Mint Mobile, though that's more as a wallet conscious individual. I VPN back home for DNS while I'm out.
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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Visible has worked well for me recently - it's wholly owned by VZW as I recall, and exclusively uses their network. In most areas, VZW is objectively the best coverage of any carrier.
$30/mo and I have yet to see throttling, even with heavy use. It "just works".
Yes, I'm effectively handing that data to VZW, but I have no illusions that any MVNO I chose would behave any differently. One way or another, they're all reselling the same 3 carriers, who by definition must have some base level of access to your data.
VPNs go a long way towards mitigating that, but using a carrier is likely to leak some level of data. While I have a great deal of respect for RMS, my own life doesn't really fit within his internet usage model and I'm forced to make choices. (Sacrifices, really, but informed ones.)
On Google Fi now. What support did you find lacking? What services got "less and less"?
What's "mvno"? Why do you use a private DNS provider?
Yeah I'm not a huge fan of Google, but Fi has never treated me wrong. My bill was cut down to a third of what my Verizon bill was when I joined 7 years ago, and I don't think I've had any increases in that time. Their support is shit, I'll admit that. My card was stolen and I told them how I'd been a customer for (at the time) 5 years, never missed a payment, and that when my new card came I'd pay the past due amount happily - and they threatened to suspend my service.
That being said, all carriers are terrible, it's a lesser of multiple evils game.
A mvno is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator, thus MVNO. They don't own the network, they lease it.
I use a private dns for privacy. I don't like my data and metrics being shared without my consent. It also blocks ads. Win win
edit: they had some sort of billing issue with me where my bill was consistently 40-50+ bucks over what it should be. So it would be correct one month then the next it would be like 200 bucks and back and forth. When I called, the garbage support had zero clue, and now that I have cancelled, they say they owe me 40 bucks. When I went to pay my bill, it was always 2 payments. Why? I called, again no clue. They did away with Google pass, well you want to know what they also did away with? The insurance on my phone and didn't tell me. So with i needed it, I was not insured. Cool. Hard pass for me.
Edit: here's an example of why a private dns is useful:
I use Tailscale on TMobile that connects to my home network as an exitnode, which allows me to use the DNS configured in my home router.
That sounds ideal, but I don't currently have the resources to set up a home network. :-\
No reason it has to literally live 'at home' - you could just as easily use a VPS via LowEndBox for five or six bucks a month, though of course trust in providers varies widely.