ITCOMO

A very brief history

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Mobile phones have been around since the mid-20th century. Relatively affordable cellular phones, as opposed to the older and quite costly "land mobile" phones, were available at retail beginning in the mid 80s and started picking up in popularity in the early 90s. I'm a HAM radio operator so, of course, I was interested in radio communications. I was a relatively early adopter, buying my first cell phone in the late 80s. It was a so-called "bag phone" -- a two-piece device with a separate, corded handset. And these were voice-only phones. No data, no internet, no apps, no camera, no texting.

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No one else I knew at the time had a cell phone. Many people didn't even know such a thing existed! I was quite popular at work (I.T. guy), advising and arranging cell phone purchases for colleagues. I generated so much business for our local wireless carrier that they gave me free service for about two years.

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Back then, a cell phone worked mainly in your home city. There was no access between cities, say along the interstate, like we have today. You could travel to another city and use your phone in that city only if your home carrier had a "roaming agreement" with the carrier in the city you are visiting. Nearby cities usually had those agreements in place, but often not far away cities.

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Eventually there were dozens of independent local wireless providers scattered all about the US. But traveling with your phone was an expensive pain. Even with roaming agreements, rates outside your home area were high. There were no "plans", either. You paid by the minute. Period.

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Carriers in adjacent cities within a region then began to coalesce into larger region-wide concerns, then eventually into the nationwide, unified network that we have today. Roaming agreements are pretty much invisible today, nothing you need be concerned with.

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OK, that was a brief overview and I did not do this topic the proper justice. If you are interested in learning more, Google is your friend. It really is quite fascinating.

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And then there were three

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Just like the major airlines, the wireless telecom industry over time has bought, sold, and merged their way into what we have today. As of Dec 2024, the time of this writing, there are now three major mobile wireless phone companies; Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile. Or simply "The Big Three".

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"But I have a cell phone and it's none of those companies"

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Right. There is a major division in the mobile carrier business in the US. The "Big Three" (VZW, ATT, and TMO) and everyone else. What does that mean? We'll get to that toward the bottom of this article, under the MVNO subheading.

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The Big Three own and/or operate the physical wireless infrastructure necessary for mobile phones to work. That includes all the towers, antennas, switch gear, cabling, etc. When you subscribe to mobile service from one of the Big Three, your phone calls and data are (mostly) flowing through equipment owned by that company.

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All that infrastructure is eye-wateringly expensive, hundreds of billions of dollars, invested over the years. As you can imagine, the Big Three wants to increase revenue in every way possible. They do this often by using confusing, elaborate plans with numerous add-ons, which we'll discuss next.

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Constant Advertising

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The Big Three spend around 5 to 6 billion a year (latest figures) on advertising, making the wireless telecom industry one of the heavier advertisers in the US. According to Pew Research, nearly 97% of the US population has a mobile phone today, so most of the new customers that any particular wireless carrier gets was likely poached from one of the other carriers. They all offer the exact same core service -- a wireless connection between your device and a cellular tower.

 

So how to differentiate? One of the common themes in Big Three wireless marketing is having numerous plans given unhelpful names and with a bewildering array of mostly-useless add-on options*. Most people don't want these options and the carriers know it. Obfuscation-laden marketing is king with the Big Three, offering plans with terms and conditions that a lot of people simply don't understand.

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* Add-on options include TV streaming from HBO, Disney, Hulu, and others, cloud storage, gaming offers, music streaming, extended warranties, various privacy protections, international travel plans, "premium" data plans that promise no derating, and whatever else they can think up. Many/most of these options add little to no value, are expensive, and often bundled-in by default.

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Making matters worse, these plans are constantly being renamed, tweaked, and generally made less consumer-friendly. It's is absolutely not in the best interest of a Big Three carrier to have an informed, savvy shopper for a customer. Right now, "unlimited" is the buzzword. And that word is doing a lot of work, much of it straining its very definition.

 

For example: Up until just a few months ago, Verizon's three main plans were called "Do More", "Get More", and "Play More". Really??* (What does that even mean?) Each had their own particular mix of add-on features, terms, and limits. But now, as of this writing, Verizon's three main plans are called "Unlimited Ultimate", "Unlimited Plus", and "Unlimited Welcome".

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* Sidebar: Remember the Buy More in the hilarious semi-spy-spoof comedy series Chuck? Their slogan was "When you buy more, you save more. And when you save more, you can buy more. And when you buy more, you save more. It all starts when you BUY MORE."

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These confusing plan names, inclusion of features, terms, limitations, etc. are not by accident. They are deliberately designed to overload thus dulling your cognitive brain as you stand there in the store, or browse their website, trying to figure out the right plan for you. This is know as decision fatigue or choice overload in behavioral economics and consumer psychology.
 

Soft Cap

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None of these plans are unlimited in any meaningful way. In fact, all mobile plans have something called a "soft cap" and a "hard cap".

 

The soft cap is the GB data limit of your plan, below which data is eligible* for the plan's full speed. The limits are on data only and are usually listed in the plan's details. You will note it is not unlimited. Exceed this soft cap and your data throughput will plummet down to, at best, 3G speed, until the next billing cycle begins. Your phone will be essentially useless (on mobile data) except for text and voice. Such limits don't apply to Wi-Fi, other than what your ISP might impose, which if so, are far higher.

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* Data rates are never guaranteed. The wireless spectrum is a severely limited resource so "derating" (a general term meaning to limit or lower priority) may be used during times of congestion.

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Hard Cap

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The hard cap is a higher limit above which you are considered an "abusive" user. That's someone whose usage exceeds the vast majority of other customers' usage. It doesn't necessarily mean you are doing anything "wrong" per se', just that you are consuming "too much" and the carrier may shut you down.

 

Finding the hard cap isn't always easy. At best, it's buried in the fine print of the lengthy Terms of Use (under the AUP or "Acceptable Use Policy") document. At worst, there's no mention at all. You're quite unlikely to hit these hard caps so no worries there. But it's just another nail in coffin of the traditional definition of "unlimited".

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No free lunch

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There's an old expression sometimes abbreviated TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). Wireless carriers love to tout their free phone offers. Seems like you could save $1,000. Except that'll never happen. These "free phone" offers generally require a 24 to 36 month contract on the most expensive plan the carrier offers.

 

Make no mistake. You are paying for that phone over time and are now locked in with that expensive plan. Do a little googling on "are free mobile phone offers legit reddit" and you'll see plenty of reading.

 

Pro tip: By adding "reddit" to the end of a search, Google will (mostly) limit searches to content hosted on Reddit, which is likely to yield higher quality, non-SEO doctored, non-AI enhanced search results. For those unaware, Reddit is one of the largest, most vibrant online communities.

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The real "uncarrier"

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Mobile carriers were/are so notorious with their lopsided contracts that T-Mobile in 2013 started advertising themselves as the "uncarrier" with their "uncontracts". More marketing bullshit albeit creative. TMO is now reneging on these uncontracts and is facing a class action lawsuit.

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TMO wanted you to interpret and accept their use of "uncarrier" as a way to disassociate and separate itself from the unsavory practices long associated with wireless providers.

 

So then, lets talk about what a real "uncarrier" might look like, coming up next...

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MVNO

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Recall that I mentioned up top, the hundreds of billions of dollars spent by the Big Three on wireless telecom infrastructure? And how they want to kick up revenues any way they can? We discussed that one of those ways is including a bunch of useless add-ons. Another way they do that is by selling bulk service to the numerous mobile providers that have no wireless infrastructure of their own.

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And yet another way is by selling your realtime location, but that's a privacy abuse discussion for another article on another day.

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Cellular infrastructure, by necessity, needs to have enough capacity to more or less meet peak demands. So during non-peak times there's a lot of excess capacity going to waste. What if the Big Three could sell that excess capacity for a guaranteed rate?

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This is where all the other wireless carriers come in, which are known collectively as MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operator). MVNOs include Consumer Cellular, TracFone, Mint, Cricket, Boost, and dozens of others. These carriers don't own any cellular infrastructure. Instead, they buy excess capacity from the Big Three at a large discount then resell that capacity to individual customers at the retail level.

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The Big Three makes money from selling that excess capacity and, maybe even more importantly, those MVNOs serve as a protective hedge against accusations of monopolistic abuse.

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MVNOs can be significantly less expensive than getting service directly from the Big Three when comparing similar rate plans. e.g. My carrier, Consumer Cellular, an MVNO hosted by AT&T, costs just over half of what I'd pay AT&T directly, for pretty much the same speed and limits on data. I don't care about all of AT&T's add-on crap, so I can save a bundle.

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MVNO rate plans tend to be simpler and unbundled. Any add-ons offered tend to be truly optional (opt-in) and separate with their features and terms more clearly disclosed. It's more a la carte. I'm not saying that all MVNOs are totally honest and up-front. But they do tend in that direction far better than the Big Three.

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About the only notable downside to an MVNO these days is they are more likely to be derated during peak congestion. This would manifest itself as slower data speeds. Phone calls and text messages are unaffected. This has yet to happen (to me) and, even if it did, I wouldn't be affected much. I don't do data-intensive things via cellular data on my phone.

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Each MVNO is free to develop their own rate plans and marketing. The ones I've looked at tend to have easier-to-understand rate plans without the confusing, obfuscating marketing BS that is so redolent of the Big Three. It's really quite refreshing. But just because they tend to serve value-oriented customers doesn't mean the experience is substandard. A well-run MVNO is pretty much indistinguishable, performance-wise, from the Big Three carrier that hosts it.

 

My MVNO (Consumer Cellular) has pretty straight-forward plans, a few clearly described optional (and opt-in) add-ons, and US-based sales and support staff. Getting them on the phone is pretty fast, there's no language barrier, or substandard connections due to a support center being 10,000+ miles away. These things matter!

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Final comments

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If you are tired of expensive wireless coverage and have no use for all the add-on crap hawked by the Big Three, then you may be be a good candidate for signing up with an MVNO. You can keep your existing phone number and the transfer process can be done in 30 minutes or so, if your phone supports an eSIM.

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As with most everything else I write about, I can help you with all this, if you need it.

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