#mobileservice — Public Fediverse posts

We have five cellphones here at HyperTwin Manor -- four people and one spare phone.

Up until last year or so, we were using Republic Wireless because at the time we first signed up (2017) what they offered was pretty progressive. They're also based near us (Raleigh) which, although it doesn't exactly make them a "local business", nonetheless seemed like a plus. (I mean, why ship those wireless megabytes all the way across the country from Silicon Valley if I can get them from closer?*)

Then last year or so, they got bought up by Dish Network, and the enshittification process began. To start with, they dropped support for calls-over-wifi, giving the justification that most modern phones supported it in hardware -- which my main phone doesn't, and it immediately began to be difficult to send and receive texts from inside the office.

So I started looking around, and found Mint Mobile -- which offered (at the time) 4GB/mo instead of RW's 1GB for (effectively) $5 less per month ($15). They sent a spare "try out out" SIM with one of my original orders, and that became the spare phone.

After thinking it over for a bit, I started the process of switching our phones over -- but part of RW's Enshittification Process means that you can no longer get the PIN to transfer your number out by going to Republic's web site; you have to call them. (Can you say "customer lock-in", boys and girls?)

Folks, I have phone-phobia, so this was a BFD. I had the spoons to do it for my phone and (eventually) one of the kids' phones (the one who kept using up his 1GB accidentally), and then I ran out of steam.

...and then just this past month, Republic (and Dish? dunno) got bought up by Boost Mobile. We were sent new SIMs and told that the price would now be $25 (another $5 more, making it $10 more than Mint).

I have no real prior experience with Boost, and a vaguely negative impression of them, so my first thought was "okay, now we really need to move the last 2 phones over) -- but apparently the plan we're on is this new(?) service, Boost Infinite, which has "unlimited bandwidth"... which usually means "we don't cut you off completely after the limit, just throttle you down to liek a bad DSL connection in the rain", but I can find no indication that there's actually any limit.

So... even though it's an extra $20/mo, I'm willing to give it a try and see how the service is.

I figure there's got to be a catch somewhere. It does still allow the phones to be used as hotspots, but it's possible there's some kind of throttling on that ("unlimited" data plans tend to throttle hotspots or disallow them, in my experience). If there isn't, then we could in theory use a phone as a backup internet if Spectrum goes out (...so there's really got to be a catch, somewhere).

* This is humor. It is permitted to giggle.
#mobileService #BoostMobile RepublicWireless #MintMobile

cc: @Harena