Repair-It

I pay like $52.99 for that.

I'm curious to see how it's taxed since it is, essentially, a cell line. The Cox price has no additional taxes added to it. My cell plan has 12.8% added to it in various taxes currently.

Just occurred to me: since I now have 2 lines, I wonder if I can re-spec my actual phone plan and get 'discounted' multi-line pricing? One thing at a time..

kevm14 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 28, 2020 12:48 pm I pay like $52.99 for that.

Yeah, we get screwed with Cox over here. W/O adding services to get a 'bundle' discount, internet-only is $83/mo for the preferred tier (60Mbps). It outperforms the speed rating in non-peak hours, but peak hour speeds have been ~40Mbps on Cox.

Actually, they've already added the device to my account as a 'data only' device (no tax info since I haven't gotten a 'bill' yet in this configuration). Amusingly, there is a phone number listed for it. Unamusingly, my corporate volume discount only applies to my cell line and not this new data service.

Peak usage time = terrible performance
https://www.speedtest.net/result/9682963397

At 1:32am?

9:53pm EST.

Got the thing. I'm using my existing ASUS router as it already works.

Pros:
- It's small
- It has an internal battery (so you get tubes on your phone even when the power is out)
- It takes ~30 seconds from turning it on to getting LTE (and it shows up on the network). Cable modems take...much longer.
- It supports AC wireless
- You can turn the wireless off (both 2.4/5 GHz independantly)
- It outperforms Cox (getting ~80 Mbps down/18 Mbps up while Cox is providing ~65 Mbps/5 Mbps right now)
- Steam downloads saturate bandwidth (though the speed seems to be more volatile than on Cox)
- It's essentially a phone, so it can send and receive texts through the web interface (or is that a con?)
- Device has a (seemingly) random web interface/wifi key out-of-the-box

Cons:
- Speedtest.net takes a long time to load
- Even after setting up port forwarding on the T-Mobile device, I can't get to the OpenVPN server on my ASUS router. Maybe its the non-standard port I'm using? Might have to call/email support as perhaps they are blocking various port ranges.
- Doesn't have controls to explicitly disable the web interface access from the WAN side. Need to see if that's available on the internet, might be a pro if it's disabled and you can't enable it.

Other:
- Web interface has the same look/feel as their web site

Off to try streaming!

I think this is going to be viable with the mainstreaming of 5G. Though the actual RF reception at my house won't get any better with 5G...

Test just now on Mint:
35.5 down
0.95 up
18ms ping
11ms jitter

Test just now on Verizon:
45.1 down
2.06 up
38ms ping
7.1ms jitter

Neither would be acceptable as a broadband connection.

Yeah, 5G will be interesting. T-Mobile's 5G coverage doesn't cover here, though, I'm about 2 miles away in every direction. I'm sure that will change. This device doesn't support 5G, so it's a problem/benefit for future me.