speed for the first 500MB of data, and then 2G speed after that. Even though 2G speed is borderline useless, there are never any overages. I've been paying about $35 USD for the cheapest plan.
My phone would be near-useless without data on - 100% of my messaging (like with my wife) is over data. I wouldn't get server alerts, urgent email etc. I'd rather disable voice/sms service than data service.
But I've also never had issues with overages. I use maybe 2-3 GB/mo, on a cheap MVNO plan where I have 6 GB/mo with rollover. Since I never use up the 6 GB, I effectively have 12 GB/mo in case something goes crazy or I need to tether.
When I tether I get super-paranoid though, since macOS has no concept of "this is an expensive connection" so it will happily download gigabytes of Photoshop updates. Little Snitch is useful for these occasions - just whitelist the software you need & trust (email, messaging, browser)
Don't worry, Windows has the "metered connection" setting but it's nearly useless as no third party apps respect the setting - Dropbox and Chrome both updated over LTE today.
Video chews up data REALLY quick. Video views on FB and IG are up, probably up on TW as well. So when people say, "My habits haven't really changed..." they probably don't realize what a difference video makes. It's not like the adverts promote this.
Even using say just IG and scrolling a lot is gonna crew up data. Not as much as video, obviously, but if you're drifting from TW or FB to more IG then I could see more data being used.
As for usage while sleeping, usage while off, etc. Well, obviously that's a BIG problem. I'm not making excuses but probably no surprise. Computers aren't perfect, are they?
I wish there was a way to make YouTube remember I don't want to watch videos in 1080p60 when I'm on the go. I always have to make sure it's not on HD when I leave the house just because I may have reset it to "auto" while watching at home on WiFi.
This is especially annoying when the first thing it shows is an unskippable 30 second ad with no option to adjust the quality because it's an ad.
For what it's worth, my usage reported by Verizon is typically within about 5% of what my phone reports. I just double checked and right now Verizon says I've used 2345MB and my phone says 2.26GB.
The difference between those two numbers is 0.09 GB. 0.09 is 3.8% of 2.35, or 4.0% of 2.26, so whichever way you look at it, it would be correct to say the difference is "within 5%".
Some US carriers offer this as well. The problem is typically that the largest carriers (mostly re-formed from the same telco monopoly that was broken up decades ago) use their market advantage to avoid this sort of thing. Why offer unlimited data when you have the only towers in a region and you can rake in overage fees from a captive audience?
Been getting slammed with Verizon overages lately myself the past several months. Habits haven't really changed but suddenly my wife and are each using roughly 3X more data.
Used Android usage features and, sure enough, it shows roughly the same as Verizon. And most is Web data.
Still, something seems awfully fishy. I wonder if Verizon's Web gateway or similar could be the problem? I need to do some comparisons with Wi-Fi to check whether page sizes, etc are the same.
Otherwise, maybe a Chrome or other update?
Anyway,something has absolutely changed--literally from one month to the next--starting a few months back.
Bad article, but if Verizon is significantly lying about data usage, well, the FCC is going to crawl so far up their ass it's going to look like that scene from Alien when this is all over.
And if they are caught doing something illegal, they'll face a few million dollar fine so the FCC can show how tough they are, while Verizon will keep a hundred million dollars in ill gotten profits.
Yup. The FCC fined Verizon $1.35 million for using supercookies without users' permission, which is unlikely to change the behavior of a company that paid its 4 top executives over $40 million in total in 2015.
Just one example: look at states which charge overly-prosectured minorities parole fees (often for unpaid tickets and other civil matters) and reimprison them if they are unable to pay these extortionist taxes.
Just make sure to show up for an asset examination.
It's the one thing you need to show up for. The judge usually just fines you, but can arrest, at least in CA. I had to show up for one, and my judgment holder didn't show up, and the judge fined him $200.00, even though I told the judge I didn't lose money by comming to court.
If you ever find yourself in this stressful situation, you have a lot of rights.
I know this sounds a bit crazy, but I'd be willing to wager that a significant chunk of data usage skyrocketing in the past few months is due to Pokemon Go.
Timely article. I recently switched to VZ from ATT where I'd been a customer for years. At ATT, I had a grandfathered unlimited plan. Before I switched, I checked my max monthly data usage from the previous few months. The max was way under 3 GB / mo. After I switched to VZ, I was hitting the 5 GB limit after only 25 days. How can that be?
Did you change phones to one with a different data usage pattern (e.g., bigger screen -> higher resolution video and graphics)? Or, just the factory settings on the new phone could have stuff like Facebook Video Auto-play reverted back to on. If you have a faster connection now, video apps might be loading 1080p video instead of 360p.
You can't really make these claims without actually comparing what apps used how much data on your phone
I have been a Verizon customer for about 4 years since the iPhone 5 came out. My data usage sometimes varies a great deal depending if I'm out of town or not. I always check a couple of days before the end of my billing cycle and I can increase the plan for that month. Now the plans have larger bin sizes and it easier keeping to one plan. Because of my methods I would frequently receiving "over data" text messages as a warning.
Also if one installs the Verizon iPhone app you can use a widget so I see my usage daily when checking the weather and schedule and so on.
I also recommend buying the omnistat app that shows you data consumed real time.
I've tried T-Mobile and AT&T. Both carriers were substantially worse than VZ for mobile data speeds and dropped calls. Not just a little. Tremendously worse. The LTE on them was slower and more intermittent than VZ's 3G coverage.
The switch back to VZ from AT&T (after just 3 months) cost me hundreds of dollars, and was still worth it. (Thankfully T-Mobile had a weeklong trial program that saved me from going through with that switch)
VZ gets away with higher pricing and abusive customer support because their network is unmatched in my opinion. My experience is obviously anecdata, and I don't live in a densely populated city, so that may be worth noting.
In my market, NYC, VZ is by far the best provider. It has far more spectrum than AT&T, which esp for Manhattan is really important because of the density of people. Moreover, we have many large steel and concrete buildings and VZ gets the strongest signal.
Data usage has grown dramatically and the spectrum availability in your market can make a difference. VZ, AT&T, and others have purchased AWS-3 Band 66 spectrum which they are brining on-line but the iPhone 7 and Galaxy 7 chips don't support it.
It is 10 AM ET and I just ran a Speedtest in Upper West Side Manhattan and have 41 Mbits/sec down and 6.5 up on iPhone 7+.
On iPhones, install the VZ App, install the widget, get the Omnistat app and that should help with knowing your data usage.
Cell phone service is a conversation where anecdata matters. The carrier you have must work in the places you visit. Unfortunately for you, that only seems to be the most customer unfriendly one, Verzion.
Where I live TMO data speeds are much faster than both ATT and Verizon (we have tested in the office with people on different carriers). TMO service is also better than Verizon where I live, and if you travel overseas at all nothing beats TMO.
The best part of this is that all of the big carriers are improving their networks like never before. Hopefully sooner rather than later, network coverage will not be a competing point.
Come on people, switch to a carrier that doesn't charge over-limit fees, like USmobile.com (see my comment below).
Also, it's very easy to see which apps are using the most data. Just keep an eye on them, where it shows the highest data usage. Delete all apps that use more than X amount of data and switch to a competing app.
As long as we have choices, businesses and apps must bend to our will. How long do you think Pokemon Go would last if everyone stopped using it because it used too much data? We are consumers, and as long as there is competition, we are All powerful.
AT&T does something similar - 75% and 90%. I learned the hard way it can't be relied on to be timely!
I received a 75% warning on a Friday night from them, continued to use data (some streaming), and never got the 90% warning, until Monday morning when I received about 20 text messages saying I had used 90%, then 100%, resulting in the automatic purchase of 1 GB more, then 75%, 90%, etc. Even with their credit for the misunderstanding it still cost me > $150 for that lesson.
I go with Verizon prepaid for about $40/month with a small data allocation. Can buy add on data packs in 3gb blocks that roll over for 3 months and tethering is included.
The usage Verizon logs is just an estimate for that moment in time. So if you're notified that you're over this evening, you may have actually gone over yesterday.
Others are correct that this article is of very low quality.
But that doesn't change the fact that data caps are arbitrarily set cash-grabs and should be either abolished entirely on both home and mobile plans, or should be regulated to have consistent costs that are tiered sanely, rather than the current "friendly allotment, arm-and-leg overage" model.
I signed up with a Verizon Wireless data plan a few days before the close of 2015 after moving to a new place. Initially paranoid about data usage and Verizon's integrity in reporting such, I maintained activity logs on all my machines with vnstat (0). But I became more at ease after a few months when I determined that Verizon's reported usage always stayed slightly below vnstat's report for each network interface (which also includes network traffic that only takes place on the LAN or with the router device itself that isn't actually sent over the airwaves).
I won't suggest the article's complaints are baseless, however, even if the article itself reflects the poor community journalism I remember expecting from the Post-Standard. Because even if Verizon isn't falsifying usage data for users, the whole game is partly rigged! A typical user has no idea what their actual usage is, or what their devices do automagically in their absence. I've seen 10 GB prepaid cell data allowances get liquidated the very evening of the day they were topped off by project volunteers using laptops. In one case, a user checking and writing email forgot to disable Windows Updates. In another instance, the user had no concept of how large the neat videos he uploaded to the project's FB page actually were. Without a real concept of how much data they actually use, most users will end up finding a data plan mostly by trial & error--they will go as cheap as they can, and incrementally adjust to a larger plan when they "go over" (rinse & repeat). I think of the numerous uncomfortable talks and arguments in households everywhere based on stupid ideas of what constitutes data use, and parents who are no better informed than their children about what they can do to actually reduce household data usage.
And yes, turning off automatic updates, "wifi assist", and other settings is good advice. Except that many of these settings have a mysterious way of getting re-enabled in commercial OSes. Why is it necessary for users to constantly police their own device settings because the Apples, Microsofts, and Googles of the world have other ideas? If you're running a non-libre OS (which is unavoidable on smart phones, presently), you might as well expect some hardship here. Your device does what it wants, because its makers don't think it actually belongs to you.
I suspect that the main reason my experience with Verizon Wireless has been nearly painless (if not inexpensive) is because I keep only a dumb phone and several machines installed with Slackware. My data usage may be larger some months, but I always know why! It's never a surprise.
That's going to depend heavily on your personal wifi. I have a decent number of dead spots in my house, and I'm frequently in the back yard where reception is poor. It'll switch back and forth frequently with assist on in those situations.
So if you watch a video, it'll do that all over mobile data? Since I've never seen it use much, I always assumed WiFi Assist was just used for stuff like timely push notifications.
Comcast has a mesh network in California I literally have free wifi (as a paying Comcast customer) anywhere I go. Definitely not a plug for Comcast as they are effectively broadcasting paying customers internet to freeloaders like myself. Morality of that is another debate though