Sunday, July 4, 2021

Nothing Says America Like Shitty ISP Practices

So AT&T had their chance, and they blew it. All I wanted was an internet rate that was $50 a month or lower. I felt that was more than reasonable, and they simply would not budge. Even after I canceled the service, they continued to stand firm, and even doubled down a little by glitching out whenever I try to check for new deals. Fortunately for me, it looks like they are being rendered irrelevant.

As some of you may recall, last time it was a fight with Spectrum, and I vowed NEVER to do business with them ever again. AT&T was not available at that time, so I resorted to using a wireless provider for my home internet. The only problem I had was that 4G/LTE data was not unlimited, and I had to be very careful with how much internet I was using. I had it down to a science. I paid $50 a month for 24GB of data from Mint Mobile. (Actually it was 2 x $25/month for 12GB, but whatever.)

Then AT&T finally came along and offered me fiber for $50/month. After the first year they tried to raise my rate, but I talked them down, unfortunately after the second year, no dice. That is why I recently canceled AT&T at the end of April.

Fortunately I found another MVNO called Tello. Their service has provided me with 25GB of 4G/LTE data for $40, and whenever I ran out I just drop another $40 for another 25GB. That has been working out pretty good except that my devices are using up a hell of a lot more data than they used to.

Seriously, I would come home from work only to find that between my smart home devices and computer auto-updates, nearly a Gigabyte was gone before I even had a chance to check my e-mail. At $1.60/GByte that shit gets expensive and paying AT&T $60/month might actually have been more cost effective.

But then I heard that T-Mobile was offering a new UNLIMITED 5G wireless home internet service for $60/month. Hmmm… Interesting! AT&T has legit competition! I checked into it, and it was available where I live, but I wasn’t quite ready to commit… That was until they offered a permanent $10/month discount for new customers! That means the service would be $50/month. That’s my sweet spot!

Unfortunately signing up for their service is a bit of a hassle. You have to give a lot of sensitive personal information to customer service reps with thick foreign accents over the phone. Even though these people were super friendly and helpful, it just feels super uncomfortable because of all the scams and identity theft going around these days. They even required me to do a temporary lift on my credit freeze, something I didn’t have to do back in January when I got my car loan!

If all goes well, my new “Internet Gateway” will ship sometime in late July, as the devices are currently on back order. While there is no equipment fee, they still own the device, and it costs $370 if anything should happen to it. In all fairness, AT&T’s modem had the same deal. but I’d prefer the option to own my own equipment from the start, even if I had to pay for it up front.

So we shall see how this internet service pans out, and I will report back warts and all. Currently T-Mobile home internet is not available in all areas, but since they don’t have to lay down physical lines, it should be coming to your town soon. After all, more internet options means more competition, and more competition generally brings prices down. Let us hope that the age of shitty ISP practices will soon come to a close, and may bundle pricing rot in hell.

One last ironic note: Both Mint Mobile and Tello are MVNO’s that lease bandwidth on T-Mobile’s towers. So no matter what, I’m using T-Mobile. And T-Mobile’s towers are connected via AT&T’s fiber, so no matter what, I’m still using AT&T. That’s hilarious!


Kudos

With work and all, I am still relying on the generosity of people like you to submit jokes via our submission page. After you enter the joke, it will go straight into the “Pending” queue. Once there, I will briefly review it, edit it if necessary, then schedule it.

If you will do that, I’ll try to keep the comics coming, and who doesn’t love seeing “Gail’s Pic of the Week”? There are sure to be more of my rants too! With all that entertainment, what’s not to love?

Thanks so much, and God bless.

Pax,

-f2x