No More Roaming For TMHI

[chuckbear]

Beginning May 8th T-Mobile will begin "Geofencing" their Home Internet service so there will be no more taking your router with you on the road. At the same time they will be offering a mobile service for, get this, $160.00 a month. If your caught with your router outside your home address area they can and will cancel your service. T-Mobile can easily tell if your router has moved or is moving. Most likely you will get an initial warning but there is no guarantee. The free ride is over. Chuck

T-Mobile doesn't want you moving around with your 5G gateway without paying more

T-Mobile will be tracking its 5G gateways to ensure that 5G Home Internet plan users are using their device at validated addresses. Read on!

www.androidauthority.com

 

[DutchmenSport]

Looks like a good opportunity to switch over to Visible. It goes anywhere and every where with you.

At home, we are located in a small pocketed area where AT&T, Verizon, or any of the major carriers can NOT come into (land lines or fiber optics). (we are literally in a land-locked area for phone coverage). The local telephone company that "controls" this area is dead-set against using their equipment, lines, and what-not for DSL or anything like that. So, that leave either satellite internet, like Huges Net, or in our case, a "line of site" internet service that bounces a signal from one tower to another and lands on an antenna at your home. That's what we have at home.

When camping we switched over from our AT&T cell phone "hot spots" to Visible. We have a dedicated phone for only Visible. Even though it has a working phone number, we never use it for calls. It set up strictly for internet access.

Now, attach a portable router and we have instant internet anywhere we go. And actually, when we are "home" we keep it running in the camper and use the router wifi in the house. It works great.

We keep the line-of-site system also, because our son lives with us and he works 100% remote. When we are gone (which is most of the time now), he still has good internet at home. But the Visible travels with us. It's dependable, reliable, and still relatively cheap compared to other internet plans.

We run our work computers and personal lap tops, and 3 Roku televisions, plus our grandson's Ipad off the little router we got for the Visible. Nothing misses a beat. Never, ever had a problem with it.

It's something to consider if you are now unhappy with your current system.

 

[Lou Schneider]

Looks like a good opportunity to switch over to Visible. <snip>

We run our work computers and personal lap tops, and 3 Roku televisions, plus our grandson's Ipad off the little router we got for the Visible. Nothing misses a beat. Never, ever had a problem with it.

It's something to consider if you are now unhappy with your current system.

New customers won't need the little router - Visible now allows more than one device to directly share the phone's hotspot. Existing customers may have to perform an update to get this feature.

 

[Isaac-1]

This makes me even more happy I have kept my $23 per month grandfathered AT&T CCU plan

 

[chuckbear]

I had Visible and it had so many problems I finally gave it up. And we don't have service where we live other than T-Mobile. Chuck

 

[Excalibur]

Looks like a good opportunity to switch over to Visible. It goes anywhere and every where with you.

At home, we are located in a small pocketed area where AT&T, Verizon, or any of the major carriers can NOT come into (land lines or fiber optics). (we are literally in a land-locked area for phone coverage). The local telephone company that "controls" this area is dead-set against using their equipment, lines, and what-not for DSL or anything like that. So, that leave either satellite internet, like Huges Net, or in our case, a "line of site" internet service that bounces a signal from one tower to another and lands on an antenna at your home. That's what we have at home.

When camping we switched over from our AT&T cell phone "hot spots" to Visible. We have a dedicated phone for only Visible. Even though it has a working phone number, we never use it for calls. It set up strictly for internet access.

Now, attach a portable router and we have instant internet anywhere we go. And actually, when we are "home" we keep it running in the camper and use the router wifi in the house. It works great.

We keep the line-of-site system also, because our son lives with us and he works 100% remote. When we are gone (which is most of the time now), he still has good internet at home. But the Visible travels with us. It's dependable, reliable, and still relatively cheap compared to other internet plans.

We run our work computers and personal lap tops, and 3 Roku televisions, plus our grandson's Ipad off the little router we got for the Visible. Nothing misses a beat. Never, ever had a problem with it.

It's something to consider if you are now unhappy with your current system.

Dutchman .. May I ask how good your Visible service is in campgrounds that are not close to urban areas? Do you get a good lock on the Net? I have been looking for a better way to get Internet while camping now that we are going farther afield than we have in the past now that we are retired. My current phone plan has data limits, but I could handle 25 bucks a month extra for unlimited service if it is any good.

 

[IBTripping]

Dutchman .. May I ask how good your Visible service is in campgrounds that are not close to urban areas? Do you get a good lock on the Net? I have been looking for a better way to get Internet while camping now that we are going farther afield than we have in the past now that we are retired. My current phone plan has data limits, but I could handle 25 bucks a month extra for unlimited service if it is any g

Visible is Verizon's low cost plan. So, if you can get a Verizon signal, Visible works well.

 

[jymbee]

Visible is Verizon's low cost plan. So, if you can get a Verizon signal, Visible works well.

So they say. However this last trip we had a few occasions at sites where Visible barely worked and Verizon worked well. No explanation and might well have been just some kind of "glitch" but otherwise, Visible has done well for us.

 

[zulu]

Starlink Roam . . .

 

[chuckbear]

Visible has been a mixed bag. Some have had great results while others, like myself, have had terrible results and finally dumped it. There are a lot of limitations so know what they are before you subscribe. First and foremost, what phones will work with it, not many, and what the limitations are for hotspots. Visible is not designed for use with hotspot devices or other than approved phones although some have made it work Some plans are only for use connected to one device, some plans are data capped, etc. But then this is not a thread about Visible. Know before you go. Maybe a Visible discussion would work well in its own thread. Chuck

 

[zulu]

Visible has been a mixed bag. Some have had great results while others, like myself, have had terrible results and finally dumped it.

Amen. I tried Visible for about a year and could not rely on it. Then I tried a Verizon 100GB plan on 8800L hotspot which usually worked great but was pricey because we couldn't suspend service when we weren't RVing . . . so at least 1/2 the year we were paying for nothing.

Ditched Verizon and bought Starlink which was $600 for dish and $150/mon for Starlink Roam service -- but I can suspend service when not in use. Significant cost saver.

 

[NY_Dutch]

Visible has worked well for us, although we have occasionally found weak Verizon areas that made streaming difficult. Fortunately we also have a grandfathered unlimited Mobley plan from AT&T that often works well in the weak Verizon areas. Most of the time both work quite well though. At about $50/mo total for both, we're quite satisfied.

 

[Heli_av8tor]

I wonder how/if this will affect the FMCA/T-Mobile hotspot plan?

 

[chuckbear]

The FMCA plan is a 5GB hotspot. This new change is for the Home Internet plan only. Chuck

 

[Bobtop46]

I wonder if I have legal recourse? I signed up in Florida for my house there (only had DSL) and was told it wasn't available at my house. The in store rep then asked point blank "Do you have another address?" I gave him my Virginia address and he said it was eligible, and signed me up. I took the router home in Florida and set it up. It's a matter of record at which store I signed up at and the address used to establish the account. I do take the router back and forth between the two addresses.

 

[Lou Schneider]

I wonder if I have legal recourse? I signed up in Florida for my house there (only had DSL) and was told it wasn't available at my house. The in store rep then asked point blank "Do you have another address?" I gave him my Virginia address and he said it was eligible, and signed me up. I took the router home in Florida and set it up. It's a matter of record at which store I signed up at and the address used to establish the account. I do take the router back and forth between the two addresses.

Probably not if the agreement you signed states the Home Internet is only to be used at a specified address (in this case the one in Virginia), regardless of the salesman's oral statements. Home Internet is month to month (no annual contracts) so your only loss if T-Mobile chooses to cancel is the cost of the equipment.

 

[Lou Schneider]

Dutchman .. May I ask how good your Visible service is in campgrounds that are not close to urban areas? Do you get a good lock on the Net? I have been looking for a better way to get Internet while camping now that we are going farther afield than we have in the past now that we are retired. My current phone plan has data limits, but I could handle 25 bucks a month extra for unlimited service if it is any good.

I've had a Visible phone with hotspot for several years now. Voice and text are the same high quality as full service Verizon, the only times I've had data slowdowns have been in places where large numbers of people gather. You're the first to be slowed if a tower becomes congested, when the congestion eases speeds go back to normal. Places like Quartzsite during the peak of the season or once during a 4th of July weekend in Salida, CO when so many people jammed the town that Walmart ran out of bread and hot dog buns. Occasionally during peak hours here in Pahrump when Spring Mountain Raceway draws large numbers of visitors to their races.

 

[msw3113]

The FMCA plan is a 5GB hotspot. This new change is for the Home Internet plan only. Chuck

I'm considering options and would like to know the cost of FMCA's T-Mobile offering. Can't find that info on FMCA site without becoming a member.
Would an FMCA member care to share what the current cost is for the 5gb hotspot through that organization?

 

[UTTransplant]

I don’t know where the 5GB number came from. The updated plans have a lot more.

 

[Larry N.]

The FMCA plan is a 5GB hotspot.

That's 5G (as in 5th Generation), not 5GB as in 5 Gigabytes -- big difference.