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Comment by solardev | Hacker News Reader

Aren't MVNOs deprioritized when there's network congestion? https://old.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/oaophe/data_pri...

(I use Google Fi, but it often seems like it has poor performance and issues sending MMS and receiving group texts to/from mixed Android/iPhone groups)

edit: from the article...

> The discount carriers were, on average, up to 46 percent slower than my Verizon connection. That sounds like a lot, but in real-world tests, I didn’t notice a difference

But then...

> “Is it worth it?” he said. “We’re saving about $1,000 a year. I’ll deal with the hassle for that.”

View on HN

I am using Mint Mobile’s unlimited plan and paying peanuts compared to my partner’s Verizon plan. But their signal is often completely fine where mine even an hour or two outside of a major metro is bad to unusable. Doubly so in large buildings.

That’s just Tmobile - we have plans both directly and with Mint and the coverage is identical. There are some other first party MVNO’s like Visible which run on Verizon you might be interested in.

To add more, this depends on area a lot. Basically MVNO or not some areas would be better with T-Mobile and some with Verizon.

Yes purely depends on your coverage areas as in few areas T Mob would be better and in other verizon or ATT. Best is to get a sense of the area you mostly spend time in. For home/office. Wi-Fi calling does the job

I've been on Straight Talk, which was great because they spanned carriers and you could pick whichever carrier worked best in your area. I used T-Mobile with them and coverage + speeds were all around great, in and out of the city.

Then Verizon bought them and forced everyone on their network. My in-city speeds went down significantly (as in, over 75Mbps slower) in the city, and the coverage in rural areas was not any better than my spouse who's on AT&T.

Verizon missed the boat on 5G, they are no longer the one stop shop for coverage that they were.

Frankly even 10MB is much more than an average person need.5G on phone is almost unnoticeable . Best strategy would've been to provide more coverage than faster coverage.

Verizon certainly have but have an excellent network and brand name. At the moment, T Mobile have the most amount of spectrum bandwidth available

10MB? That's like half a Javascript framework

Turn on Wi-Fi calling & that'll help with the coverage part. They operate on T-Mobile which generally has sub par coverage. I expect it to improve in a year or so

That only works when you have useable WiFi and that’s far from guaranteed even in a major city.

Was about to post the same thing. On vacation in a major city, one of the folks with us had their iPhone battery drain to nothing while it constantly searched for a Verizon signal using a MVNO. We were on Verizon too, never had an issue, no battery draining.

I personally hate every cell provider and really liked Google Fi, but I constantly had issues receiving text messages and terrible call quality.

Oh, interesting! My Pixel 7 seems to run out of battery really fast too (vs previous Pixels, which I've had many of). I first thought it was 5G, but LTE doesn't seem much better. Now that I think about it, I switched to Fi at around the same time... wonder if it's actually that causing the drain?

Google Fi seems to prioritize T-Mobile networks in my experience, maybe monetary related, but they had terrible signal near me. I got an app on the play store to force it to US cell, but I constantly had to switch it. I wouldn't trust the Google Fi app to "automatically choose the best network" _for you_.

Something else must have been wrong, because that's not the way QoS works IIUC. MVNO subscriber equipment receives the same signal strength as the carrier's own subscribers do, but packets are deprioritized, resulting in occasionally slower service with higher latency. But battery draining isn't supposed to result.

There are a few big MVNOs (like Straight Talk) that work across multiple carriers - I bet in the face of deprioritization the phone tried to switch to another network, and kept doing that as the new carrier also experienced congestion.

It's not a real time switching but you've an option to pickup the network and change to a new network if you want .Like it's either or

I have an old $100/4 line plan (with something like 100gb of mobile data) from total wireless (now total by verizon) which I don't anticipate giving up for a while

When I was using an LTE only device (granted a pretty old one with likely fewer frequencies than a newer LTE device), I would get no service in time square whereas I updated to a phone with 5G and more LTE frequencies (I suspect) and now I get service just fine

I definitely get slow service at high congestion moments but I'm not a heavy user so I generally don't really care (I use my phone mostly to read books/articles that are preloaded as opposed to watching videos like millennials...)

GenX and Boomers are also definitely watching videos too...

I'm sure it's a good calculus for some. Personally I tried one of these and the service was fine the majority of the time, but that savings doesn't look nearly as good when you're traveling for work and can no longer access Slack because you're in a major metro and don't have wifi passwords.

The fact is you're more likely to want cellular data exactly when the MVNO is going to get you de-prioritized. If you never leave home, like a coworker of mine, it's a great deal. If you travel for work it's a recipe for frustration.

This is why, if work wants me to have cellular connectivity, they can buy me an appropriate phone and plan to go with it. It's not my responsibility to have a high reliability plan on my personal phone if I don't care (and I don't - I currently carry a flip phone).

I've played the "combined personal and work phone" game in the past, rather extensively, and have come to the conclusion that it's a sucker's game, because it means you always have access to work - and will therefore spend a lot more time thinking about it than you would with separate devices.

Interesting, I got a MVNO primarily for international travel (Fi has free data and texts in many countries).

What do you do instead? Get a new SIM card everywhere?

There are bunch of apps in app stores that sell tourist eSIMs.

You can also buy a global SIM for like $70 that provides you data in 140ish countries for 365 days

It depends. Every carrier has multiple QCI or service standards in laymans' terms. Think of it as boarding priority via zone on the plane. You pay less, you get less. Same goes for coverage wise, where carriers do offer MVNO a choice to have less coverage at significant discount. So ultimately, it depends on the person use

I heard same, but Cricket (AT&T) has not shown issues for me in past 8 or so years we've used it.

I have AT&T, my partner has Cricket.

I've never been in a situation where my partner didn't have signal but I did.

Were you able to confirm usability at the time when you both had signal?

Cricket user and I frequently have problems at Costco when it’s crowded but not when it’s empty. Lately I just sign in to the Costco guest WiFi network.

Yes, they usually are.

Some offer premium data which is prioritized but whether or not that’s the same priority as post-paid traffic is not clear.

Even on post-paid, the plan you’re on can determine network priority. I usually carry two phones and sometimes the MVNO SIM data is completely unusable.

> premium data which is prioritized but whether or not that’s the same priority as post-paid traffic is not clear.

The details are a bit sparse, but sometimes it's possible to find the QoS class/level listed for a given MVNO and plan, and some of them are indeed identical to that of the network's first-party plans.

Yea. They should be required to disclose this information.

> Aren't MVNOs deprioritized when there's network congestion?

Not as a general rule, although it's common.

I'm using one that's only deprioritized after the first 50 GB per month, and even that only ever on low-rate 5G and LTE.

mind sharing the name of the MVNO that does it after 50GB/mo?

Visible. They're on (and actually a subsidiary of) Verizon.

I've had their deprioritized plan in the past, and that oscillated between faster than my home fiber connection (when not congested) and completely unusable (when in crowded cells).

My experience with Visible is exactly the same. I've seen < 50 KB/sec regularly.

Are you sure it's deprioritized (as in QCI) and not just throttled?

Yes, it's actually deprioritized: Just as fast as always when not in a congested cell, but essentially unusable otherwise.

At least that was the case when I was still using their "deprioritized by default" plan (the non-deprioritized plan has only been around for a year or so).

US Mobile's "Warp 5G" (Verizon) has the same priority as Verizon's own plans as long as you're using a 5G device.

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