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Message-ID: <20220730205055.8BD7246D791F@ary.qy> Date: 30 Jul 2022 16:50:55 -0400 From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com> Subject: Re: What's the Best VoIP Provider? It appears that Mike Rudko <rudkomike.remove-this@gmail.com> said: >What's the best home voip provider? >I'm ready 2 bail from my LEC. This is sort of like asking what's the best restaurant. What do you want? Here's some clues you might give us: - What kind of broadband do you have (if it's cable, cableco phone service is usually pretty good and the quality will be better than VoIP because it has dedicated bandwidth) - Do you want a provider that offers a complete package including the terminal adapter or VoIP phone - Or do you have your own VoIP phone or terminal adapter, or are you willing to get one? Used Linksys adapters are about $40 on eBay = Do you care about call processing features, e.g., calls from certain numbers ring differently or go directly to voicemail - Do you make a lot of phone calls or would you be OK with a cheaper barebones plan where each call costs a few cents? I've been happy with Callcentric which is inexpensive, reliable, but very unbundled. You have to get your own hardware and configure it which is easy if you're used to doing it, potentially painful otherwise. R's, John

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Message-ID: <tc4kbg$fff$1@gal.iecc.com> Date: 31 Jul 2022 01:02:40 -0000 From: "John Levine" <johnl@taugh.com> Subject: Re: When will 4G be Obsolete? According to Bill Horne <malQRMassimilation@gmail.com>: >> Is there a projected date for when 4G will no longer be supported by >> the cellular carriers? >For practical purposes, Verizon is removing 4G on December 31, >2022. No, they're turning off 3G at the end of the year. What's confusing is that some of the carriers lied about their early "4G" phones which were really 4G data but 3G voice, so they will stop working when 3G turns off. Full 4G is sometimes called 4G VoLTE. Doubly confusing is that some 4G phones have VoLTE but some carriers or MVNOs don't turn it on. I have a Samsung S9 that no longer works on Tracfone because they can't turn on its VoLTE with a Verizon SIM which is all they have now. But it works on Ting which is also Verizon underneath. Beats me. At this point I'd suggest Ting if you don't use much data, for $10/mo for voice+SMS, and $5/GB shared among all phones on your account. Or Mint for $15/mo for voice+SMS+4GB if you pay a year at a time. Mint has a one week free trial at https://www.mintmobile.com/free-trial/ -- Regards, John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

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Message-ID: <b5c55709-b33d-601f-9290-c54fc027a41d@ionary.com> Date: 31 Jul 2022 11:19:50 -0400 From: "Fred Goldstein" <fQRMgoldstein@ionary.com> Subject: Re: When will 4G be Obsolete? On 7/30/2022 6:08 PM, Bill Horne wrote: > On Thu, Jul 28, 2022 at 07:17:48AM -0700, Fred Atkinson wrote: >> Folks, >> >> I have a question. I've searched the Internet and so far I have not >> found the answer. >> >> Is there a projected date for when 4G will no longer be supported by >> the cellular carriers? >> >> If there isn't an exact date for 4G to go away as yet, is there any >> kind of rough projection? A year, two years, etc.? > > For practical purposes, Verizon is removing 4G on December 31, > 2022. The company had said that it would continue into 2023, but then > they sent me a letter saying that my wife's "4G LTE" phone didn't meet > their criteria for 4G, and that I would have to buy a new phone - > limitied to "their" brand of 4G, of course - to continue her 4G > service. > > I've decided to do without both Verizon Mobile and their deceptive > marketing: I got a 5G phone for myself and switched to Ting. My wife's > "4G LTE"ng phone will need to be replaced, most likely with the same > brand and model that I have, but I might put an Internet-only texting > and talk app on it, give her mine (again ...), and use the 4G LTE phone > around my home, since we'll have her phone when we travel. LTE isn't going away. "5G" is a set of extensions to LTE, and mostly compatible with older devices on the older bands. Verizon is discon- tinuing 3G (CDMA) service, turning off cells this year. And it may be requiring LTE phones to support Voice over LTE (VoLTE) as their method of voice calling, which is not perfectly standardized across devices. So there may be some older LTE phones that still used CDMA for voice and LTE for data. Those are toast. I just bought a new 4G LTE (no 5G) phone for use on Verizon and there seems to be no risk about losing support. Verizon still sells some such models, like the Motorola G Power.

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