Net Austerity

As discussed in the Notes post, “Net Junkyard,” the quest to find a more economical prepaid wireless plan has become a priority in this shitty “new normal” of austerity.

However, the recent acquisition of Sprint® by T-Mobile® has introduced a few reservations. The most inexpensive MVNOs (e.g., Tello) use the Sprint® network. Unfortunately, T-Mobile® plans to deprecate the 2G CDMA system on Sprint® to repurpose the frequency bands for 5G. Will the MVNOs be affected? Will they be able to upgrade to VoLTE? And, will rates rise significantly after that?

So, that’s the quandary at this point in time. From all indications, the MVNOs will be able to continue business as usual for at least a year. Not too promising.

Incidentally, the installation of Ka-Block! (content blocker) for iOS Safari seems to have reduced cellular data usage significantly, even though it is not a true “ad blocker.” Many steps were taken beforehand, such as the use of AMP news aggregators, to reduce data usage. For the most part, most of the personal Web browsing has excluded sites with heavy advertising. Thus, much of the data reduction must be due to the blocking of tracking scripts.

Addendum: The bulk of cellular data usage has been devoted to the Molech-themed Twitter® feed (for lack of any other use), which is a total waste of time and resources. And, the unlimited music streaming is no longer exploited because of junk music.