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Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

"User begins blocking T-Mobile from future consideration."

I'm not using an ISP that prevents me from accessing perfectly legal Internet services. No matter how they want to brand themselves, today's telcos are ISPs, no more, no less.

When shopping for cell phone providers, our considerations are 1) complete Internet access, 2) coverage, and 3) cost. T-mobile could charge $5 a month for unlimited usage, but if they can't satisfy requirements #1 and #2, then #3 is moot.

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If you’re in the US, have you found a wireless provider that meets your criteria?

As far as I know Verizon doesn’t block things. They have great coverage.

They’re not cheap.

Woo oligopoly!

They block private relay on my phone.

Strange, I'm on Verizon too and its not blocked

No kidding? If I go into Settings > iCloud > iCloud > Private Relay (Beta), I see:

> Private Relay is turned off for your cellular plan.

> Your cellular plan doesn't support iCloud Private Relay.

I’m on Verizon, and it works fine for me.

Verizon just blocked personal hotspot from my phone with the message that I would need to switch to a non-unlimited plan to reenable it.

That doesn't sound right at all. All of Verizon's unlimited plans aside from the lowest one come with hotspot data.

How can they change your existing contract?

I'd been happy with Verizon until recently when they blocked Private Relay. I'm starting the search again now.

Verizon is the only network that is reliable in my area. I've had great luck with visible, which is a spin-off on their network. Cheap as hell too - $25/mo for unlimited everything.

Whoa. I'll check into that.

Note that Visible is an MVNO subject to deprioritization. I’m on the lowest Verizon Unlimited plan which is subject to the same and my service is nigh unusable when my broadband internet goes out or I’m in a really large crowd (e.g. music festival)

Yes, adding in a second data point as well. Verizon directly is great in this one area nearby, but using Visible in that same area was painful for anything data related. Would show full signal bars with Visible, but actual data rates were throttled and/or strongly deprioritized.

You genuinely get what you pay for when you spend the extra dollars for the direct carrier relationship with AT&T and Verizon. All of the MVNO's as well as their own prepaid plans will not compare if the towers are busy.

I have Verizon and I'm able to use private relay. Maybe it's because I bought an unlocked phone directly from Apple? Idk.

All Verizon phones are unlocked, but the lock status does not change whether or not they can manage the carrier settings that Apple exposes to them.

I don't use Private Relay, but I do have Verizon. I just tried enabling it (with WiFi disabled, obviously) and had no issues. Do you have a source to back up your claim that Verizon blocks it?

Here's a screenshot of my Private Relay settings: https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0eaTQXkx0FGrIINRWsrF3wagg...

I'd like to be proven wrong, but that looks clear.

That's really strange. Are you on an old grandfathered plan of some sort? It has to be either that or a bug, because it's pretty clear that Verizon is not blocking Private Relay in any large scale manner.

I don't think so. We're switched to the Verizon Plan Unlimited a couple years ago.

As another data point, I do not see private relay being blocked using ATT.

Ah, looks like I had to change my cellular settings, per https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/10/tmo-report-iclo... .

Does it change if you opt out of the “Verizon Custom Experience” program? Or turn off CPNI?

You will not find any, because there are none.

Small Business AT&T

AT&T hits all of those for me.

Ting's been great for me and it meets those three requirements. I'm a little hesitant now that they're owned by Dish though.

> our considerations are 1) complete Internet access, 2) coverage, and 3) cost.

Anyone know how Google Fi compares on this criteria? I've been considering switching over for Fi's better security [1], but curious what Fi users think of the service. Since it piggybacks on other networks, does it inherit any of their service restrictions or other problems too?

[0]:https://fi.google.com/

[1]:https://blog.kraken.com/post/219/security-advisory-mobile-ph...

In the US, at least, Google Fi is essentially a T-Mobile MVNO. It was previously T-Mobile, Sprint, and U.S. Cellular, but T-Mobile bought Sprint, and U.S. Cellular divested a fair amount of its network.

I saw conflicting reports about whether Google Fi was affected by T-Mobile's reported text message censorship. I don't know where it stands on this iCloud Private Relay issue.

I have Fi currently; definitely recommend it.

Internet Access - err... it works? I am able to stream Netflix and YT without being locked to 480p.

Coverage - it's basically TMo coverage.

Cost - Fi is a bad deal if you plan to use a lot of data. It's almost 10$/GB (in the worst plan) or around 70$ for an "unlimited" plan, however it can get cheaper with a group (https://fi.google.com/about/plans/) . For me, its a great deal; I'm always close to a WiFi and rarely need mobile data. My bills ended up being around 25$. I'd say Fi's killer "feature" is it's international roaming charges... though I doubt that will be useful anytime soon :')

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