Posted in Rants, Technology

Please stop comparing 5G services T-Mobile (aka John Legere)

(featured image: ASSOCIATED PRESS – via Engadget)

So it looks like T-Mobile is up to it’s old (VERY) antics again and making fun of the competition’s 5G services and claiming superiority over the 5G that Verizon is providing. This needs to stop immediately and John Legere needs to live out his days and weeks peacefully. I know in reality, this will never happen, as John’s eccentric attitude is somewhat how T-Mobile got to where it is today, but here’s hoping he reads this, or someone on his team does and passes the word along.

Let me state this up front. I am a T-Mobile fan and a current customer of 5+ years since I left At&t years ago. What I do not like, is the constant “poking” at some other carrier/s, when your stuff isn’t exactly stellar, yourself. T-Mobile marketing team, John and the incoming Mike Sievert, are you listening? Good, let’s get started.

A little history lesson. I will go back to 2012, when 4G was first starting to get out. We (as in the United States) were reaching 3G market saturation (though, some would argue) and 4G was the next-gen fledgling technology that was on the horizon. At&t just one day started labeling their 3G services (HSPA+) as 4G (aka FauxG). HSPA+ is TECHNICALLY just 3.5G, as a slightly faster 3G service. Depending on where you search, you can see evidence of this here, here (“In a lot of markets, except in the USA, an HSPA+ network is unofficially considered and marketed as a 3.5G network”) and here. T-Mobile even followed suit by marketing with Carly Foulkes in a black & pink leather motorcycle outfit and giving her “blazing” blur lines behind her motorcycle to show how fast she was going. I actually covered this marketing debacle back then when it happened.

I digress, but you get my overall point. 4G was still basically new to the market and companies had to market it, so they could sell new handsets, get consumers to buy in and how they were “improving” their networks with faster speeds. Remember, for T-Mobile, this is all pre-John Legere and post the failed 39 billion dollar buy-out attempt from At&t, from the year prior. As I noted in my above article link, I believe that T-Mobile had no “future plans”, since it was expected that T-Mobile would just fold in under At&t. (I even had a tech news show at the time and covered it and even blogged about it as well) This is completely different 8 years later and now we are expecting to see the T-Mobile buyout of the dying Sprint service, hopefully by April 1st, 2020[1] [2]. (T-Mobile may be laying people off, when they boasted that they would be creating jobs during the merger process over the last few years.) My, how the tables have turned for the former underdog, T-Mobile, since John Legere has shown up.

Moving a bit forward in time, I want to temporarily turn my sites over to Samsung (who some may call me a FanBoy) and give you a quick rundown of their similar antics of trolling iPhone, by advertising and continually selling people on the fact that they kept the 3.5mm headphone jack, well after the iPhone 7, into the Galaxy S10, being the last flagship phone to have it. For a few years, Samsung would PROUDLY stand up on stage and boast how they were able to keep the headphone jack in their flagship phones. Soon, after it was found that the Note 10 from 2019 would be dropping it, Samsung quietly deleted all of their trolling marketing materials. Let’s not forget the oddly marketed Galaxy S4 as well, with all those dancers. So my personal advice T-Mobile, let’s just stop trolling now, before you, inevitably have to delete it all anyway.

Now moving forward to a more recent time in history, last year in 2019, At&t started lying to it’s customers again and began labeling their 4.5G LTE Advanced as “5Ge”. Even though, Verizon had already been marketing it as it was intended, LTE-A for years. I assume since At&t was behind this curve on this technology and so close the “launch” of 5G technologies, they figured it wouldn’t hurt to FIB again, as they did in 2012. I even had friends telling me adamantly about how their Samsung device had “5G” already and was getting better service than I was. I had to sadly explain to them that they had been lied to by their service provider and that just because the 5Ge logo showed up, didn’t mean it was real 5G.

I have finally reached the most current marketing scheme, being led by the eccentric John Legere and his team. He started last year with the “verHIDEzon” stuff.

Before I get too deep into the details, let me give you a quick, 10,000 foot view of 5G technology. There are 3 major versions of it currently. There is the high band, high speed 5G mmWave tech that goes SUPER CRAZY fast, sometimes getting in the Gigabit speeds when testing. The problem is, these are very hard to get, and typically need line of sight and cannot be blocked by anything (even tree leaves).

Then there is the complete opposite side, the low band, slightly higher speeds (typically about 20% faster than current 4G LTE) of the sub 600Mhz spectrum. You can also see more tests about this and how it is much easier to stay connected indoors and out. This is the technology that T-Mobile decided to start with, so they could market it as being the “first nationwide 5G” rollout. While this isn’t the same tech that At&t mistakenly chose to start their “5G” marketing campaign with, the sub 600Mhz isn’t as fast as the mmWave tech that a few cities around the US are currently experiencing. Which is why John decided to start his trolling with the aforementioned “verHIDEzon” ads.

I didn’t forget the 3rd portion, known as mid-band, but this most likely won’t be seen until the completion of the merger with T-Mobile and Sprint and T-Mobile starts transforming the current 2.5Ghz towers into their coverage. There are quite a few good explanations of this out there, but I think T-Mobile has a great quick little video with Bill Nye the science guy that explains the best for all peoples.

Now back to the HIDEzon stuff. As Verizon began rolling out their mmWave 5G in select cities, sidewalks and crosswalks around America, they weren’t being real forthcoming with their 5G coverage maps, because they knew that it was spotty at best and you could literally block the tech with tree leaves, the wind or even glass. It wouldn’t be a good idea to tell people on a mass public scale of their 5G coverage if it suffered from small blockages and then have to explain themselves. As far as I am concerned, this was a very good idea, not to speak at all and just let it be tested by the tech bloggers and journalists, so they could see it for themselves and explain it to the masses. Free marketing. Win. Win.

Unfortunetly, John Legere took this as a way to troll Verizon and started his whole campaign on how they are “hiding” their maps from the public and T-Mobile was working in the background on their upcoming nationwide coverage, so he felt it was “cool” to kick this off. It was funny to some, but overall in my opinion was a flop in a marketing attempt as it didn’t reach the levels I think he wanted, as the twitter account was deleted soon after.

As of this last week, he has now created a second attempt and changing the Verizon name into “verWHYzon” ads. He has already started paying for more ads again. Yes, as in before, he has created a soon to fail, twitter account, again. This time, it seems to be headed up by Neville Ray, their President of Technology, but I am sure it is being orchestrated by Legere himself, as a coup de grâce on his way out as CEO. As I noted in a discussion thread on Reddit, I just want it to stop immediately.

If you are going to be the “best”, I ask that you shut up, be quiet and just BE THE BEST. I think Rene Ritchie said it best, when he noted that Apple doesn’t even use other companies in their advertising or comparisons at all. They just show you their products, as if there are no other competitors at all in the market. They can create the “reality” that Steve Jobs was known for, that they are the “best” and there is no need to look for companies. I am in no way an Apple fan, but Rene has a point.

So, T-Mobile, until you fix your CURRENT 4G LTE coverage, you can’t tout about how your BUDGET level sub 600 5G is nationwide and you are “better” than Verizon. It’s like touting you are the fastest turtle on the beach.

One of your biggest fans, but slowly getting frustrated, with you sending me a microCell to FIX your LTE connection issues at my house,
-Rusty G

Posted in Technology

Best Disk Space Visual Analyzers for Windows and Mac

So, these are not my own selections, but two articles I found that I would like to keep bookmarked on my own site for archival purposes. The two pages are originally from here (2016 on both):

https://lifehacker.com/the-best-disk-space-analyzer-for-windows-5915921

and

I personally use WinDirStat for all of my Windows installations and it has been my go to for years, but I recently just saw a very similar one called WizTree for Windows. You can see the similarities below in the screenshots:

WizTree
WinDirStat

Since I love being able to see my data in a very easy to see visual format, I also wanted to find something similar to this on the Mac side as well. It wasn’t hard to find with a quick Google search. I installed Disk Inventory X and it seemed to be exactly what the others were. Something visual I could see and click on large blocks and just click and see what the file was and do with it what I needed, very quickly.

Disk Inventory X

I hope this helps you out as you are trying to see what it taking up the most space on your drives, as it helped me!

Posted in Technology

The Problem with Streaming

 

If you have ever been to my house, you will most definitely see the somewhat large collection of movies that I have on physical media, with 99% of it being Bluray and 0.5% being DVD and the other 0.5% being the newer 4k Bluray discs as I begin to start transitioning my newer purchases to be 4k only. As a huge media consumer and collector, I find it very odd that people are giving up their ability to own things, verses renting them for a limited time. That whole idea leads me into the reason for this article.

Streaming is a really bad idea if you want to own your music, tv shows or movies. This really can apply to any digital media to be honest, so if I missed something, I apologize. We are a society that is slowly going to the way of the content provider’s wishes and paying a subscription for streaming. I know that a lot of people are doing it and it can be seen in this latest article over at Mashable, astutely titled, “Music In the Air“. You can see from a lot of their research, that more and more people are going to the cloud streaming services for their music. This includes Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, Tidal and many many others that are available to consumers.

You Don’t Own Your Collection and Can’t Play it Anywhere

Let me give you my argument and the reasons why streaming is very bad for the future of online media. First and most importantly, you don’t actually “own” the music, but you are renting it for a small fee, most likely on a monthly basis. I am using the word “own”, very loosely, in so much as that you can play the media anywhere and any place that can play it. For example, if you purchase the physical movie (which typically comes with a ‘free’ digital copy), it will usually come in one of the three major varieties: DVD, BluRay or 4k BluRay. Most likely with the BluRay and 4k versions, you will get an extra copy via the lower version. So, with 4k, you will get a BluRay and digital and with BluRay, you will typically get a DVD and digital copy. This is not exact for every movie purchase, but is very common in most retailers.

Now that you have this, as long as you have one of these compatible players, you can play this movie anywhere you have a display of some kind, the right cables and electricity. There isn’t any online license checks or validations needed to play the movie. If you are a console gamer, then you mot likely already have one of these players built in as a ‘bonus’ and sometimes, can be cheaper than buying some of the higher end BluRay players that have some of the exact same features via their gaming dashboard. If you are somewhere where the internet doesn’t reach, but have a TV or display and the appropriate player and electricity, then no fear, you can play it!

With streaming services, this is not yet universally available. When you have streaming services, you have to have some sort of internet connection. Though, this is getting harder and harder to find, there are plenty of places in the world that do not have access to ‘landline’ (Cable, DSL or the newer Fiber) internet and may only have OTA (over-the-air) via either their cellular provider, satellite or maybe even long distance WiFi beamed internet. Sometimes, that may even be sparse or limited, depending on the ISP. Audio streaming really doesn’t need a lot of bandwidth and can really be done over ‘3G’ networks and above, but when it comes to video services, you most definitely want ‘4G LTE’ or above, unless you want to live in an utter buffering hell.

Streaming is a Temporary License

Since streaming is typically on a subscription basis, you also could lose access to your playlists or media if the provider decides to no longer carry the content provider (artist or creator) or their licensing deal has expired. If you are a member of the popular Netflix community, you know there are websites and articles that will keep you up to date with with what is coming and going on Netflix.

There have been many stories throughout the years that showcase this issue over and over. There was the very public Taylor Swift issue that was eventually ended. Even more recently, with the advent of Disney+, you will begin to see Disney movies and properties leaving Netflix and other streaming services as well. This can even include the platform specific ‘exclusives’ for video services, for the most part. The ‘exclusives’ doesn’t pertain to audio streaming services as much, but can happen from time to time. It bodes well for a music artist to be on all platforms, unless they are at Taylor Swift levels and can make exclusives for certain streaming services.

Without your internet connection, the selected service cannot validate your payment and allow for certain songs to be played, unless they have some sort of ‘offline’ feature, the way YouTube and Netflix have begun to offer in most recent years. Obviously, this has become less of an issue with more WiFi and cellular connections than we used to have, but if you go camping or hiking in some regions, this may not be possible.

SIDEBAR: Streaming Exclusives Also Hurt the Industry

So this is just a small aside, but the idea of ‘Exclusives’ also hurts the overall streaming market in general. I don’t have the best way to explain it, so I recommend watching this short 5 minute video done by the Verge to explain it (and also explains a few other points of mine):

 

Quality Suffers When You Stream

One of the biggest caveats that you give up when streaming as well is quality. I myself am kind of a quality snob, so it is important to me, but for most at home consumers, they really don’t care or can tell a difference. I will admit that this section will not affect most readers, but for those of us that enjoy the highest quality we can get, having a physical form of the media is always best, or at least the highest quality digital version, like 320Kpbs for MP3 or for real audiophiles, FLAC, which is completely lossless. In the video side of things, this maybe full 1:1 copy of a disc or even a ‘compressed’ .mkv or .mp4 file, but these can take up precious amounts of storage, if you do not have the budget to purchase large amounts of storage.

When you have the physical discs (mostly referring to movies & TV shows), you are getting a higher bit-rate (basically the amount of information able to be converted into something you can see or hear) from the disc and is more consistent while viewing. If you are using a streaming service, this can fluctuate based upon your connection speed and network congestion. With cable services, this can be worse, as it is a shared network (Think Xfinity/Comcast/Turner/Spectrum) versus having a dedicated line like DSL (though really slow in comparison) or Fiber. If you have ever watched a video online, you are well aware of ‘buffering’.  This can be more annoying when on anything less than a 10MB connection with multiple users.

Pirating or ‘Personal Copies’

Now, I won’t completely forget the online ‘underworld’ of pirating. Obviously, I cannot condone or share how to go about pirating copies of your favorite media, but I do know it exists. One of the most famous stories of this, was the early release of digital copies of movies being made available before the studios wanted them available through the Sony hack of 2014. This was the large attack that released copies of ‘The Interview’ to the internet even though the North Koreans didn’t want it released at all. There were more details and information to the overall story, but was still a very publicized story of ‘piracy’ in the mainstream.

I will admit that I learned all of the ‘piracy’ skills I would ever need in the days of Napster and Limewire (and Kazaa as well) and the Gnutella days when I was in middle school and entering high school in 1999. Peer-to-peer sharing has always been an issue with all of the digital distributors, even though iTunes and Apple was really one of the first to make it so convenient, that it is just easier to purchase your digital copy online than it is to take the risk of pirating your ‘copy’. These days, the best way to ‘share’ is via BitTorrent, but this again is meant for legal large file sharing.

I do know that there are legal and really ‘easy’ ways to backup your discs (audio or video) for your own personal collection called ‘ripping. If you were ever an owner of the original iPod and used iTunes, you know how easy it was to drop a CD in your computer and just hit the ‘rip’ button with the selected quality that you wanted (64kbps on up to 320). There are even laws that protect the consumer for ‘ripping’ movies, TV shows and CDs as long as it was for their own personal collections as backups and not being shared online for all to pirate. If you have ever heard of HandBrake, then you know what I am talking about (though these days, I hear MakeMKV is way better).

This is how most of us built up our music collections in the early 2000’s, if you are an iTunes or even WinAMP of old user. As the years went on, we had to keep adapting our music libraries and even started collecting movies with the digital copies that came with DVD and BluRay purchases via either iTunes, Vudu or even UltraViolet throughout the years. I am really happen though, with all those splinters of different companies, they finally brought them all under one ‘roof’ with the latest service, MoviesAnywhere.

Summary

So overall, you can get my general disdain for streaming as the main way of consuming content. If any of your services ever ‘die’ or cease to exist, there will be no servers on the other end to validate you DRM’d content. If you are ever without internet, you can’t get your services to work. If the zombie apocalypse happens, then you no longer have a ‘library’ of movies or music to listen to! Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind having those as backups or as an extra option to watch or listen to my media, but I want to be the controller of this content, instead of some 3rd party service.

This is why large services like Plex Media, Kodi or even VLC exist. This is why there are personal ‘cloud’ devices from Western Digital(WD), Synology or even Drobo that allow you to have local storage libraries full of your media. I am not against digital media, but I just think that we need to own it, so we can play it anywhere and as many times as I want to hear my guilty pleasure of Teenagers, by My Chemical Romance.

Here is a great short video as well, basically explaining all of my thoughts above, since the most recent announcement of Samsung stopping building BluRay players in the future. There are multiple videos out there like this and I am sure are linked to this video, but I think he explains it in the shortest amount of time:

Edited 5/25/19 1:44 PM EST/EDT

Another Great Video explaining it:

Edited 5/28/19 5:32 PM EST/EDT

Even MORE great videos explaining (in part) more on the topic:

-Rusty G

Posted in Rants, Technology

Open Letter to John Legere and Neville Ray of T-Mobile

Dear T-Mobile and its Representatives, via Neville Ray (current CTO) and John Legere (Current CEO),

As a newer customer (somewhere over 4 years), I would like some help in this particular matter. I am a HUGE fan of your company since the entrance of your current CEO John Legere. I am writing on the basis of a small complaint and a request, as a well as a hope for the near future merger (if approved, more on that in a minute) of Sprint and T-Mobile. I am writing on the growth pains that T-Mobile is experiencing and it is painful for those of us outside of major metropolitan cities. I currently live in Cleveland, TN and I am having an issue with your coverage and it’s current solution that you provide, among many for those of us in this predicament and I appreciate it, but it needs some re-thinking in my opinion.

I want to share that as I stated above, I am a HUGE fan (and promoter) of T-Mobile and for the first time since I left my mother’s plan, after being with At&t from the age of 18 through my early 30’s, you all provided me my first stand alone cell phone service, so I appreciate that! You can see just a few of tweets from years past here:

This is not to say, that I have not also had my complaints, as no company is perfect and we all know that. It’s part of competition and what makes the market grow and learn. Even though you charged me $150 more that At&t (and even $50 more than Samsung) was for the Galaxy Gear S3 Frontier (see tweet below)! I gladly accepted it and purchased it anyway and still wear my Gear S3 to this day.

I am coming to you now with an issue I have with the coverage in my area and the current solutions you have and the specific one that I chose. I have to point out first that I recently moved back to Cleveland, TN back in the summer of 2018 and have only been here for approximately 1 year and I am struggling to keep service here in my area of travel outside of my home. The area of Cleveland on the North side, doesn’t really have an issue, but the South side does and I hope that you can help!

I recently tweeted about this issue back in September of 2018 and ended up ordering the T-Mobile 4G LTE Personal Cell Spot that uses a small Nokia Femtocell micro tower in my house. The second version of this is what I received, since this was announced in November of 2017 and I did not set this device up until recently.

 

 

I want to explain my frustration in two areas, both your coverage vs actual coverage and the aspect of payment for this solution that you are providing for “cheap” or free in certain situations.

Coverage vs Actual Coverage

Your website is very misleading on the map’s coverage colors and how they blanket areas. I actually had sold a friend on T-Mobile and had him swap his entire business, some 13 lines over from Verizon a few years back. Unfortunately, due to your misleading maps, he got mad with me and swapped back and I believe ended up having to fight with a regional manager on getting all of it fixed.

So let’s start with my area of living in Cleveland, TN. I will show you the map that you guys provide to the public for my area:

tmobile04_tmobile

The map shows my address and even shows my verified tests that I have done. This is an average, due to the fact that I live at the top of the hill and can see for quite a few miles in most directions from our house, so this can be attributed to sea level of my house. The issue runs into the fact that when you get to the bottom of our hill, we lose signal almost immediately and I have to either travel North for a few miles before I start getting a signal and then I can start my Pandora stream (thanks for the 1 year of Premium, BTW!). You can even see in my tweet that I mentioned above, that if I travel Southward, that I lose signal for quite a few miles until I get into the Georgia area, after I cross the state line. This map makes it look like I should have Good to Fair coverage in my ENTIRE area, but this is very false.

I do understand that it takes time to grow a network, in purchasing, licensing and leasing fees to put your equipment on pre-owned towers that other companies have already put up. I even began to look deeper into the issue and see that you guys are most likely paying a leasing fee to Tillman Infrastructure for the nearest tower to me. So I wanted to look a little deeper into this and it looks like there are several customer facing websites that I can search for better understanding of the coverage issue. One of the first ones is CellMapper.net:

tmobile01_cellmappernet

So I see that there are towers North of me, but it looks like my area is just this weird area that T-Mobile does not cover for some reason. So I wanted to search other sites for more details and maybe confirmations. So I then looked into AntennaSearch.com, which is how I found out who built or owns the tower now, where you have the nearest tower to me:

tmobile01_antennasearch

You can see a confirmation that the towers available in my area are limited to the North side of town and for some reason, our little sliver is neglected by T-Mobile for some reason. Until, I got to my third site, CellReception.com and was able to understand why. Maybe, T-Mobile isn’t ignoring our area, but may be either being blocked by a competing company or may be planning to merge with this company and see if you can ‘fix’ the issue (hopefully) with a tower from Sprint. I will show you the confirmation map first, to show that there are definitely no towers “near” me from T-Mobile (I don’t know why they don’t show the others with this site) :

tmobile03_cellreption

And then, when I select Sprint as a provider, I see that there is a tower just behind my neighborhood, less than a mile:

tmobile03b_cellreption

This leads me to the fact that I hope, that this is the plan, that if (here’s hoping) the merger goes through, you can use that equipment already there or upgrade it and make my area better. I am just really frustrated with your coverage in my home area and dislike having to drive nearly 2 miles away from my house before I get a good signal and can start streaming my Pandora!

The Temporary Solution (I hope)

As I stated above, there are multiple options that your company provides, including an ASUS Wifi Router for Wifi Calling (not sure if you still provide this), a Cell Booster, that takes two smaller boxes and uses one as a repeater and one as a booster to repeat an outside signal back into the house (now looking back, I probably should have ordered this instead) and finally the LTE Personal CellSpot V2 that I currently have. Now, I do want to clarify, I have no clue how much each of these devices cost T-Mobile, but the customer is typically charged $25 for a deposit to receive these and can be refunded upon cancellation of service or return of the device. I have heard that you can get that fee waived, but in my case, they did not.

That being said, I am sure there is some cost of these devices as the initial cost of T-Mobile purchasing specially branded versions of this Nokia device (not actually Nokia, but a separate company that makes them and uses the Nokia branding). That aside, I find it odd that we as customers are not compensated for expanding your network in small cell areas of about 3,000 square feet. I have heard on some Reddit threads that it can be a few acres? (Wow if that is true!) I say that, to say, if we are “fixing” an issue with your equipment that you provide, we should be compensated a $5 or $10 discount on our monthly bills.

Here is my argument, as I have combed over many T-Mobile Support Forums and a Reddit Threads to read the complaints. Since T-Mobile does not provide any customer facing UI, GUI or CLI to be able to view or change anything with this femtocell, all T-Mobile (and I have read some At&t customers, I assume roaming) customers are allowed to use this tower, as if it were a macro tower. I understand that in both the macro and the micro towers, that it is the company equipment, but if you are using our internet connection to create it on the micro equipment, we should be compensated monthly.

We as customers are paying for our own “landline” cable, fiber or DSL internet and some of these companies still have data caps and these can be crashed through if there are neighbors or any T-Mobile customer coming through and using the micro tower. I have read some, not many, stories of since adding these femtocells into their network of them going over their data limits. This can be easily seen by jumping into Reddit or the T-Mobile Forums. So the overall thing is, that we are paying twice for internet, when it should have been provided without having to get your home solutions. In most rural areas, the cable and DSL providers do not have great speeds to provide to this CellSpot. I am a unique customer and have a 100Mbps connection behind it with no data caps, so I am a “unicorn”, I would think, but can understand other customer’s issues with this device.

I think that At&t provides a whitelist function on their Femtocells, so that only selected users can use it. Which leads me to the second issue, which is the fact that the data on this micro tower is STILL counted in our monthly counts. Why is that allowed? I understand it costs money to maintain a VPN tunnel between these devices and the T-Mobile network, but you again, are using our internet that we are being charged for. We should not be charged data counts in our monthly counts when it is STILL our own backhaul behind the microtower that is feeding the LTE signal created by the device. I believe that not only should we be be compensated a $5 or $10 monthly discount, but also given any data that we use on your microtower and not counted as “on-network” 4GLTE/4G/3G that you would provide if we were connected to a macro tower. It just seems very backwards and I think could be reworked.

I am thankful for your time and attention to this issue and hope that you will seriously consider my complaints and possible solutions. Please feel free contact me via my Twitter (@RustyG) if you would like to help!

-Rusty G

One of your biggest fans in the Southeast!