Is this legit?

[comfortably_numb]

I'm seeing a lot of $34.99/mo AT&T unlimited data plans with no throttling on Ebay.

This is very appealing to me as my DSL service now costs over $100 per month.

Anybody use a service like this?

VERIZON 7730L HOTSPOT WITH AT&T $34.99 UNLIMITED DATA PLAN-BLAZING FAST! | eBay

THE 7730L IS A HIGH-END DUAL GSM-CDMA VERIZON HOTSPOT WITH MULTIPLE FREQUENCY BANDS FOR THE STRONGEST POSSIBLE SIGNAL AND LTE CHANNELS! GREAT FOR RURAL INTERNET SERVICE!

www.ebay.com

 

[NYDutch]

They're using a cloned IMEI number to make the AT&T system see the 7730L as a tablet that's eligible for the $35 plan. I haven't compared the band coverage of the VZW 7730L hotspot with the bands AT&T uses, but don't be surprised if AT&T shuts folks down using the wrong device once they sort it out.

 

[comfortably_numb]

NYDutch what do you use? Any recommendations? I get superb Verizon coverage here, ATT is OK, Sprint is non-existent, and TMO is marginal.

 

[NYDutch]

We're currently using a grandfathered AT&T $20/month unlimited data plan as our primary provider, with a Visible (a Verizon company) phone for their $40/mo unlimited talk, text, and data plan with tethered and hotspot features as our fallback plan when AT&T is weak. Visible has a "Party Pay" option that lets 4 users join a "Party", reducing their billing to $25/mo each. The members of the party each get their own account and bill, and are virtually anonymous to each other. The plan only allows one device to connect to the phone at a time, but many of us make that one device a compatible router that supports more connections. We only use the plan for the unlimited data since we have other phones we like better for overall smartphone use. Both of our plans are truly unlimited with no data caps, subject only to prioritization when a tower is congested. In reality, we've never noticed whether a slowdown was caused by prioritization or just the normal slow downs we've always seen on busy towers during peak hours. Both of our plans are month to month with no contract.

In your situation with great Verizon service, I'd give the Visible service a try. If you have a compatible phone or an Android phone to trade in for their ZTE "R2" phone, your only cost would be for the actual service for the time you keep it active.

Visible | The Future Of Phone Service

 

[comfortably_numb]

What is the speed of Visible's hotspot? Is it capped?

 

[Jim S.]

Doesn't Visible restrict video streaming to 480p?

People have been using the grey-market AT&T iPad plan for over a year so far and there doesn't seem to be any coordinated effort to put a stop to it.

 

[NYDutch]

What is the speed of Visible's hotspot? Is it capped?

I somehow missed your question until now... Visible is currently uncapped for existing and new subscribers for as long as they stay active, although they could revert to their previous 5 Mbps cap for new subscribers at any time.

 

[NYDutch]

Doesn't Visible restrict video streaming to 480p?

I haven't found anything in their TOS that states that, but we do occasionally see significant PQ degradation briefly on really busy towers.

 

[ncted]

I had a number of friends around here who tried Visible and gave up due to poor network performance. I had a similar experience with Verizon Prepaid. If you aren't a VZW post paid customer, expect some serious deprioritization, depending on where you are.

 

[comfortably_numb]

I had a number of friends around here who tried Visible and gave up due to poor network performance. I had a similar experience with Verizon Prepaid. If you aren't a VZW post paid customer, expect some serious deprioritization, depending on where you are.

Have had Verizon Prepaid on my personal phone for almost a year now, no issues.

Hotspot phone on Visible has slower pings, ~155 ms; other than that the network issues seem to have been worked out.

 

[ncted]

Have had Verizon Prepaid on my personal phone for almost a year now, no issues.

Hotspot phone on Visible has slower pings, ~155 ms; other than that the network issues seem to have been worked out.

Depends on where you are. Big Red-based MVNOs have a bad rep around here. If you are a business or post-paid consumer user, it is pretty good, but prepaid customers struggle to get better than 3Mbps downloads a lot of the time. I had some speedtest results, but it looks like I lost them when I upgraded to a new phone. I'll see if I can find them where I posted on HowardForums.

 

[comfortably_numb]

Depends on where you are. Big Red-based MVNOs have a bad rep around here. If you are a business or post-paid consumer user, it is pretty good, but prepaid customers struggle to get better than 3Mbps downloads a lot of the time. I had some speedtest results, but it looks like I lost them when I upgraded to a new phone. I'll see if I can find them where I posted on HowardForums.

Yeah, I think it has to do with saturation; I live in a mostly rural area. I have heard that Visible uses a different switching technology than the regular Verizon network, so I don't know how that affects things.