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cell phone services - visible

nuclearlemon

Hard Core 4+
Joined
Aug 23, 2005
Messages
8,297
Location
windy wyo
has anyone used it? verizon has for a long time had the best service, but they've gone downhill while the prices have gone up. visible uses their towers and is dirt cheap. i've had a few people (that i don't know) on the cheyenne pages recommend them. the website says "by verizon" and they use the verizon network, so why are they so cheap compared to verizon? if i was in town all the time, it would be a no brainer, but i live remote and travel remote a lot.
 

DaveInDenver

Rising Sun Ham Guru
Joined
Jun 8, 2006
Messages
12,942
Location
Grand Junction
Visible is owned by Verizon but it's still an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator). MVNO is the name given to a company that buys bulk access to the networks owned by AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and resells it. An MVNO can be anything from a complete company that only needs the radio spectrum owned by the big guys all the way down to a company in name only that leverages just about everything except the name.

They can be anywhere from a little to a lot cheaper depending on their business model and overhead. In the case of Visible it seems what they are selling is two things.

One is they reduce the already marginal customer service Verizon provides to essentially zero. They don't provide a voice number to call, all their customer service is online via chat bots or through Facebook messages. Switching to them can be fairly quick but if you ever decide to leave and port your phone to another carrier it'll be a major PITA.

Second they put Visible traffic in line behind Verizon. In Wyoming that's not likely a big deal but in Denver or dense cells you might see slower speeds or dropped calls.

All MVNOs get their traffic prioritized below the owner's. But how depends on the agreement. I'd expect Visible would be handled higher than a true 3rd party but there's no way to really know or predict. No matter how you look at it there's only so much spectrum and eventually it gets swamped no matter who's name is on the SIM.
 
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HDavis

Hard Core 4+
Joined
Feb 13, 2019
Messages
1,116
@DaveInDenver Thanks for chiming in! You are right about the no customer service aspect. I will say it's worth the sacrifice as I've had to deal with the chat service, and they were able to help me.

I work at the airport a few days a week and live downtown, which I would assume is one of the denser scenarios with no dropped calls. I also probably only make 1-5 calls a week and am pretty easy to please, so I may not be the best example.

We facetime with my Mother who lives on the road in the mostly rural places, and she also has Visible. It usually works just fine but a good old voice call always works.
 

satchel

Rising Sun Member
Joined
Jun 16, 2009
Messages
834
Location
Erie Co
No experience with Visible but I did use Google Fi for a number of years and they had excellent US based customer support and is cheaper than Visible I believe. It also uses the T-Mobile/Sprint network which has the majority of the 5G spectrum that is being rolled out, so that is supposed to surpass Verizon in coverage and speed in the coming years.
 

nuclearlemon

Hard Core 4+
Joined
Aug 23, 2005
Messages
8,297
Location
windy wyo
i don't deal well with customer service anymore. i prefer to do everything online and voice calls are minimal. i use the maps and internet (although on wifi much of the time, unless i'm driving or public place), so dropped calls arent' a big thing. verizons service has really started to suck. (sometimes, i'll get the 35 text messages that people have been sending me for the last week all in one big dump, i routinely get failed messages that sometimes go through and sometimes don't) so, i can't see paying $100/mo when i can go to $30/mo for slightly lesser service.

i'll have to check out google fi also, although the sprint network scares me. @satchel do they charge on mms like sprint does? when my old job switched a bunch of managers to sprint, our bills went from $175 (with verizon) to $450 (with sprint) because their "coverage" was all roaming. i could make it 10 minutes out of town east or west and then my phone went to roaming. and when work reports got emailed (pre starlink, so all my internet was on the phone) every half hour, even though it might only be 1kb of info, it billed at 1mb of info.
 

satchel

Rising Sun Member
Joined
Jun 16, 2009
Messages
834
Location
Erie Co
No, it was all unlimited talk/text/data, no charge for mms or anything. Works extremely well overseas also. They offer a pay as you go for data if you don't think you would use much and want to save some money. It is largely the T-Mobile network with some Sprint sprinkled in now that they have merged.
 

DaveInDenver

Rising Sun Ham Guru
Joined
Jun 8, 2006
Messages
12,942
Location
Grand Junction
Visible's coverage isn't going to be better than Verizon.

You can look up predicted coverage, although the reported data lags about a year for various reasons.

https://fcc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=6c1b2e73d9d749cdb7bc88a0d1bdd25b

A couple of things about Google Fi. First is it's not device agnostic, particularly if you have an iPhone one of the main features (network hopping) doesn't work well yet.

It also does not yet support 5G on iPhones. That's important for T-Mobile since they bought a bunch of 700 MHz spectrum for 5G primarily to build out their rural coverage. Make sure you know Google Fi will work where you intend to use it.

If you already have or are getting a Google phone then that won't matter. Other main Android phones are usually supported.

Also Google isn't known for being exactly good with data privacy. They are making a lot of money but when the service is cheap or free that's because it's you who is the product. They monetize everything and one can only imagine having all that cell traffic routed through their private VCN/VPN data centers must be a real treat.
 
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