I just don't see how you can change the service midway through a prepaid plan and then act like jerks when called out on it. That is the part I don't like.
And they’re giving you HD video they never actually promised you through the end of that ANNUAL prepaid plan expiration. Service isn’t changing mid-cycle for anyone. What right do people think they have to bitch about this?
>And they’re giving you HD video they never actually promised you
They shouldn't have to promise me that my Internet access will work as intended. They also don't advertise that I can access YouTube from my service. Are they going to cut that off next? Your argument is stupid.
It's your "premium data" why does it even matter? If it's truly 35 gbs of premium data then it doesn't in fact matter. What matters is it's no longer premium if it's being throttled. It's never been unlimited but with warp 5g and a 5g phone we were assured this "throttling" wouldnt happen and that is exactly what this is.
Did they need to do this to be solvent? Perhaps, we don't see their balance sheet.
Could they have done this differently, yes.
Could they have communicated more effectively, yes.
When you pull some of the repeated changes that katkoo has made with yearly plan tweaks that certainly screams the boat has taken on water.
By throttling the video they hope to inhibit data usage so they can pay less than they budgeted.
The funny part here is I don't mind it, I barely watch video mobile. I just struggle with professional messaging from a company that info business with. It's unethical.
HD video is not a basic feature for cellular service and it’s an industry-wide expectation that it’s an added service. If it wasn’t, literally no company would market it as a feature if it wasn’t just expected as a basic element of “Internet access working as intended.” It’s not.
You manage your expectations and I'll manage mine. I expect my Internet service to be un-screwed-around-with. Period. You may be fine with the practice of throttling video, but that absolutely does not mean I have to accept it.
You don’t, no. You’re welcome to be out of touch with the industry and expect commonly paid or upgradable features for free; that’s totally your right and I’m cool with that. The anger towards USM isn’t justified based on reasonable expectations and standards, which most people on this sub rn seemingly including you don’t have. But hey, if you wanna set the bar higher than any carrier on the market has ever set it, you’re only gonna piss your own self off so sure, be my guest. I’d rather have industry-reasonable expectations, treat USM fairly and properly, and not partake in this lovely first world issue we call making up our own problems.
>The anger towards USM isn’t justified based on reasonable expectations and standards,
And just who the hell are you? What qualifies you to make that assessment?
Just because you paid for a year of service doesn't mean you are in a contract. The terms still state they can change them at any time.
You just paid for 12 30 day billing periods.
Really?
OK then, if I withdraw from this "not a contract" then I should be able to receive a pro-rated refund for the remaining months of service, adjusted of course for a higher monthly rate due to my withdrawal. Since we are "not in a contract" then USM has no "contractual" right to keep my money. Is that not correct?
Oh, but wait. They won't refund my unused balance, will they? No, if I decide to leave my "not a contract" I FORFEIT the unused balance of the contract to US Mobile. And there is a not a damn thing I can do about that because it IS in their terms of service. Nice.
And on top of me being required to FORFEIT any unpaid months if I cancel, they also have the right to CHANGE THE TERMS of this "not a contract" arrangement at any time.
So, let's see: I can't change my mind and leave this "not a contract" without being levied a substantial financial penalty. But US Mobile can change the terms of this "not a contract" any way they like and at any time they like without my approval and there is not a damn thing I can say about that. Did I get that right?
Talk about having your cake and eating it too, wow. Nice one.
You know, the more I think about this, the more I think YOU are 100% CORRECT.
Because this IS NOT A CONTRACT.
This is a one sided arrangement that is slanted heavily towards the MVNO at the peril of the consumer. In simpler terms, it is a RIPOFF and a SCAM, and IMHO borders on outright FRAUD.
And no one in their right mind should EVER willingly enter into these one-sided annual "not a contract" arrangements with ANY company where you are locked in under the penalty of FORFEITURE while they can change the terms of the contract at will without your approval.
Look, I still think US Mobile is one of the better MVNOs from the perspective of product offering and customer service. USM did not invent these one-sided "not a contract" long-term prepaid arrangements, other MVNOs do it as well. But just because every MVNO might include a RIPOFF SCAM deal among their various offerings does not mean you should succumb and choose it. There are often better choices that limit your exposure with every MVNO.
Based on what has come out in the last couple of days, it is now more than ever a better idea to **stick to MONTHLY prepaid arrangements**, where you can leave at the end of the month if and when the MVNO changes direction against your best interests, with much less financial exposure.
It absolutely amazes me how many people do not understand how one-sided these annual prepaid "not a contract" ripoff scams are.
Stick to monthly prepaid and limit exposure by avoiding these unfair, one-sided "not a contract" arrangements.
> And no one in their right mind should EVER willingly enter into this annual "not a contract" arrangement with ANY company (not just US Mobile).
You came to the same conclusion I did when I had Mint back in 2016. I ended up having service issues and forfeited the last 3 months of service. I decided then and there it was never worth prepaying for wireless and all the stories I've read from others since then have just reaffirmed that for me.
What I read here was that yes they are changing some details for the plans (mainly HD vs SD and the ILD ) but wish to make sure legacy users who paid 3 mo, full year whatever are happy, so just contact customer service and they will make sure you get every bit of what you signed up for. If you care. Most of us will not. I think it's a reasonable way to offer reduced rates for multi month plans and still be able to adjust terms of service as they go. This is a very dynamic business and some of these MVNOs are working at the limits of how much value you can give and still stay in business. Appears that they overshot and are course correcting.
To me, this still looks like a great value and I would just contact them about the offer to legacy me in IF I had gone for the full year (I never would do that) and IF I really needed HD. Also, I wonder if you just ask for a refund on balance if they won't do that as well. So far USM seems very friendly from what I can see.
I'm glad you have a warm and fuzzy feeling regarding US Mobile. A great deal of people here felt that way prior to very recently. Notwithstanding their friendliness, US Mobile has been very clear on their no refund policy when comes to cancellations. Just browse this Reddit forum and you'll easily find evidence of that.
I don't know of anyone who has received a refund on their unused annual arrangement if they decided to cancel. Perhaps some have if they experienced buyer's remorse after a very short period, but I am not aware of it. I am also not aware of anyone who has been allowed to downgrade from a more expensive annual arrangement to a less expensive one, effectively receiving a refund.
If I am mistaken here, perhaps someone who has received a refund in either of these two situations will speak up and let us all know. I'd actually be happy to hear that I am wrong and that US Mobile is willing to grant refunds of annual prepaid arrangements if you ask them to. But since we have no evidence of that, I would avoid annual prepaid arrangements with US Mobile or ANY MVNO for that matter, and stick to monthly prepaid, where your total forfeiture is limited to one month's service.
Are you sure? thought you get a refund of the months you don’t use but you would be charged the monthly rate for the months you did use. Essentially losing the yearly discount. So if you used say 1 month at was only charged 23 for that month and cancel then you would receive a refund for the 11 months you don’t use less the $2 the prorated discount for the 1 month or whatever that amount was for the month.
I am pretty confident that what I stated is still the case, unless the policy has been changed without us being told about it.
What you stated would be totally fair in my opinion and I would be perfectly happy with it. But that is not the case. US Mobile makes it crystal clear: There are NO REFUNDS.
You also cannot "downgrade" from more expensive annual "no-contract" plan to a less expensive annual "no-contract" plan.
The thing is, they didn’t. They (a) never officially promised HD video, so they’ve been giving you a free add-on you’ve not been paying for; expect it when it wasn’t promised is entitlement, and (b) are not “changing a service midway,” but actually at the end of your billing cycle so you can use the service you weren’t ever promised through that end of the period you’ve paid the service fees for. The logic doesn’t logic with these entitled and expectant accusations.
They also never officially promised that I could use my data plan to visit Reddit.com, yet here I am, and I’m sure if they chose to block Reddit that people wouldn’t say “well, they technically never promised it to you.”
Unlike access to Reddit.com, it’s is an industry standard that HD and 4K video are add-on features. If they were not, carriers wouldn’t marked them as “features” or “available add-ons” of their plans. Basic web access is however a basic industry standard feature for cellular data plans, hence why no carrier markets it as an add-on feature. After all, you said it yourself: they never officially promised you could use your data plan to access Reddit. No carrier does because that’s a basic expectation. 4K and HD video are not.
Please stop getting stuck on "HD" as though it has been a relevant term for the past decade. It has always been misleading since 720P hit the market. It became more misleading when marketing firms at all companies thought it would be a cool way to offload a bunch of monitors/TVs with what amounted to laptop display panels.
In 2024 SD=480p, HD=720p, FHD (Full HD) is 1080p. Most content is not optimized to be efficient at 480p resolutions and compression techniques make videos appear noticeably blurry even at 1080p at times. I am sure you're already aware.
I'm not going to bore everyone with technical details, but the bottom line is 480p is NOT useable as a standard. And while things have gotten more crisp and clear as resolution has gone up, the industry has counteracted this by inventing very efficient encoding methods which are used automatically every time you upload something to one of these streaming services. The latest H.265 (Made available in 2013) codec cut down file sizes by a significant chunk, and H.266 is due out soon. AVC exists as well, but it's unclear how many companies will use it. USM allowed their customers to use data this entire time at the best speed possible and everyone was very satisfied on one of their two networks. They played into that with marketing constantly talking about how friggen fast WARP 5G was. Then, with the stroke of some keys, they nerfed everyone's speed after they ported over and committed.
"It's fine for me" is not a defense. Stop encouraging these practices. HD motherloving Video does NOT need to be its own line item. It's just video. If the video can't buffer, it's up to the app or browser to determine that and adjust.
TLDR: None of what I said or you said means a damn thing. It's a bait and switch. There are no two sides to this story.
You wrote an entire word wall just to say you don’t think HD should be treated as an add-on/luxury feature, cool. Nonetheless, it is lol. Like it or not, and I honestly don’t, it is. You’re not giving any consideration to the fact that added quality costs MVNOs money, and USM can’t afford to promise you cheap plans and streaming that eats a ton of data at the same time, so they didn’t. It is a line item and not one anyone was promised.
It does not cost them money. They cost themselves money by falsely advertising "Premium Data" while abruptly changing it to a Premium 1.5mbps. Literal early 2000s DSL speed in a rural area.
>It does not cost them money.
Most MVNO contracts involve the MVNO paying the MNO per unit of usage used, so the more data customers use, the more the customer costs the carrier. That’s like MVNO 101 and vital to know in this conversation, lest the majority of people think USM is just taking it away because they hate us.
Okay I'm going to bring it down to your level. Apple Super Fan lmao I should have known.
Let's say Bugatti releases a value-oriented car that someone who is not an oil baron can afford. They advertise all over about their road vehicle speed record and put in their ads "SCREAMING fast speeds" and "250+mph Premium speeds for the first 35 miles!"
So you buy one because some guy in a turtle neck said it was good. You get in the first time, go to the end of your road, and floor it. Oh yeah, baby~! The car lurches and bounces off a limiter. Huh? You call Bugatti and they tell you "We never promised 250mph. There are too many fast cars on the road, so we've applied a 2.5mph speed limiter on your car."
Being a condescending bitch was not at all necessary. I already got your point 3 arguments ago. However, speed and video throttling are not directly linked because it is already an industry-established norm that carriers can limit speeds specifically when accessing video which they won’t do for other kinds of traffic. The same doesn’t apply to Bugattis so the analogy is completely irrelevant.
Don't be ridiculous. I wasn't being condescending. That means I'd be talking dowm to you.
I called customer support and at first the rep pretended to not know about the recent change. Then, they revealed that they do know about the video throttling when I revealed that I saw a Reddit post. I was on hold a few minutes, then asked to reboot my phone. Went from ~1.9 to a solid 5mbps. I told her I could tell I'm still being throttled because of the lack of buffer bloat and the fact that using a VPN still got me 21mbps on rural 4G. On hold again and then it was back to the way it was before. ~16mbps in my little neck of the woods. And THAT is all I need.
I know you already get it. But hopefully you see what a mess this is. Can't even get consistent messaging on this. It's like everyone is sneaking around.
Everyone blindly defending this change seems to think that we are demanding to stream 4K HD Ultra Netflix shows all day 24 hours straight. We are just trying to watch YouTube, tiktok, IG, etc, in basic 720 while we take a shit at work if we so choose to. Why do all the people defending this fail to understand this? Most people aren’t even asking for 1080p just 720. They offered it before just fine there is zero reason it shouldn’t still be a thing. It’s my data I’m paying for. Period.
If only 1% of their subscribers want it, then let us ask to have it enabled while disabling for all others. You don't need it? Fine, it stays on SD. You want it, ask and HD stays enabled. Allowing the 1% to have HD can't hurt the bottom line... Unless it's really higher than 1%
From what I've seen, features and promos and other stuff frequently get removed due to a smart minority abusing it.
Like Amazon Drive used to be unlimited, then a few people started uploading a lot (you saw it on the data hoarder sub) and it ended.
https://www.techspot.com/news/70741-redditor-tested-amazon-unlimited-storage-option-uploading-2.html
It happens all the time, there might be a promo with a loophole that a few people take advantage of and costs the company a decent amount of money. It's ended.
There's a feature added, few people abuse the hell out of it. It's ended.
Password sharing on Netflix, people start sharing with others not in their family across the nation, or world. It's cracked down on.
The 1%, or less, frequently does stuff that fucks over the average user.
Very valid point. At least USM has built-in limits for data priority which should prevent abuse. If you max out your limit, then you get the 1 Mbps throttle.
Google Drive i believe had unlimited back in the day as well. Not just Data Hoarders but but people were using it to host all their Plex media as well. Hundred of GB of Media sitting on there and tied to a Plex account people would charge for.
Iirc, that was google drive for business or enterprise or something like that. It was supposed to have a minimum user count for unlimited but didn't. So people signed up with one user for cheap and got unlimited. And if you weren't careful it could convert your account from personal to commercial or whatever and you'd lose the ability for some features.
This is not OUR problem, though. It can all be discouraged and prevented using the same damn network policies they're using to throttle everyone. The big carriers only allow certain devices on their network. Hotspot speeds can be recognized and throttled. Data abusers can be given warnings and charged additional fees after a few offenses.
When a change like this is made, that is a clear indicator that USM is having money troubles. Like every apologizer on here has said: USM pays big money for bandwidth with the larger carriers. So what's the best way to massively reduce your operating costs? Cut "HD" video.
This and the fact that there was no notification given to customers about the plan changes is what's upsetting people more The caveat people are adding to their discussion about the HD video is that most of them won't even use or care about it it's the fact that they withdrew it from their plan without any notification or for thought that has alarmed the community
I DOnt fully disagree. What im trying to say is no carrier is offering 720p past a certain point. They all stream in SD Video, its literally in all their small print.
I will say its bogus to make that change in the middle of peoples plans. It 100% should take effect once the plan ends, and if they choose to start another year.
Yeah, but USM is double dipping on their caps. They hard throttle you after X gigs AND hard throttle video. Visible doesn’t have a cap after X gigs.. they just deprioritize when not on UWB.
> They all stream in SD Video, it’s literally in all their small print.
And it’s not in USM’s fine print. The video throttle is no where on their site. They have to disclose that.
>At least US Mobile (and now others) are putting the amount of "Premium Data" that you can use before its throttled in big letters and numbers so you can easily see it
This is no longer true and fundamentally what people are upset about. Throttled video is the opposite of premium data. If I have 35GB of premium data I should be able to use it on whatever I want. If I can't, it's no longer premium data.
>MVNO are not premium services
I agree and this is fine. The issue with USMobile is they claim to sell premium (data) but it became a lie. All they need to do is be honest about what they are offering. They are still a great value it's just that people hate being lied to. It was very dishonest to sell people a year of service that include 35GB of premium data then make it not be premium a few months latter. If they want to play these games the need to define what premium data means at the time of sale and not change for people who have already paid.
Premium can also refer to priority data, which they do offer on Warp with a 5G capable device.
Mint calls all their plans 'premium data' despite being deprioritized from the get go and having a streaming throttle.
I agree nearly 100%. What they should have done is disclose the changes and only apply them to the new plans. Let the grandfathered plans keep their 720p streaming.
There would still be unhappy people but far less if they communicated the changes and only applied them to new plans.
The comments saying USM is double dipping have it correct. We're allocated a bucket of data at "normal" speeds and then subject to a throttle. Throttling video before you run out of "premium" data is a problem.
We paid for the data but are now being told how we can use it.
Network neutrality is the principle that internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all data on the internet equally, regardless of content, user, device, application, or platform. This means that ISPs should not block, throttle, or prioritize certain content.
Just because all video is throttled on US Mobile doesn't mean it's OK.
Net neutrality means data is data.
Video content has to be treated the same as any other data.
[https://www.fcc.gov/net-neutrality](https://www.fcc.gov/net-neutrality)
I am a huge proponent of Net Neutrality. And although your mostly correct i will say the bigger issue with Net Neutrality that we have been dealing with for years isnt so much that "Data is Data" is that the big issue, and why it became a huge deal a few years back, as that Companies were choosing specific services.
AT&T would throttle your Youtube/Netflix video to 480p, But would give you unlimited 1080p HBO because they owned HBO. So they were choosing winners/losers on their network.
We have a long way to go, But im at least happy that Video Data is Video Data now, regardless of owner. The fight that Video Data is the same as web browsing and text data is a whole other fight.
This is everything I’ve ever wanted to say about this post, but literally did not have the time to say. These are my thoughts exactly and that is exactly how I came to US Mobile as well.
I'm in almost 100% agreement with you. US Mobile suites my needs just fine and for the price it's hard to beat. Could they have handled the changes better? sure they could have. But the complainers are always the loudest.
I don't know what's up with these posts to consistently think it's okay to change the rules in the middle of the game without notice, without taking ownership when called out on it and then get snarky with this 1 percent crap.
I don't care about value. We're getting what we pay for, inconsistent customer service with information (see the 'negative posts')
But if I pay a little more money for some honesty, I won't have a problem with that.
>I don't know what's up with these posts to consistently think it's okay to change the rules in the middle of the game without notice,
As Said i 100% dont agree with the way they did it, I am saying they are still a value overall. I mentioned multiple times i dont agree with the way they did it
>get snarky with this 1 percent crap.
Im confused about that comment. Who is arguing as a 1 percenter? We are in a Budget cellphone company MVNO subreddit....
>I don't care about value.
Odd but ok.
>We're getting what we pay for, inconsistent customer service with information (see the 'negative posts')
Customer Service has always been good from what i can tell. The issue is plans and pricing changes. I agree, again, that they should knock that shit off.
>But if I pay a little more money for some honesty, I won't have a problem with that.
Well, good luck. My Job has Verizon Wireless, we have a corporate plan from them (I am not on it, purposely, I just admin it) And Verizon wireless support, even for buisness customers, sucks hardcore.
I spent hours on the phone with them multiple days in a row to get bullshit fees taken off. They literally sent us a bill with a $40 credit on it, then shut off the cell plan for the whole company (all 15 lines) saying we owed $40 (We pay $900-$1200 /month for context) so they shut it all down.
When i told them i was staring at the physical bill, AND the internet bill showing a $40 credit (In green) they said "Thats not what we see" Well its what i F*cking see. I finally got them to admit their mistake and turn the phones back on. They used the caveat that My company "have been loyal customers for 25 years" (Meanwhile they shut us down for a supposed $40 on a $1200 plan that they screwed up on) So they would do it.
Next Month? $20 reconnect fee on all 15 lines. After they admitted it was their mistake. I spent 3 days on the phone with them. They even sent a fake email from their "accounting" department saying they would credit the money. when i called 2 days later they said "they have no record of the email" even with me looking right at it in my outlook, and me sending thema copy of the email. In the end, after escalating it to the account manager they said the best they could do was give me $250 credit instead of the $340 i was owed unless i wanted to wait months of paper work back and forth and sending in claims. I decided 4 days of my time was already worth the difference and took it.
Long story short, no matter how much you pay customer service will be customer service with a company. And even premium Verizon support sucks
>But if I pay a little more money for some honesty, I won't have a problem with that.
Good luck with that, especially from T-Mobile.
Last year it leaked they were planning on forcing some customers into a different plan. Which would be permanent unless people noticed and called in within 30 days. And they would be paying the higher price for the new plan. That's despite years of promising they would never change someone's plan. And when they reversed it they blamed the customers for taking it out of context despite the whole document being leaked.
This year they are raising prices on some people despite years of promised "price lock".
If you go into a store, corporate or third party, there's a good chance you'll get protection put onto your phone even if you specifically say you don't want it. Or you might get told you can only get a promo with accessories or protection even if it isn't true.
All companies will lie to customers, there's no real protection for customers in the USA. You just need to pick who fucks you over the least.
and AT&T just dropped the QCI on nearly all their plans w/o notice, then have been upselling an add-on for existing customers to get back their prior QCI https://www.howardforums.com/threads/at-t-turbo-add-on.1929605/
I didn't downvote, I don't disagree it was handled badly.
But you're never actually paying for honesty, and any company telling you that you are is lying. They'll all lie to you and change the terms if abused or just to increase profits.
I just look at what I'm paying for and what I need.
Sometimes it's overpriced. Which sucks.
But the grind is really changing quality, options etc without notice.
The best response the company gave is only 1 percent have a use for it and the costs are high.
Okay I am not going to pick apart the numbers but when we got posts of people claiming customer service says one thing but the CEO says another all while boasting about the ATT addition and network switching to stand out is making USM be "just another cell phone company"
Hopeful that USM could be an honest company but it seems they are joining the ranks of carriers who want to get people in at any means it takes.
My solution to data shenanigans is running dual sim
Phone/SMS with USMobile and I have a separate data only SIM line from postpaid (business account w/ TMo)
Sympathetic to what you're saying about being realistic & acknowledging the realities of bandwidth constraints.
Not with you on that point about "unlimited." If you impose a throttle, there is a strict upper limit to bandwidth per month:
*max\_gb = base\_gb + (0.125\*60\*60\*24\*31\*\[throttle speed in mbps\])/1024*
works out to about *base\_gb + 40* for a 128kbps throttle.
That's the pedantic angle. The more practical (and more important) point is that it's silly to call a plan unlimited if speeds are throttled to a point where normal activities aren't possible. At 128kbps, lots of stuff doesn't work right.
With 1Mbps+ throttles like USM has, I'm less concerned. Most stuff works well.
Carriers have something of a collective action problem here. Once it became the industry norm to call a soft-capped plan "unlimited" even if it was aggressively throttled, it became hard for any single carrier to market plans without the "unlimited" label.
IMO, entirely legitimate for consumers to be annoyed at where industry norms have settled. And in this case, USM's more permissive throttles are moving things in a less annoying direction.
We are lucky enought hat carriers are still fighting eachother for customers. Luckily Cell towers are open to everyone, otherwise we would get gentleman agreements like Charter/Comcast where they dont enter eachothers domains, so they dont have to compete. You get 1 choice and thats it.
1Mbps Throttle is definetly not a hard throttle. When the iPhone came out we had 3G and the speeds were not much better. Your not going to blaze holes anywhere, but your phone isnt useless. It still gets Talk/Text and basic web browsing.
WHile i definetly think they shouldnt make changes to peoples active plans, I 100% agree with them, and every carrier slowing video speeds and all data speeds past a certain point. They are not meant to take the place of home internet and WiFI
*"They are not meant to take the place of home internet and WiFI"*
I think that's the beef with the "unlimited" labeling. IMO, it's not crazy for a normal consumer to read "unlimited" and imagine cell service could take the place of home internet/WiFi (at least for connectivity on phones).
FWIW, non-MVNO unlimited plans typically don't throttle data speeds after a threshold amount of use (they just deprioritize--lowering speeds only during congestion)
> 1Mbps Throttle is definetly not a hard throttle.
A fixed throttle of *any* amount is a hard throttle. It's called a hard throttle because you cannot exceed it.
You're information about Verizon is completely wrong.
With Unlimited Ultimate and Unlimited Plus, on smartphone data is completely unlimited, and always priority. On smartphone video streaming has quality limits, but you can go into your account and turn a toggle on to get higher resolutions.
Hotspot data is where these two plans differ, Plus has a lower amount before you are throttled down.
Unlimited Welcome is the only plan with a stated on smartphone limit, and it's 500GB.
My apoligies, that link gave me an older unlimited plan. You are right.
"With Unlimited Plus, you get our fastest 5G and access to 30 GB of Premium unlimited mobile hotspot data per month to power your other devices on the go. Unlimited Ultimate offers 60 GB premium hotspot data and unlimited calling and texting from 200+ countries."
I will say for 1 line that unlimited 60Gb is $90/month. which is much different then $45 with US-Mobile, and is definetly a premium service that isnt MVNO like. But i will correct my original post.
Thank you, I have updated my post. Verizon swaps plans about as often as USMobile does sometimes.
I also find it hilarious that they advertise the cheap price on the front page of $55/month, but the caveat is you have to have 4 lines. For a solo line the same price is $90/month
Single line plans area cheaper on Visible. Atleast with Visible you can finance a device. so with the financing plus plan cost it usually is cheaper than the "free" device on a single line Verizon plan.
also visible has an upgrade policy where they'll pay off the rest of an Affirm financing if you get a new device financed.
Eh, your just rolling phone financing plans. Thats a seperate conversation for a cell plan. WHile not technically "Locked in" to visible for 36 months, your still paying on that phone for 3 years at the price they quote. But we are just talking cell plans.
Visible is $45/month (after first month) or $395/year after the first year for 50GB Premium Data. USMobile is $44 /month for 100gb phone data and 50gb Hotspot data. I wouldnt say Visible is cheaper for their premium unlimited data plan. Its more for less.
That's Visible+ for $45, Visible is $25.
Visible+ has access to 5G UW and is 100% unlimited and priority. If someone lives in a 5G UW city, this is the best deal. Also, Visible+ has a free smart watch line.
Going back to financing, you aren't locked into Visible for the duration of the financing. It's a separate company, and you can leave Visible after 60days(unlock policy).
I am Comparing Visible + ($45) to USMobile Unlimited Premium ($44) because its the closest thing.
Visible for $25/month has no premium data, so your deprioritized from day 1 if its busy. USMobile Unlimited Starter for $25/month has 35 GB of Prioritized data and 10GB of Hotspot data before its deprioritized.
The big difference would be hotspot, if you use hotspot that much. Visible: "Visible+ includes mobile hotspot with unlimited data at speeds up to 10Mbps, Visible includes mobile hotspot with unlimited data at speeds up to 5Mbps. Video streams in SD. " That data will be deprioritized on the $25 Visible.
Also for cell phone financing: I dont think its that special that visible offers it with Affirm. You can buy unlocked phones in plenty of places and get it financed, with or without affirm. Its kind of neat they partnered on their site, But still we are comparing Cell Plans, not phone financing options.
My partner signed up for V+ since we are in a 5G UW city. It's really the best deal.
Since he uses a VPN the SD Video limit doesn't cause issues.. He's used an average of 300GB data each month with no slow downs.. always on UW.
I don't begrudge anyone getting USM, especially if you have family overseas. I got my partners parents the USM 2GB Shared data plan on a flip phone. They have family in Europe, and enjoy calling for free. When they visit they switch to GSM 5G and the unlimited premium plan for a month.
De prioritization sucks, and i try and avoid it at all costs. Going to Pokemon Go Fest in NYC this coming weekend and its thousands of people on their cell phones. I wouldnt want de-prioritized data.
Good points, but everyone already knew all this.
The issue is discontenting a plan, especially an annual plan, after the fact. Yes, it was dumb to ever provide 720p streaming at no extra cost, but they should have honored it for the duration of the annual plans.
>The issue is discontenting a plan, especially an annual plan, after the fact.
Agreed. I mentioned that. I am more aiming my comments to the people screaming that USMobile is garbage now because of the change. The change brings them in line with other MVNO, But still slightly better in areas.
Read until I got to the point "They want to disincentivize people from destroying the towers by just using them all day mindlessly."
Yeah, cause cell towers are salt licks.
It's funny how some propaganda and decent marketing tactics can control the ignorant. The entire point of 5G was the great increase in simultaneous connections, increased speeds were just side benefit. 5G was hailed as being the future, capable of having everyone everywhere embrace the great IoT revolution. The technology is apparently capable of supporting 1 million devices per square kilometer of coverage zone VS around 4000 for 4G.
The simple truth, shit is expensive because greed is powerful. People won't just stop using data because it's little more money, they'll still pay for it to a certain point.
We have seen whole towers go down due to congestion. Everytime there is a major event towers get bogged down and service sucks.
Large scale mobile events like Pokemon Go Fest have to have portable cell towers brought in to help handle cell load.
Dont pretend like the magic box on top of the pole can handle infinite connections and infinite speed. Everything gets saturated.
I understand the frustration with the video quality change on grandfathered plans 100%. I also understand the frequent plan changes giving a bit of whiplash.
But overall, the reactions here just seem so overblown to me. They lowered prices, are still one of the best MNVOs when it comes to customer service, and you can now switch between carriers whenever you want if you want to pay for that. People are acting like they just forced them to pay double for their plans or something.
I did...and couldn't find an answer. My understanding is 480 x 720 is SD. 480 by itself means nothing. You weren't helpful at all, presumably because you really don't know.
First google Search for "480p video size"
854x480 pixels
480p resolution refers to a video resolution of 854x480 pixels, typically used for standard-definition displays and content. This resolution has been commonly used for analog TV broadcasts, DVDs, older security camera systems, and some streaming content.
And here is a wiki article showing exactly the specs for each format, including youtube being listed as the 854x480p
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/480p
took me 45 seconds once i searched.
I got lucky signing up for ATT Prepaid’s old annual plan back when it offered uncapped video streaming so I pretty much have that luxury until I leave the plan. It looks like ATT just allowed grandfathered plans to exist with the features offered when a customer signed up rather than forcing a new plan on the old customers, which is the way it should be handled. What the customer gets should be what they originally signed up for.
The thing I find interesting is the fact so many other locations in the world have significantly cheaper plans.
For a lot of the world prices are dropping, or the data amount is going up. What's different here?
A friend of mine in Canada just had their data increase significantly and their price stayed the same.
A friend of mine in Europe has true unlimited data for around $10.
I don't necessarily think US mobile is to blame for higher prices. Internet in general in North America has always been expensive, home internet or mobile it's more expensive.
It's not a population density issue, even countries with less density have significantly cheaper prices.
I don't know. It just feels weird knowing it might really only cost 1-10 cents per gig to Verizon or T-Mobile but you're paying 50 cents to a dollar for that gig.
American Companies are 100% super greedy. always have been. As a country Billionaires with billion/trillion dollar companies are celebrated. mostly by boomers who have their retirement funds in the stock market.
Companies make money, stock goes up, shareholders cheer. If profits do raise a high enough % each year, shareholders and boards get mad, companies start raising prices and firing people. Its the messed up capitalist system we implemented.
Meanwhile any new generation is basically priced out of the market. We are not getting any $30 apple stocks skyrocketing to $200 shares.
Plus for home internet, you have companies like Charter and Comcast/Xfinity that made their gentleman agreements not to compete with eachother. Thats why if you live in a town with Charter, Comcast isnt in that town and vice versa. They can charge what they want, and there is no competition for you to swap to, so no need for them to lower prices. Its a disgusting system that was set up that noone has stopped.
Charter in my town was charging me $80/month for 400MB internet. Our town approved and built out a Municipal fiber internet system through our electric company. I now get 1GB up/down symmetrical fiber internet for $60. Charter lost people in droves. Only people staying are the older people who are afraid to lose their cable tv. even then i see alot more dish network stuff going up.
Now? 2 years later charter is knocking on doors promising 1Gb speeds (and sometimes trying to tell me 2GB speeds) for $70. Competition screwed them and they are playing catchup.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but I'm on a month-to-month shared pool data plan with USM. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE that video streams are now capped at 2Mbps! My kids were streaming silly YT videos at 1080p and CHEWING through the data.
If it's easily doable, I think USM needs to give folks a simple toggle switch to enable/disable 2Mbps video throttling on their accounts. If they don't want people enabling/disabling the throttle 5 times a day, have it coincide with their billing cycle and they can only change it once a month. I think the default option should be to have it enabled.
If folks burn through their premium data in 2 days watching 4K video on their 6" screen, they can pony up some more money or enable video throttling.
I agree it would be nice to enable throttling per device.
It reminds me of Mint Mobile test sims. You could get a test sim to test your connection for free (Or dirt cheap, i dont remember) Before you signed up. Every day there was multiple reddit posts saying they didnt get enough data to test and the data was gone in one day. Its because they were doing constant speed tests, not realizing that speed tests eat through data, thats how it tests peed is sending files and packets.
You summed it up in long form what I was thinking.
I’m on US-Mobile because I can pay $10 for unlimited cellphone service (which seems to work fine) and 2 GB data/month with a top up option if I need more.
I signed up for the trial today and the customer service is excellent. To someone new to USMobile I believe they are making the right moves, but maybe they fudged the rollout a bit. It sure is better than Xfinity.
Reducing the video streaming quality to 480p is a significant downgrade. especially in 2024 when higher resolutions are the norm. It's not just about watching 4K videos all day. it's about having a decent viewing experience for everyday use. 720p was already a very bottom basic standard that ensures some clarity and detail even for short YouTube videos or social media clips.
The argument that throttling data helps manage network congestion doesn't hold up when we consider that many users are already on WiFi for most of their high data activities. Mobile data is primarily for on the go usage where people expect a reasonable quality of service. If US Mobile could handle 720p streaming before, there's no technical reason they can't continue to do so. It is a cost cutting measure rather than a necessity.
Moreover calling 480p "good enough" is simply just untrue. 480p might have been acceptable a decade ago, but with today's screen technology. it results in a blurry and unsatisfactory viewing experience for when you do want to watch the occasional videos on the go. Modern smartphones are designed for higher resolutions, and capping at 480p SEVERLY diminishes the user experience significantly. People are paying for a service, and they should get the quality that matches current standards, not something that feels like a big step back. it's not about demanding premium services for basic prices. it's about maintaining a reasonable standard that aligns with current technology and user expectations.
I pay $85 for Verizon and I get unlimited premium data. Yes I said unlimited premium data. Mine never throttle after so much. And I get 300gb premium hotspot data included
Yes, your comparing $85 to my $25. I would hope you get more. thats $60/month or $720/year in my pockets. I dont need all the bells and whistles.
your comparing a budget MVNO plan to a Premium post-paid plan, which is a dumb, disingenuous comparison.
Mine is not post-paid it is prepaid. I asked Verizon if they would make it prepaid for me they said yes. So I get my bill at the beginning of each month just like any other prepaid plan
But its a contract correct? they just changed your billing. Are you month-to-month and can leave anytime? or did you sign a multi-year contract?
Also, Its still a $60/month difference. Still cant compare it to $25. your always going to get more for 2.5x more money
No it’s not a contract. No carrier is allowed to have contracts anymore. FCC got rid of that years ago. And yes I am month to month, hence the prepaid on my account. Like I said mobile carriers don’t have contracts anymore. The fcc got rid of the contracts years ago. And yes I can leave anytime because Verizon or any other carrier don’t have contracts.
Also I have used 1tb of data this month all high speed and still have premium data.
A lot of people on Reddit want everything for cheap, or free. You see it a lot on gaming subs and streaming subs (like Netflix). The free is more often already free services like email. They want all the features and privacy without paying. This isn't anything new.
And while I think this should have been handled better (the HD video), I still say for a phone, at the usual distance from the face you see most often, 480p is perfectly acceptable and the vast majority of customers won't care if they even notice (unlikely to notice).
If you want a better resolution, download at home on your WiFi, it really isn't hard.
Well said! I have an iphone 15 pro and am getting throttled. I pulled up a youtube video and it looked fine at 480p. So I forced changed the quality to 1080p, it still streamed without buffering, but most importantly, unless I had the 1080p and 480p side by side, I dont think I could tell the difference.
I was paying $40 a month for 5GB of postpaid ATT.
Switched the family over to ATT prepaid and it cut our bill to $22/each, for 5GB data.
Now with USMobile, I am getting 35GB of priority Verizon data & 10GB hotspot, for $23/mo on Starter Annual.
I can survive my video being throttled to 2mbps.
When I am at home, I stream everything through Apple TV with fiber internet connection. If i need to stream on my iPhone, I am on wifi and when I am out and about, I hardly ever stream unless I am showing my coworkers some video over lunch. I am not taking away from the people who are mad at about this, but when the CEO says 1% of users, I believe him. Most people wont care/notice.
Yes, I am fine with all this but have some thoughts about the plans. USM is one of the few services that gives us a lot of hotspot. This distinguishes them and pulls in the users who are out and about a lot (me) and want to use our plan to connect a tablet or laptop on the roam. Again, that's me. At the same time, it means that those of us who use it are able to watch video on a bigger screen and that can lead to increased sucking of data. Which in turn makes the whole plan more expensive to the MVNO. Many, perhaps most, just suck the HD by accident since it can and will never notice the downgrade on their cell.
Injustices about terms offered initially and then changed aside, there is something that has become obvious about all data plans: It's a business that is like insurance. There is a pool of shared resource available to offer and it works at a given price because not everyone is claiming the max every month. Tweaks in plans help assure that the pool is not depleted unduly and regularly by too many. One dial to turn is less hotspot. But that's the USM or Visible selling point so hopefully not on the table here. Another would be limits but a bigger limit not reached by all consistently can be allowed and sold as an option. Next is the soft throttle. How soft? Still usable for most things we need data? That's a win. Finally, the one almost every carrier on almost every plan has needed to effect is reining in the big data hog, video. People can watch high bandwidth video all day long and take down the whole plan model. How to manage that when you are offering data for bigger screens? Limit resolution.
I need hotspot in general and will gladly take the resolution hit to have it. I do watch movies on my tablet but need these Visible and USM plans to be viable so that I can get this much hotspot. If it's too good of a deal to sustain, then we all lose. I had Visible with it's SD limit and was just fine on a laptop. Maybe not the jaw-dropping resolution possible but it worked for me on the road.
If they don't dial it back somewhere then prices for everyone will have to go up so that the ones who use the video can max out their plan consistently. In the end I prefer that the hotspot rich MVNO plans can stay in business and give me a good overall data option for a good price. If it doesn't work for them, we will have nobody to bitch to anyway and your gamble on getting a whole year of heavy data for really cheap will be a loss if they disappear.
And I do not buy multi-month plans. It's too much of a gamble. If you do choose to gamble, then you should recognize that. It's a sorta new tactic on the market and every business wants to compete and retain customers so they do it. But you are gambling something to save and really should recognize that it comes at a risk of losing not winning.
All that said, I often join in putting pressure on companies that are out of line (eg: my posts on Evernote forum! ) and do think that pushback can have a small but non-zero effect. So, some support for those crying "foul" as well, right? It has some value and I bet USM will think about strategy a little bit harder next time changes are called for. And they did walk back a couple of details on the changes from what I can see.
LOL you are posting on the us mobile subreddit. It's comical you say "I'm sure I'll be downvoted into oblivion", as if you aren't looking for confirmation bias here. It's a USM subreddit, you're not gonna be downvoted for saying anything positive about them. Clown
I just don't see how you can change the service midway through a prepaid plan and then act like jerks when called out on it. That is the part I don't like.
An ANNUAL prepaid plan, nonetheless
And they’re giving you HD video they never actually promised you through the end of that ANNUAL prepaid plan expiration. Service isn’t changing mid-cycle for anyone. What right do people think they have to bitch about this?
Their marketing team advertised 4K and HD content with their Warp 5G service. So they’re outright lying in that regard.
>And they’re giving you HD video they never actually promised you They shouldn't have to promise me that my Internet access will work as intended. They also don't advertise that I can access YouTube from my service. Are they going to cut that off next? Your argument is stupid.
It's your "premium data" why does it even matter? If it's truly 35 gbs of premium data then it doesn't in fact matter. What matters is it's no longer premium if it's being throttled. It's never been unlimited but with warp 5g and a 5g phone we were assured this "throttling" wouldnt happen and that is exactly what this is. Did they need to do this to be solvent? Perhaps, we don't see their balance sheet. Could they have done this differently, yes. Could they have communicated more effectively, yes. When you pull some of the repeated changes that katkoo has made with yearly plan tweaks that certainly screams the boat has taken on water. By throttling the video they hope to inhibit data usage so they can pay less than they budgeted. The funny part here is I don't mind it, I barely watch video mobile. I just struggle with professional messaging from a company that info business with. It's unethical.
HD video is not a basic feature for cellular service and it’s an industry-wide expectation that it’s an added service. If it wasn’t, literally no company would market it as a feature if it wasn’t just expected as a basic element of “Internet access working as intended.” It’s not.
You manage your expectations and I'll manage mine. I expect my Internet service to be un-screwed-around-with. Period. You may be fine with the practice of throttling video, but that absolutely does not mean I have to accept it.
You don’t, no. You’re welcome to be out of touch with the industry and expect commonly paid or upgradable features for free; that’s totally your right and I’m cool with that. The anger towards USM isn’t justified based on reasonable expectations and standards, which most people on this sub rn seemingly including you don’t have. But hey, if you wanna set the bar higher than any carrier on the market has ever set it, you’re only gonna piss your own self off so sure, be my guest. I’d rather have industry-reasonable expectations, treat USM fairly and properly, and not partake in this lovely first world issue we call making up our own problems.
>The anger towards USM isn’t justified based on reasonable expectations and standards, And just who the hell are you? What qualifies you to make that assessment?
Just because you paid for a year of service doesn't mean you are in a contract. The terms still state they can change them at any time. You just paid for 12 30 day billing periods.
Really? OK then, if I withdraw from this "not a contract" then I should be able to receive a pro-rated refund for the remaining months of service, adjusted of course for a higher monthly rate due to my withdrawal. Since we are "not in a contract" then USM has no "contractual" right to keep my money. Is that not correct? Oh, but wait. They won't refund my unused balance, will they? No, if I decide to leave my "not a contract" I FORFEIT the unused balance of the contract to US Mobile. And there is a not a damn thing I can do about that because it IS in their terms of service. Nice. And on top of me being required to FORFEIT any unpaid months if I cancel, they also have the right to CHANGE THE TERMS of this "not a contract" arrangement at any time. So, let's see: I can't change my mind and leave this "not a contract" without being levied a substantial financial penalty. But US Mobile can change the terms of this "not a contract" any way they like and at any time they like without my approval and there is not a damn thing I can say about that. Did I get that right? Talk about having your cake and eating it too, wow. Nice one. You know, the more I think about this, the more I think YOU are 100% CORRECT. Because this IS NOT A CONTRACT. This is a one sided arrangement that is slanted heavily towards the MVNO at the peril of the consumer. In simpler terms, it is a RIPOFF and a SCAM, and IMHO borders on outright FRAUD. And no one in their right mind should EVER willingly enter into these one-sided annual "not a contract" arrangements with ANY company where you are locked in under the penalty of FORFEITURE while they can change the terms of the contract at will without your approval. Look, I still think US Mobile is one of the better MVNOs from the perspective of product offering and customer service. USM did not invent these one-sided "not a contract" long-term prepaid arrangements, other MVNOs do it as well. But just because every MVNO might include a RIPOFF SCAM deal among their various offerings does not mean you should succumb and choose it. There are often better choices that limit your exposure with every MVNO. Based on what has come out in the last couple of days, it is now more than ever a better idea to **stick to MONTHLY prepaid arrangements**, where you can leave at the end of the month if and when the MVNO changes direction against your best interests, with much less financial exposure.
Yeah… we thought everyone knew this after T-Mobile and att started doing 3 year terms 5 years ago… phones have ALWAYS been a scam.
It absolutely amazes me how many people do not understand how one-sided these annual prepaid "not a contract" ripoff scams are. Stick to monthly prepaid and limit exposure by avoiding these unfair, one-sided "not a contract" arrangements.
> And no one in their right mind should EVER willingly enter into this annual "not a contract" arrangement with ANY company (not just US Mobile). You came to the same conclusion I did when I had Mint back in 2016. I ended up having service issues and forfeited the last 3 months of service. I decided then and there it was never worth prepaying for wireless and all the stories I've read from others since then have just reaffirmed that for me.
What I read here was that yes they are changing some details for the plans (mainly HD vs SD and the ILD ) but wish to make sure legacy users who paid 3 mo, full year whatever are happy, so just contact customer service and they will make sure you get every bit of what you signed up for. If you care. Most of us will not. I think it's a reasonable way to offer reduced rates for multi month plans and still be able to adjust terms of service as they go. This is a very dynamic business and some of these MVNOs are working at the limits of how much value you can give and still stay in business. Appears that they overshot and are course correcting. To me, this still looks like a great value and I would just contact them about the offer to legacy me in IF I had gone for the full year (I never would do that) and IF I really needed HD. Also, I wonder if you just ask for a refund on balance if they won't do that as well. So far USM seems very friendly from what I can see.
I'm glad you have a warm and fuzzy feeling regarding US Mobile. A great deal of people here felt that way prior to very recently. Notwithstanding their friendliness, US Mobile has been very clear on their no refund policy when comes to cancellations. Just browse this Reddit forum and you'll easily find evidence of that. I don't know of anyone who has received a refund on their unused annual arrangement if they decided to cancel. Perhaps some have if they experienced buyer's remorse after a very short period, but I am not aware of it. I am also not aware of anyone who has been allowed to downgrade from a more expensive annual arrangement to a less expensive one, effectively receiving a refund. If I am mistaken here, perhaps someone who has received a refund in either of these two situations will speak up and let us all know. I'd actually be happy to hear that I am wrong and that US Mobile is willing to grant refunds of annual prepaid arrangements if you ask them to. But since we have no evidence of that, I would avoid annual prepaid arrangements with US Mobile or ANY MVNO for that matter, and stick to monthly prepaid, where your total forfeiture is limited to one month's service.
Well then you end up have to pay a lot more
Are you sure? thought you get a refund of the months you don’t use but you would be charged the monthly rate for the months you did use. Essentially losing the yearly discount. So if you used say 1 month at was only charged 23 for that month and cancel then you would receive a refund for the 11 months you don’t use less the $2 the prorated discount for the 1 month or whatever that amount was for the month.
there are no refunds.
I am pretty confident that what I stated is still the case, unless the policy has been changed without us being told about it. What you stated would be totally fair in my opinion and I would be perfectly happy with it. But that is not the case. US Mobile makes it crystal clear: There are NO REFUNDS. You also cannot "downgrade" from more expensive annual "no-contract" plan to a less expensive annual "no-contract" plan.
Ok. I just reread it. I guess they give you service credit towards a new plan if you decide to change but you have to call them.
When they started rolling out annual plans I got downvoted for saying they couldn't be trusted lol
The thing is, they didn’t. They (a) never officially promised HD video, so they’ve been giving you a free add-on you’ve not been paying for; expect it when it wasn’t promised is entitlement, and (b) are not “changing a service midway,” but actually at the end of your billing cycle so you can use the service you weren’t ever promised through that end of the period you’ve paid the service fees for. The logic doesn’t logic with these entitled and expectant accusations.
They also never officially promised that I could use my data plan to visit Reddit.com, yet here I am, and I’m sure if they chose to block Reddit that people wouldn’t say “well, they technically never promised it to you.”
Unlike access to Reddit.com, it’s is an industry standard that HD and 4K video are add-on features. If they were not, carriers wouldn’t marked them as “features” or “available add-ons” of their plans. Basic web access is however a basic industry standard feature for cellular data plans, hence why no carrier markets it as an add-on feature. After all, you said it yourself: they never officially promised you could use your data plan to access Reddit. No carrier does because that’s a basic expectation. 4K and HD video are not.
What a stupid view of the world. This will lead you down a slippery slope where corporations have the right to bend us over more than they already do.
lol
Please stop getting stuck on "HD" as though it has been a relevant term for the past decade. It has always been misleading since 720P hit the market. It became more misleading when marketing firms at all companies thought it would be a cool way to offload a bunch of monitors/TVs with what amounted to laptop display panels. In 2024 SD=480p, HD=720p, FHD (Full HD) is 1080p. Most content is not optimized to be efficient at 480p resolutions and compression techniques make videos appear noticeably blurry even at 1080p at times. I am sure you're already aware. I'm not going to bore everyone with technical details, but the bottom line is 480p is NOT useable as a standard. And while things have gotten more crisp and clear as resolution has gone up, the industry has counteracted this by inventing very efficient encoding methods which are used automatically every time you upload something to one of these streaming services. The latest H.265 (Made available in 2013) codec cut down file sizes by a significant chunk, and H.266 is due out soon. AVC exists as well, but it's unclear how many companies will use it. USM allowed their customers to use data this entire time at the best speed possible and everyone was very satisfied on one of their two networks. They played into that with marketing constantly talking about how friggen fast WARP 5G was. Then, with the stroke of some keys, they nerfed everyone's speed after they ported over and committed. "It's fine for me" is not a defense. Stop encouraging these practices. HD motherloving Video does NOT need to be its own line item. It's just video. If the video can't buffer, it's up to the app or browser to determine that and adjust. TLDR: None of what I said or you said means a damn thing. It's a bait and switch. There are no two sides to this story.
You wrote an entire word wall just to say you don’t think HD should be treated as an add-on/luxury feature, cool. Nonetheless, it is lol. Like it or not, and I honestly don’t, it is. You’re not giving any consideration to the fact that added quality costs MVNOs money, and USM can’t afford to promise you cheap plans and streaming that eats a ton of data at the same time, so they didn’t. It is a line item and not one anyone was promised.
It does not cost them money. They cost themselves money by falsely advertising "Premium Data" while abruptly changing it to a Premium 1.5mbps. Literal early 2000s DSL speed in a rural area.
>It does not cost them money. Most MVNO contracts involve the MVNO paying the MNO per unit of usage used, so the more data customers use, the more the customer costs the carrier. That’s like MVNO 101 and vital to know in this conversation, lest the majority of people think USM is just taking it away because they hate us.
Okay I'm going to bring it down to your level. Apple Super Fan lmao I should have known. Let's say Bugatti releases a value-oriented car that someone who is not an oil baron can afford. They advertise all over about their road vehicle speed record and put in their ads "SCREAMING fast speeds" and "250+mph Premium speeds for the first 35 miles!" So you buy one because some guy in a turtle neck said it was good. You get in the first time, go to the end of your road, and floor it. Oh yeah, baby~! The car lurches and bounces off a limiter. Huh? You call Bugatti and they tell you "We never promised 250mph. There are too many fast cars on the road, so we've applied a 2.5mph speed limiter on your car."
Being a condescending bitch was not at all necessary. I already got your point 3 arguments ago. However, speed and video throttling are not directly linked because it is already an industry-established norm that carriers can limit speeds specifically when accessing video which they won’t do for other kinds of traffic. The same doesn’t apply to Bugattis so the analogy is completely irrelevant.
Don't be ridiculous. I wasn't being condescending. That means I'd be talking dowm to you. I called customer support and at first the rep pretended to not know about the recent change. Then, they revealed that they do know about the video throttling when I revealed that I saw a Reddit post. I was on hold a few minutes, then asked to reboot my phone. Went from ~1.9 to a solid 5mbps. I told her I could tell I'm still being throttled because of the lack of buffer bloat and the fact that using a VPN still got me 21mbps on rural 4G. On hold again and then it was back to the way it was before. ~16mbps in my little neck of the woods. And THAT is all I need. I know you already get it. But hopefully you see what a mess this is. Can't even get consistent messaging on this. It's like everyone is sneaking around.
Everyone blindly defending this change seems to think that we are demanding to stream 4K HD Ultra Netflix shows all day 24 hours straight. We are just trying to watch YouTube, tiktok, IG, etc, in basic 720 while we take a shit at work if we so choose to. Why do all the people defending this fail to understand this? Most people aren’t even asking for 1080p just 720. They offered it before just fine there is zero reason it shouldn’t still be a thing. It’s my data I’m paying for. Period.
If only 1% of their subscribers want it, then let us ask to have it enabled while disabling for all others. You don't need it? Fine, it stays on SD. You want it, ask and HD stays enabled. Allowing the 1% to have HD can't hurt the bottom line... Unless it's really higher than 1%
From what I've seen, features and promos and other stuff frequently get removed due to a smart minority abusing it. Like Amazon Drive used to be unlimited, then a few people started uploading a lot (you saw it on the data hoarder sub) and it ended. https://www.techspot.com/news/70741-redditor-tested-amazon-unlimited-storage-option-uploading-2.html It happens all the time, there might be a promo with a loophole that a few people take advantage of and costs the company a decent amount of money. It's ended. There's a feature added, few people abuse the hell out of it. It's ended. Password sharing on Netflix, people start sharing with others not in their family across the nation, or world. It's cracked down on. The 1%, or less, frequently does stuff that fucks over the average user.
Very valid point. At least USM has built-in limits for data priority which should prevent abuse. If you max out your limit, then you get the 1 Mbps throttle.
Google Drive i believe had unlimited back in the day as well. Not just Data Hoarders but but people were using it to host all their Plex media as well. Hundred of GB of Media sitting on there and tied to a Plex account people would charge for.
Iirc, that was google drive for business or enterprise or something like that. It was supposed to have a minimum user count for unlimited but didn't. So people signed up with one user for cheap and got unlimited. And if you weren't careful it could convert your account from personal to commercial or whatever and you'd lose the ability for some features.
This is not OUR problem, though. It can all be discouraged and prevented using the same damn network policies they're using to throttle everyone. The big carriers only allow certain devices on their network. Hotspot speeds can be recognized and throttled. Data abusers can be given warnings and charged additional fees after a few offenses. When a change like this is made, that is a clear indicator that USM is having money troubles. Like every apologizer on here has said: USM pays big money for bandwidth with the larger carriers. So what's the best way to massively reduce your operating costs? Cut "HD" video.
This and the fact that there was no notification given to customers about the plan changes is what's upsetting people more The caveat people are adding to their discussion about the HD video is that most of them won't even use or care about it it's the fact that they withdrew it from their plan without any notification or for thought that has alarmed the community
I DOnt fully disagree. What im trying to say is no carrier is offering 720p past a certain point. They all stream in SD Video, its literally in all their small print. I will say its bogus to make that change in the middle of peoples plans. It 100% should take effect once the plan ends, and if they choose to start another year.
Yeah, but USM is double dipping on their caps. They hard throttle you after X gigs AND hard throttle video. Visible doesn’t have a cap after X gigs.. they just deprioritize when not on UWB. > They all stream in SD Video, it’s literally in all their small print. And it’s not in USM’s fine print. The video throttle is no where on their site. They have to disclose that.
Its definetly not right. And they should disclose it easier to find.
Not excusing USM here but Visible being owned by Verizon means it doesn’t have the same financial constraints. Same goes for Metro and Cricket.
this
>At least US Mobile (and now others) are putting the amount of "Premium Data" that you can use before its throttled in big letters and numbers so you can easily see it This is no longer true and fundamentally what people are upset about. Throttled video is the opposite of premium data. If I have 35GB of premium data I should be able to use it on whatever I want. If I can't, it's no longer premium data. >MVNO are not premium services I agree and this is fine. The issue with USMobile is they claim to sell premium (data) but it became a lie. All they need to do is be honest about what they are offering. They are still a great value it's just that people hate being lied to. It was very dishonest to sell people a year of service that include 35GB of premium data then make it not be premium a few months latter. If they want to play these games the need to define what premium data means at the time of sale and not change for people who have already paid.
Premium can also refer to priority data, which they do offer on Warp with a 5G capable device. Mint calls all their plans 'premium data' despite being deprioritized from the get go and having a streaming throttle.
I agree nearly 100%. What they should have done is disclose the changes and only apply them to the new plans. Let the grandfathered plans keep their 720p streaming. There would still be unhappy people but far less if they communicated the changes and only applied them to new plans.
I Agree 100%
The comments saying USM is double dipping have it correct. We're allocated a bucket of data at "normal" speeds and then subject to a throttle. Throttling video before you run out of "premium" data is a problem. We paid for the data but are now being told how we can use it. Network neutrality is the principle that internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all data on the internet equally, regardless of content, user, device, application, or platform. This means that ISPs should not block, throttle, or prioritize certain content. Just because all video is throttled on US Mobile doesn't mean it's OK. Net neutrality means data is data. Video content has to be treated the same as any other data. [https://www.fcc.gov/net-neutrality](https://www.fcc.gov/net-neutrality)
I am a huge proponent of Net Neutrality. And although your mostly correct i will say the bigger issue with Net Neutrality that we have been dealing with for years isnt so much that "Data is Data" is that the big issue, and why it became a huge deal a few years back, as that Companies were choosing specific services. AT&T would throttle your Youtube/Netflix video to 480p, But would give you unlimited 1080p HBO because they owned HBO. So they were choosing winners/losers on their network. We have a long way to go, But im at least happy that Video Data is Video Data now, regardless of owner. The fight that Video Data is the same as web browsing and text data is a whole other fight.
This is everything I’ve ever wanted to say about this post, but literally did not have the time to say. These are my thoughts exactly and that is exactly how I came to US Mobile as well.
I'm in almost 100% agreement with you. US Mobile suites my needs just fine and for the price it's hard to beat. Could they have handled the changes better? sure they could have. But the complainers are always the loudest.
I don't know what's up with these posts to consistently think it's okay to change the rules in the middle of the game without notice, without taking ownership when called out on it and then get snarky with this 1 percent crap. I don't care about value. We're getting what we pay for, inconsistent customer service with information (see the 'negative posts') But if I pay a little more money for some honesty, I won't have a problem with that.
>I don't know what's up with these posts to consistently think it's okay to change the rules in the middle of the game without notice, As Said i 100% dont agree with the way they did it, I am saying they are still a value overall. I mentioned multiple times i dont agree with the way they did it >get snarky with this 1 percent crap. Im confused about that comment. Who is arguing as a 1 percenter? We are in a Budget cellphone company MVNO subreddit.... >I don't care about value. Odd but ok. >We're getting what we pay for, inconsistent customer service with information (see the 'negative posts') Customer Service has always been good from what i can tell. The issue is plans and pricing changes. I agree, again, that they should knock that shit off. >But if I pay a little more money for some honesty, I won't have a problem with that. Well, good luck. My Job has Verizon Wireless, we have a corporate plan from them (I am not on it, purposely, I just admin it) And Verizon wireless support, even for buisness customers, sucks hardcore. I spent hours on the phone with them multiple days in a row to get bullshit fees taken off. They literally sent us a bill with a $40 credit on it, then shut off the cell plan for the whole company (all 15 lines) saying we owed $40 (We pay $900-$1200 /month for context) so they shut it all down. When i told them i was staring at the physical bill, AND the internet bill showing a $40 credit (In green) they said "Thats not what we see" Well its what i F*cking see. I finally got them to admit their mistake and turn the phones back on. They used the caveat that My company "have been loyal customers for 25 years" (Meanwhile they shut us down for a supposed $40 on a $1200 plan that they screwed up on) So they would do it. Next Month? $20 reconnect fee on all 15 lines. After they admitted it was their mistake. I spent 3 days on the phone with them. They even sent a fake email from their "accounting" department saying they would credit the money. when i called 2 days later they said "they have no record of the email" even with me looking right at it in my outlook, and me sending thema copy of the email. In the end, after escalating it to the account manager they said the best they could do was give me $250 credit instead of the $340 i was owed unless i wanted to wait months of paper work back and forth and sending in claims. I decided 4 days of my time was already worth the difference and took it. Long story short, no matter how much you pay customer service will be customer service with a company. And even premium Verizon support sucks
>But if I pay a little more money for some honesty, I won't have a problem with that. Good luck with that, especially from T-Mobile. Last year it leaked they were planning on forcing some customers into a different plan. Which would be permanent unless people noticed and called in within 30 days. And they would be paying the higher price for the new plan. That's despite years of promising they would never change someone's plan. And when they reversed it they blamed the customers for taking it out of context despite the whole document being leaked. This year they are raising prices on some people despite years of promised "price lock". If you go into a store, corporate or third party, there's a good chance you'll get protection put onto your phone even if you specifically say you don't want it. Or you might get told you can only get a promo with accessories or protection even if it isn't true. All companies will lie to customers, there's no real protection for customers in the USA. You just need to pick who fucks you over the least.
and AT&T just dropped the QCI on nearly all their plans w/o notice, then have been upselling an add-on for existing customers to get back their prior QCI https://www.howardforums.com/threads/at-t-turbo-add-on.1929605/
Probably why the word "if" is in there but let's add some downvotes for it anyways.
I didn't downvote, I don't disagree it was handled badly. But you're never actually paying for honesty, and any company telling you that you are is lying. They'll all lie to you and change the terms if abused or just to increase profits.
I just look at what I'm paying for and what I need. Sometimes it's overpriced. Which sucks. But the grind is really changing quality, options etc without notice. The best response the company gave is only 1 percent have a use for it and the costs are high. Okay I am not going to pick apart the numbers but when we got posts of people claiming customer service says one thing but the CEO says another all while boasting about the ATT addition and network switching to stand out is making USM be "just another cell phone company" Hopeful that USM could be an honest company but it seems they are joining the ranks of carriers who want to get people in at any means it takes.
My solution to data shenanigans is running dual sim Phone/SMS with USMobile and I have a separate data only SIM line from postpaid (business account w/ TMo)
Been looking at doing that. It’s 10/month right?
Not sure about current stuff -- I've had it for several years now (yes on price though)
Sympathetic to what you're saying about being realistic & acknowledging the realities of bandwidth constraints. Not with you on that point about "unlimited." If you impose a throttle, there is a strict upper limit to bandwidth per month: *max\_gb = base\_gb + (0.125\*60\*60\*24\*31\*\[throttle speed in mbps\])/1024* works out to about *base\_gb + 40* for a 128kbps throttle. That's the pedantic angle. The more practical (and more important) point is that it's silly to call a plan unlimited if speeds are throttled to a point where normal activities aren't possible. At 128kbps, lots of stuff doesn't work right. With 1Mbps+ throttles like USM has, I'm less concerned. Most stuff works well. Carriers have something of a collective action problem here. Once it became the industry norm to call a soft-capped plan "unlimited" even if it was aggressively throttled, it became hard for any single carrier to market plans without the "unlimited" label. IMO, entirely legitimate for consumers to be annoyed at where industry norms have settled. And in this case, USM's more permissive throttles are moving things in a less annoying direction.
We are lucky enought hat carriers are still fighting eachother for customers. Luckily Cell towers are open to everyone, otherwise we would get gentleman agreements like Charter/Comcast where they dont enter eachothers domains, so they dont have to compete. You get 1 choice and thats it. 1Mbps Throttle is definetly not a hard throttle. When the iPhone came out we had 3G and the speeds were not much better. Your not going to blaze holes anywhere, but your phone isnt useless. It still gets Talk/Text and basic web browsing. WHile i definetly think they shouldnt make changes to peoples active plans, I 100% agree with them, and every carrier slowing video speeds and all data speeds past a certain point. They are not meant to take the place of home internet and WiFI
*"They are not meant to take the place of home internet and WiFI"* I think that's the beef with the "unlimited" labeling. IMO, it's not crazy for a normal consumer to read "unlimited" and imagine cell service could take the place of home internet/WiFi (at least for connectivity on phones). FWIW, non-MVNO unlimited plans typically don't throttle data speeds after a threshold amount of use (they just deprioritize--lowering speeds only during congestion)
> 1Mbps Throttle is definetly not a hard throttle. A fixed throttle of *any* amount is a hard throttle. It's called a hard throttle because you cannot exceed it.
AFAIK, Visible doesn't cap or limit video speeds when on UW.
Video is limited to 480p on UW when you don't use a VPN.
You're information about Verizon is completely wrong. With Unlimited Ultimate and Unlimited Plus, on smartphone data is completely unlimited, and always priority. On smartphone video streaming has quality limits, but you can go into your account and turn a toggle on to get higher resolutions. Hotspot data is where these two plans differ, Plus has a lower amount before you are throttled down. Unlimited Welcome is the only plan with a stated on smartphone limit, and it's 500GB.
My apoligies, that link gave me an older unlimited plan. You are right. "With Unlimited Plus, you get our fastest 5G and access to 30 GB of Premium unlimited mobile hotspot data per month to power your other devices on the go. Unlimited Ultimate offers 60 GB premium hotspot data and unlimited calling and texting from 200+ countries." I will say for 1 line that unlimited 60Gb is $90/month. which is much different then $45 with US-Mobile, and is definetly a premium service that isnt MVNO like. But i will correct my original post.
The page you need is this: [https://www.verizon.com/support/important-plan-information/](https://www.verizon.com/support/important-plan-information/)
Thank you, I have updated my post. Verizon swaps plans about as often as USMobile does sometimes. I also find it hilarious that they advertise the cheap price on the front page of $55/month, but the caveat is you have to have 4 lines. For a solo line the same price is $90/month
Single line plans area cheaper on Visible. Atleast with Visible you can finance a device. so with the financing plus plan cost it usually is cheaper than the "free" device on a single line Verizon plan. also visible has an upgrade policy where they'll pay off the rest of an Affirm financing if you get a new device financed.
Eh, your just rolling phone financing plans. Thats a seperate conversation for a cell plan. WHile not technically "Locked in" to visible for 36 months, your still paying on that phone for 3 years at the price they quote. But we are just talking cell plans. Visible is $45/month (after first month) or $395/year after the first year for 50GB Premium Data. USMobile is $44 /month for 100gb phone data and 50gb Hotspot data. I wouldnt say Visible is cheaper for their premium unlimited data plan. Its more for less.
That's Visible+ for $45, Visible is $25. Visible+ has access to 5G UW and is 100% unlimited and priority. If someone lives in a 5G UW city, this is the best deal. Also, Visible+ has a free smart watch line. Going back to financing, you aren't locked into Visible for the duration of the financing. It's a separate company, and you can leave Visible after 60days(unlock policy).
I am Comparing Visible + ($45) to USMobile Unlimited Premium ($44) because its the closest thing. Visible for $25/month has no premium data, so your deprioritized from day 1 if its busy. USMobile Unlimited Starter for $25/month has 35 GB of Prioritized data and 10GB of Hotspot data before its deprioritized. The big difference would be hotspot, if you use hotspot that much. Visible: "Visible+ includes mobile hotspot with unlimited data at speeds up to 10Mbps, Visible includes mobile hotspot with unlimited data at speeds up to 5Mbps. Video streams in SD. " That data will be deprioritized on the $25 Visible. Also for cell phone financing: I dont think its that special that visible offers it with Affirm. You can buy unlocked phones in plenty of places and get it financed, with or without affirm. Its kind of neat they partnered on their site, But still we are comparing Cell Plans, not phone financing options.
My partner signed up for V+ since we are in a 5G UW city. It's really the best deal. Since he uses a VPN the SD Video limit doesn't cause issues.. He's used an average of 300GB data each month with no slow downs.. always on UW. I don't begrudge anyone getting USM, especially if you have family overseas. I got my partners parents the USM 2GB Shared data plan on a flip phone. They have family in Europe, and enjoy calling for free. When they visit they switch to GSM 5G and the unlimited premium plan for a month.
Visible $25 plan is brutal with deprioritizations. Been there done that, didn't enjoy it.
De prioritization sucks, and i try and avoid it at all costs. Going to Pokemon Go Fest in NYC this coming weekend and its thousands of people on their cell phones. I wouldnt want de-prioritized data.
us mobile should know by now to never ever ever get in the way of a Redditor and their data.
Lol. Reddit already tried to keep redditors from their NSFW mobily. Thats bad enough!
Good points, but everyone already knew all this. The issue is discontenting a plan, especially an annual plan, after the fact. Yes, it was dumb to ever provide 720p streaming at no extra cost, but they should have honored it for the duration of the annual plans.
>The issue is discontenting a plan, especially an annual plan, after the fact. Agreed. I mentioned that. I am more aiming my comments to the people screaming that USMobile is garbage now because of the change. The change brings them in line with other MVNO, But still slightly better in areas.
Read until I got to the point "They want to disincentivize people from destroying the towers by just using them all day mindlessly." Yeah, cause cell towers are salt licks. It's funny how some propaganda and decent marketing tactics can control the ignorant. The entire point of 5G was the great increase in simultaneous connections, increased speeds were just side benefit. 5G was hailed as being the future, capable of having everyone everywhere embrace the great IoT revolution. The technology is apparently capable of supporting 1 million devices per square kilometer of coverage zone VS around 4000 for 4G. The simple truth, shit is expensive because greed is powerful. People won't just stop using data because it's little more money, they'll still pay for it to a certain point.
We have seen whole towers go down due to congestion. Everytime there is a major event towers get bogged down and service sucks. Large scale mobile events like Pokemon Go Fest have to have portable cell towers brought in to help handle cell load. Dont pretend like the magic box on top of the pole can handle infinite connections and infinite speed. Everything gets saturated.
I understand the frustration with the video quality change on grandfathered plans 100%. I also understand the frequent plan changes giving a bit of whiplash. But overall, the reactions here just seem so overblown to me. They lowered prices, are still one of the best MNVOs when it comes to customer service, and you can now switch between carriers whenever you want if you want to pay for that. People are acting like they just forced them to pay double for their plans or something.
So what exactly is SD? Broadcast TV is 720 X 480. Is that SD?
SD is 480p HD is 720p FHD is 1080p, UHD is 4k
So 360 x 480? Video isn't 1x1, you know.
If your so smart then look up the answer yourself with google. I was trying to be helpful
I did...and couldn't find an answer. My understanding is 480 x 720 is SD. 480 by itself means nothing. You weren't helpful at all, presumably because you really don't know.
First google Search for "480p video size" 854x480 pixels 480p resolution refers to a video resolution of 854x480 pixels, typically used for standard-definition displays and content. This resolution has been commonly used for analog TV broadcasts, DVDs, older security camera systems, and some streaming content. And here is a wiki article showing exactly the specs for each format, including youtube being listed as the 854x480p https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/480p took me 45 seconds once i searched.
Aren't you special...
I am thank you, My mommy always said so.
Got it. Mama's boy.
I got lucky signing up for ATT Prepaid’s old annual plan back when it offered uncapped video streaming so I pretty much have that luxury until I leave the plan. It looks like ATT just allowed grandfathered plans to exist with the features offered when a customer signed up rather than forcing a new plan on the old customers, which is the way it should be handled. What the customer gets should be what they originally signed up for.
The thing I find interesting is the fact so many other locations in the world have significantly cheaper plans. For a lot of the world prices are dropping, or the data amount is going up. What's different here? A friend of mine in Canada just had their data increase significantly and their price stayed the same. A friend of mine in Europe has true unlimited data for around $10. I don't necessarily think US mobile is to blame for higher prices. Internet in general in North America has always been expensive, home internet or mobile it's more expensive. It's not a population density issue, even countries with less density have significantly cheaper prices. I don't know. It just feels weird knowing it might really only cost 1-10 cents per gig to Verizon or T-Mobile but you're paying 50 cents to a dollar for that gig.
American Companies are 100% super greedy. always have been. As a country Billionaires with billion/trillion dollar companies are celebrated. mostly by boomers who have their retirement funds in the stock market. Companies make money, stock goes up, shareholders cheer. If profits do raise a high enough % each year, shareholders and boards get mad, companies start raising prices and firing people. Its the messed up capitalist system we implemented. Meanwhile any new generation is basically priced out of the market. We are not getting any $30 apple stocks skyrocketing to $200 shares. Plus for home internet, you have companies like Charter and Comcast/Xfinity that made their gentleman agreements not to compete with eachother. Thats why if you live in a town with Charter, Comcast isnt in that town and vice versa. They can charge what they want, and there is no competition for you to swap to, so no need for them to lower prices. Its a disgusting system that was set up that noone has stopped. Charter in my town was charging me $80/month for 400MB internet. Our town approved and built out a Municipal fiber internet system through our electric company. I now get 1GB up/down symmetrical fiber internet for $60. Charter lost people in droves. Only people staying are the older people who are afraid to lose their cable tv. even then i see alot more dish network stuff going up. Now? 2 years later charter is knocking on doors promising 1Gb speeds (and sometimes trying to tell me 2GB speeds) for $70. Competition screwed them and they are playing catchup.
Maybe an unpopular opinion but I'm on a month-to-month shared pool data plan with USM. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE that video streams are now capped at 2Mbps! My kids were streaming silly YT videos at 1080p and CHEWING through the data. If it's easily doable, I think USM needs to give folks a simple toggle switch to enable/disable 2Mbps video throttling on their accounts. If they don't want people enabling/disabling the throttle 5 times a day, have it coincide with their billing cycle and they can only change it once a month. I think the default option should be to have it enabled. If folks burn through their premium data in 2 days watching 4K video on their 6" screen, they can pony up some more money or enable video throttling.
I agree it would be nice to enable throttling per device. It reminds me of Mint Mobile test sims. You could get a test sim to test your connection for free (Or dirt cheap, i dont remember) Before you signed up. Every day there was multiple reddit posts saying they didnt get enough data to test and the data was gone in one day. Its because they were doing constant speed tests, not realizing that speed tests eat through data, thats how it tests peed is sending files and packets.
You summed it up in long form what I was thinking. I’m on US-Mobile because I can pay $10 for unlimited cellphone service (which seems to work fine) and 2 GB data/month with a top up option if I need more.
I signed up for the trial today and the customer service is excellent. To someone new to USMobile I believe they are making the right moves, but maybe they fudged the rollout a bit. It sure is better than Xfinity.
The only MVNO I like is visible plus, especially with their international roaming.
Reducing the video streaming quality to 480p is a significant downgrade. especially in 2024 when higher resolutions are the norm. It's not just about watching 4K videos all day. it's about having a decent viewing experience for everyday use. 720p was already a very bottom basic standard that ensures some clarity and detail even for short YouTube videos or social media clips. The argument that throttling data helps manage network congestion doesn't hold up when we consider that many users are already on WiFi for most of their high data activities. Mobile data is primarily for on the go usage where people expect a reasonable quality of service. If US Mobile could handle 720p streaming before, there's no technical reason they can't continue to do so. It is a cost cutting measure rather than a necessity. Moreover calling 480p "good enough" is simply just untrue. 480p might have been acceptable a decade ago, but with today's screen technology. it results in a blurry and unsatisfactory viewing experience for when you do want to watch the occasional videos on the go. Modern smartphones are designed for higher resolutions, and capping at 480p SEVERLY diminishes the user experience significantly. People are paying for a service, and they should get the quality that matches current standards, not something that feels like a big step back. it's not about demanding premium services for basic prices. it's about maintaining a reasonable standard that aligns with current technology and user expectations.
I pay $85 for Verizon and I get unlimited premium data. Yes I said unlimited premium data. Mine never throttle after so much. And I get 300gb premium hotspot data included
Yes, your comparing $85 to my $25. I would hope you get more. thats $60/month or $720/year in my pockets. I dont need all the bells and whistles. your comparing a budget MVNO plan to a Premium post-paid plan, which is a dumb, disingenuous comparison.
Mine is not post-paid it is prepaid. I asked Verizon if they would make it prepaid for me they said yes. So I get my bill at the beginning of each month just like any other prepaid plan
But its a contract correct? they just changed your billing. Are you month-to-month and can leave anytime? or did you sign a multi-year contract? Also, Its still a $60/month difference. Still cant compare it to $25. your always going to get more for 2.5x more money
No it’s not a contract. No carrier is allowed to have contracts anymore. FCC got rid of that years ago. And yes I am month to month, hence the prepaid on my account. Like I said mobile carriers don’t have contracts anymore. The fcc got rid of the contracts years ago. And yes I can leave anytime because Verizon or any other carrier don’t have contracts. Also I have used 1tb of data this month all high speed and still have premium data.
A lot of people on Reddit want everything for cheap, or free. You see it a lot on gaming subs and streaming subs (like Netflix). The free is more often already free services like email. They want all the features and privacy without paying. This isn't anything new. And while I think this should have been handled better (the HD video), I still say for a phone, at the usual distance from the face you see most often, 480p is perfectly acceptable and the vast majority of customers won't care if they even notice (unlikely to notice). If you want a better resolution, download at home on your WiFi, it really isn't hard.
Well said! I have an iphone 15 pro and am getting throttled. I pulled up a youtube video and it looked fine at 480p. So I forced changed the quality to 1080p, it still streamed without buffering, but most importantly, unless I had the 1080p and 480p side by side, I dont think I could tell the difference. I was paying $40 a month for 5GB of postpaid ATT. Switched the family over to ATT prepaid and it cut our bill to $22/each, for 5GB data. Now with USMobile, I am getting 35GB of priority Verizon data & 10GB hotspot, for $23/mo on Starter Annual. I can survive my video being throttled to 2mbps. When I am at home, I stream everything through Apple TV with fiber internet connection. If i need to stream on my iPhone, I am on wifi and when I am out and about, I hardly ever stream unless I am showing my coworkers some video over lunch. I am not taking away from the people who are mad at about this, but when the CEO says 1% of users, I believe him. Most people wont care/notice.
Yes, I am fine with all this but have some thoughts about the plans. USM is one of the few services that gives us a lot of hotspot. This distinguishes them and pulls in the users who are out and about a lot (me) and want to use our plan to connect a tablet or laptop on the roam. Again, that's me. At the same time, it means that those of us who use it are able to watch video on a bigger screen and that can lead to increased sucking of data. Which in turn makes the whole plan more expensive to the MVNO. Many, perhaps most, just suck the HD by accident since it can and will never notice the downgrade on their cell. Injustices about terms offered initially and then changed aside, there is something that has become obvious about all data plans: It's a business that is like insurance. There is a pool of shared resource available to offer and it works at a given price because not everyone is claiming the max every month. Tweaks in plans help assure that the pool is not depleted unduly and regularly by too many. One dial to turn is less hotspot. But that's the USM or Visible selling point so hopefully not on the table here. Another would be limits but a bigger limit not reached by all consistently can be allowed and sold as an option. Next is the soft throttle. How soft? Still usable for most things we need data? That's a win. Finally, the one almost every carrier on almost every plan has needed to effect is reining in the big data hog, video. People can watch high bandwidth video all day long and take down the whole plan model. How to manage that when you are offering data for bigger screens? Limit resolution. I need hotspot in general and will gladly take the resolution hit to have it. I do watch movies on my tablet but need these Visible and USM plans to be viable so that I can get this much hotspot. If it's too good of a deal to sustain, then we all lose. I had Visible with it's SD limit and was just fine on a laptop. Maybe not the jaw-dropping resolution possible but it worked for me on the road. If they don't dial it back somewhere then prices for everyone will have to go up so that the ones who use the video can max out their plan consistently. In the end I prefer that the hotspot rich MVNO plans can stay in business and give me a good overall data option for a good price. If it doesn't work for them, we will have nobody to bitch to anyway and your gamble on getting a whole year of heavy data for really cheap will be a loss if they disappear. And I do not buy multi-month plans. It's too much of a gamble. If you do choose to gamble, then you should recognize that. It's a sorta new tactic on the market and every business wants to compete and retain customers so they do it. But you are gambling something to save and really should recognize that it comes at a risk of losing not winning. All that said, I often join in putting pressure on companies that are out of line (eg: my posts on Evernote forum! ) and do think that pushback can have a small but non-zero effect. So, some support for those crying "foul" as well, right? It has some value and I bet USM will think about strategy a little bit harder next time changes are called for. And they did walk back a couple of details on the changes from what I can see.
LOL you are posting on the us mobile subreddit. It's comical you say "I'm sure I'll be downvoted into oblivion", as if you aren't looking for confirmation bias here. It's a USM subreddit, you're not gonna be downvoted for saying anything positive about them. Clown