Last week I detailed a possible solution to my 1.5Mbps internet speed problem. Sprint has a 100GB per month 4G LTE plan for $60/month that throttles down to 2G after 100GB is reached. Well, hang onto your hat. It gets better. Visible has an even better plan. It's 4G LTE on Verizon and is unlimited. No data caps. No throttling. It allows tethering/hotspot usage. The catch is that tethering is limited to 5MBps, and that's what I'd be doing, tethering my computer to it with a USB cable. Windstream is $98 and change for 1.5Mbps. Hmm, less than half cost for 3.3 times the speed is something I can live with.
The sad thing is I ordered a cheap, $20 Sprint phone, arriving Monday, to test the signal strength where I live. The order was made hours before YouTube recommended a video about Visible. On paper Visible is cheaper and has more data. It still might not be the better deal. Visible has deprioritization which means they can throttle the speed to give preference to regular Verizon customers. Since Verizon owns Visible, it would be strictly enforced. In my rural location I don't think that would be a problem. Another problem is, due to my location, I only get one or two bars with Verizon. If the Sprint signal is stronger, the speed would be much better. Even at $20 higher per month, Sprint might be a better option. I'll know once the phone gets here. Another problem is device cost. The Sprint hotspot is $240. A new phone for Visible(they have massive restrictions) is $129. Those are upfront costs if I wanted to pay outright, which I usually prefer to do.
What I'm leaning toward doing is getting Visible for internet and switching my normal cell phone to Sprint on Red Pocket Mobile. Every once in a while, Red Pocket will have a double data or more deal on Sprint or ATT but never on Verizon. I could pay 6 months in advance or however long and have plenty of data. Other resellers have sales, too, just not on Verizon's network. For instance, the cheap cell phone I just ordered from Gen Mobile comes with 5GB of Sprint data for $15 instead of 1GB for $15. I'll be able to run speed tests like crazy and stream video to see how reliable Sprint is, etc. There are also Black Friday sales with lower prices and extra data.
Before throwing money around, I'm kind of waiting to see what Congress does with the next stimulus package. Assuming I went with Visible, I'd have to test them for a month to see how it works in the world before driving a stake through Windstream.
This video has some statistics about unemployment and job losses. I find this guy to be kind of annoying, but the information is more important than that. 91% of people think they'll be going back to work. 42% will never go back, at least not to the same job. There's more than just that, of course. It's worth a listen. His angle is talking about stimulus payments. Let's look past that. If these stats hold true, I don't see any way forward without a basic minimum income. Forget a stimulus check. That won't work. Even stimulus checks for a year won't work. It would have to be a permanent basic minimum income. Unemployment is around 25%. That's the real figure, not the official figure which hasn't been accurate since cold war times due to national pride reasons. After seeing the stats and the continually rising unemployment, I expect Congress to do a multi-month stimulus check for the near future. Anything less would be letting the economy die. My opinion is that whatever they do will either be a basic minimum income or transition into one.
In a recent blog I said that it was obvious New York should have been quarantined. Research suggests people traveling from New York in early March caused 65% of the cases in the rest of the country.
One of the arguments for universal basic income or basic minimum income is robots taking over jobs. That argument feels weak to me. However, robot stalks people. Another link to that.
In another country drones are being used to disinfect from Covid-19.
Some patients are seeing robots before seeing doctors.
Other robots are screening patients in India.
It's interesting how quickly robots were programmed and deployed for these tasks. Maybe we actually will see more robots taking jobs.
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