Speaking of CricKet, sometimes people ask me what the best cell phone company is. To which I answer, “it depends.” If you want the latest high-end smartphones (I do) you’ll need to pony up for a contract with Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint or AT&T (in order of my carrier preference at this point). If you’re okay with a lower-end phone that still works perfectly well, you have more options. Read the rest of this entry »
Posts Tagged Verizon
The Best Cell For Your Money
Oct 31
This evening I and a few friends were hanging out in front of the miniature apartment complex next to my school (I have no pretense of privacy). One had his Verizon iPhone 4 out. The discussion for a minute or two turned to how much he was paying for his cellular service ($40 per month plus change for an add-a-line on a family plan), after which he mentioned that, once his Verizon contract was, up, he’d switch his phone to CricKet and pay a little more, but in return get unlimited everything without the need to be on his parents’ family plan. “it’s the same network as Verizon anyway,” he said.
Wrong.
The above misconception is surprisingly common, so I don’t blame anyone for espousing it Read the rest of this entry »
UPDATE 4: Added a Kerrville Daily Times link for a new article on how 911 is handled. Lots of good information there.
UPDATE 3: Added another news source. Swamped by homework so tweets will have to wait, but other than those I think I’ve got all the online info on the outage linked from here.
UPDATE 2: Added another couple of news sources, corrected one of my usual typos…some how I forgot to add a “not” into the paragraph about Wal-Mart taking credit card transactions. Sorry for the confusion. Also modified information based on an article from the Fredericksburg Standard Radio-Post. The link below takes you to the subscriber-only version of the article; the non-subscriber snippet just makes the paper look bad (very little info).
UPDATE: Added some more news articles, (still) working on collecting all tweets about the incident, revised some information for accuracy (originally wasn’t sure about CricKet and Pocket, but they too were taken down by the outage…DSL was also apparently iffy in Kerrville).
Granted, I wasn’t in the area when it happened, but since I have plenty of family and friends down there I’m certainly going to talk about it! Read the rest of this entry »
So up until now I’ve tested three of the four providers who have 3G service in Fredericksburg, TX: AT&T, Sprint and CricKet, listed in order of connection speed, descending. I was able to borrow a Verizon aircard from work (Novatel USB727) and check Verizon’s speed at my house. Here are the results: Read the rest of this entry »
Interesting stuff happening lately about internet service in this area:
- My mom saw a Verizon truck in the county fair parade today (I didn’t go; saw no need and was tired). The truck has “High Speed Internet coming soon!” or similar painted on te side. This is DSL, not FiOS (Verizon always refers to their fiber offering by its trademarked name). However from what I hear Verizon’s DSL release is just a ploy to drive up the sale cost of their system here; Fredericksburg isn’t a large metropolitan area, and there are too mayn bridged taps and other phone system anomaies here for DSL to reach beyond a small part of town. At least that’s what the scuttlebutt says. My prediction: Verizon offers some flavor of DSL to folks who can currently get Windstream DSL, then sells the system to whoever will take it, using the “we have DSL in our central office” argument to jack the price up slightly above what the system is worth.
- Bee Creek Communications, the local our-hands-are-tied-and-if-anyone-competes-with-us-we-lose wireless ISP, was in the parade today as well. They also have a third-of-a-page ad in the paper advertising free installation to new customers until September 15th. A few years ago an installation with similar equipment would have run you around $220. The problem here is that their network is already over capacity in some areas, they’re spread too thinly in terms of manpower and their speeds are the stuff of yesteryear, barely competitive with satellite internet (though their monthly transfer caps are higher). The service also requires a two-year contract with a $125 early termination fee. If you want a one-year agreement service will run you another $10 per month. In short, don’t buy. Read the rest of this entry »