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Six 'mobile data' stories July 2014 - August 2016
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New report reveals the best & worst places in the U.S. for mobile connectivity

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Aug 3 2016 - 5:58 am PT
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Most of us have cursed poor mobile connectivity in our home towns at some point or other, but if you want to know whether you really have something to complain about, the latest RootMetrics report has the answers.

RootMetrics is a mobile analytics company that tests cell networks across the USA, measuring reliability, speed and performance across data, calls and text to come up with an overall performance ranking for 125 metro areas …


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T-Mobile offering free unlimited data to Simple Choice customers visiting Europe this summer

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Jun 23 2016 - 6:35 am PT
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If you’re one of the 2.5M Americans planning a European vacation this summer, T-Mobile has a pretty sweet deal for its Simple Choice customers: free unlimited speed data throughout July and August, up from the normal 128Kbps limit.

The Un-carrier today announced it’s unleashing summer travel, giving customers unlimited high-speed data, up to 4G LTE speeds, throughout Europe all summer long […]

Starting July 1st all the way through August 31st, T-Mobile’s giving Simple Choice customers unlimited high-speed data across all of Europe (except Andorra) – all at absolutely no additional cost – so you can share, Skype, snap and scope every moment of your European holiday … 


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Feature Request: App-by-app toggling of mobile data roaming

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy May 11 2016 - 6:11 am PT
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I once teased an American friend about the fact that only 36% of Americans hold a passport, compared to 83% of Brits. He quite rightly pointed out that in America you can fly for six hours and still be in the same country – Seattle to Miami, for example – while Brits can fly for an hour or so and be in any one of a dozen different countries. (I later did a bit of Googling and found he could even have said 11 hours: New York to Honolulu.)

For that reason, this feature request may be most relevant to Europeans and frequent business travellers, but I think it’s one that would at least fall into the nice-to-have category for anyone who travels.

The issue is mobile roaming charges. Use your iPhone in your own country and all-you-can-eat calls and texts are typically pretty affordable, with data being the main thing that determines how much you pay for your plan. But however much you pay for data at home, that’s nothing compared to roaming charges overseas …


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Teenager blames Wi-Fi Assist for $2,000 bill as he racks up 144GB of data on his iPhone plan

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Jan 6 2016 - 4:51 am PT
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One person who definitely didn’t read our PSA on Wi-Fi Assist last September is San Francisco teenager Ashton Finegold. CBS News says that he is blaming the feature on a mobile phone bill for $2,021.07 as he racked up 144GB of data.

It turns out Ashton Finegold’s bedroom is one such place with a weak [Wi-Fi] signal. So while he thought he was still connected to his home Wi-Fi while surfing the web in his room, his iPhone was eating up more than 144,000 MB of data.

The piece notes that Finegold did receive a text message warning from his carrier, which he ignored …

Wi-Fi Assist is an iOS 9 feature that automatically uses mobile data when you have a poor Wi-Fi connection. By default, it is switched on – leading to a $5M class action suit against Apple. Apple issued a support document explaining exactly how the feature works in October of last year.

Image: TekRevue

Apple facing second (unrelated) lawsuit over excess data usage, this one for iPhone 5/5s

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Dec 18 2015 - 5:02 am PT
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Apple is already facing one class action lawsuit alleging that customers were unknowingly using up substantial amounts of mobile data, and it now faces a second.

The issue at stake in this new suit is that the iPhone 5/5s could silently switch from Wi-Fi to LTE under some circumstances, resulting in mobile data usage even when the phone was on Wi-Fi. This was fixed for Verizon users back in September 2012, but law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP claims that Apple didn’t fix it for AT&T users until more than two years later.

According to the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, Apple knew about the defect “almost immediately,” yet failed to fix it for AT&T wireless subscribers for years, and did not even disclose the defect. The defect affected all versions of iOS 6 and 7 and was only resolved with the release of iOS 8.1 in October 2014.


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OECD data reveals one mobile Internet connection for every person in the U.S.

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Jul 25 2014 - 4:54 am PT
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Data released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reveals that there are now as many mobile Internet connections as there are people in the USA. While not everyone has a mobile data SIM or dongle, those with multiple devices make up for those left out, taking the average to a fraction over 100 percent.

Six other countries also manage to have more mobile data subscriptions than people, Finland topping the list with an average of 1.25 connections per person. The overall average across the 34 countries within the OECD grouping was 72.4 percent.

(via The Register)

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