Showing posts with label Verizon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Verizon. Show all posts

Mar 15, 2019

Cell Phone Carrier Quality

RootMetrics gathered data on the four major cell phone providers—Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile to see which one had the best overall performance. They tested call, data, and text reliability in all 50 states and across 125 of the most populated metropolitan markets. Sprint consistently fell behind the other carriers in all metrics. Verizon came out on top, T-Mobile took second place, and AT&T came in third.

In a similar study, J.D. Power collected data from over 30,000 customers on call quality, data quality, and texting for the major carriers in six regions. Sprint came in last in all of the regions except for the Southeast, where it tied for last with AT&T.

Jan 5, 2018

Free Football Viewing

This year, you will not need Verizon Wireless service to watch free NFL games on your phone. Instead, you can watch in-market coverage, playoff games, and the Super Bowl for free, regardless of carrier.
The live games this season will stream on the NFL Mobile app, Verizon's Go90 video app, and Yahoo. Starting next season, Verizon will no longer provide a free stream of the NFL Network or an optional $2-per-month stream of NFL Redzone on mobile devices. If you want to keep watching Redzone without cable, even on your phone, you will have to subscribe to an entire streaming bundle such as Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, or FuboTV, as NFL and Verizon greed kick more fans to the sidelines.

Naturally, there is a catch. As with Verizon's existing NFL streams, you will be forbidden from watching live games on your antenna-less television. The carrier will not offer full games on streaming TV devices, and will continue to block screen mirroring from your phone through Chromecast and Apple TV's AirPlay.

If you have DirecTV Now with bundled AT&T wireless service, you no longer have to miss any NFL Network games. If you have strong TV antenna coverage, you will also be able to watch many games free.

Jan 27, 2017

Cell Phone Usage

During January, 2009, only about 10% of the U.S. population had smartphones, resulting in network traffic that mostly involved texts and voice, and some modest picture messaging.

Four years later the faster LTE wireless network that Verizon had launched during late 2010, still had not gone mainstream. AT&T said that data usage on its D.C.-area network was more than 16 times larger than it was during 2009. By 2016, 88% of the population owned smartphones.

Jun 19, 2012

New PLAN for Your Phone

The federal government wants to implement a centralized system of control over all communications, with last year’s announcement that all new cell phones will be required to comply with the PLAN program (Personal Localized Alerting Network), which will broadcast emergency alert messages directly to all Americans’ cell phones.

Although users can opt out of receiving the alerts from FEMA and the Amber Alert program, messages direct from the president will be mandatory.

The thought of cellphone users being forcibly targeted with text messages from Barack Obama during the election season has obviously stoked concerns that the emergency alert system could be exploited for political reasons.

The system went live in the New York and Washington Metro areas last December 2011, caused panic in New Jersey after Verizon customers received text messages warning them that a “civil emergency” was in progress and to take shelter. This prompted alarmed citizens to flood 911 lines with anxious calls.

Verizon Wireless later apologized to its customers for causing alarm, admitting that the confusion was caused by a “test” of the PLAN emergency alert system.

The emergency alerts are designed to be incorporated into the Intellistreets system which turns all street lights into surveillance hubs that can record conversations and broadcast messages.

For the first time ever the government will have a direct line to millions of Americans who use cell phones and be able to transmit whatever messages it decides. Between this and the GPS required on all cell phones, we no longer need worry about being alone.

Mar 14, 2012

How 7 Companies Chose Their Name

Pepsi is derived from the digestive enzyme pepsin.
Starbucks is named after Starbuck from the book Moby Dick.
Amazon is named after the Amazon, because Bezos wanted a name that began with A and the Amazon is the largest river in the world.
eBay was named because the original name Echo Bay was already taken as a dot com name.
Nike is named for the Greek goddess of victory.
Verizon is named after veritas (truth) and horizon.
Reebock is named after an African Antelope, Rhebok.

Apr 1, 2011

Speed

We have become so accustomed to speed for our internet play time that we get upset when things slow down. All Internet Service Providers (ISP) do not measure their speed equally.

ISPs are the big name companies, like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, etc., that offer you service and provide an on-ramp to the internet and email from your phone or wireless access for your laptop, or iPad. They tout claims of 3G (3rd generation cellular wireless), 4G (4th generation), etc., but the claims are not truly living up to the legal descriptions of those services. For instance, the original ITU-R requirements of data rates approximately up to 1 Gbits ( 1 gigabit = a billion bits per second) for 4G systems. Average phone users get speeds of about 1Mbps (1 thousandth of a Gbits) and the minimum is 400Mbps.

Bottom line, don't believe any of the hype. All providers these days are good enough, unless your are a power user and download large amounts of data or play games with users around the world. Be happy that, for the most part, we no longer have to rely on dial-up service for our home PCs.

Here is a site where you can test your speed. LINK  It takes about 30 seconds and you can see how your home system compares to others. Below are my results with Verizon FIOS.

Google's internal studies show that introducing a delay of 100 to 400 milliseconds (thousandth of a second) when displaying search results led users to conduct up to 0.6 percent fewer searches.