I've bemoaned how my ISP, Windstream, received $130 million from the Obama administration to upgrade internet speeds but ended up pocketing the money. I posted about when they went bankrupt for lying to another business the same way they lied to me about upgrading my internet speed. I've recounted the good news that Verizon has a 5G unlimited internet service for $70/month no contract that will be in my area in 2021(unless SARS-CoV-2 throws that off). I may have more good news. Windstream's days as my ISP could be numbered.
I have cell phone service from Red Pocket Mobile, an MVNO. MVNOs resell phone service from the big carriers at hugely discounted prices. I pay $15/month for 1,000 minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB of data. I've never run out of minutes or data. When I logged in to check my data usage one day, I noticed Red Pocket was running a sale on their plans that gave double data or more. The $15 plan was offering 3GB of data. I looked into it, but it turned out that it was for Sprint(and ATT?) customers. I'm on Verizon through them. Verizon never gives a break on data, ever. I thought 3GB was a lot compared to one, so I did some searching.
Sprint has a $60/month data plan with 100GB on 4G LTE that throttles down to 2G after 100GB. It's not phone, just data. I use an estimated somewhere between 30GB to 60GB per month through Windstream. I don't know exactly how much I use any more, but I don't stream movies or television. On 1.5Mbps, who could? At one point I had a data monitoring program installed. I may do that again if my router doesn't store that stat.
So, I may switch to Sprint until Verizon arrives, assuming I'm still here then. I don't know if Sprint works in my location. Their map says I have a great signal here even indoors, but that's on paper. I would have to buy a cheap Sprint phone and activate it on an MVNO for $10 or $15 and run speed tests and see how it performs in the real world before committing. Even if the phone test works flawlessly, Sprint wants over $200 for a mobile hotspot. I'd want to research a cheaper alternative. I'd also want to test Sprint for a month before cancelling Windstream.
The money adds up fast for all that. I'm waiting to see how the next stimulus round does. If it's closer to the generous Democrat proposals and farther from the nearly-absent, stingy Republican proposal, I'll be ordering a Sprint phone very soon. If that works, I'll have real internet speed within a month.
Book Stuff
I finished going through Book 2 and started going through the part of Book3 that's already written. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about book covers for the novella or Book2. I'm going to try to paint them if I can. I'm not sure I can.
Florida, where they don't report deaths.
Bad news in the Middle east for Iraq. And it's not the only oil country being demolished by low oil prices. This kind of instability could lead to a war in that region. It looks like it has major prophetic significance.
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