cellular coverage
Ever since moving to the island, I have had to deal with almost nonexistent cell service. I have been a user of a T-Mobile MVNO for over a decade. At the time, my mobile bill was running around $200/month and dropped to about $30 when I switched. The MVNO (now Google Fi) was really cool at first, but gradually degraded mostly in customer service. That wasn’t a problem for me, as I rarely if ever needed customer service after the first couple of years.
After moving, even though T-Mobile’s coverage maps show that we’re smack in the middle of an area with good coverage, I got absolutely nothing at the new house. In fact, I could (and did) walk over a mile to the north, to the south, and to the east without getting a glimmer of coverage anywhere. Walking to the west requires mountaineering gear I don’t have, but even if I approach the gulch from the other side (a drive of many miles, but still only a few hundred feet from the compound), there’s no signal there, either. The coverage maps are simply fraudulent. In fact, if I drive to the nearby village (about six miles away) I can get some spotty coverage, once there, but none along the way. If I drive to the nearest town, about twenty miles away, there is no coverage en route but fair coverage in the town itself. The trip to the nearest city, about sixty miles away, is without coverage for 75% or more of the trip. In other words, 98+% of the time I’m using my phone, I’m doing it through WiFi because the coverage promised by T-Mo’s maps simply does not exist. I could do the same thing through my PBX for 50¢/month, so paying even $30/month for cellular “service” just for those rare times that I’m traveling seems extortionate.
Verizon is even worse than T-Mo around here. The only carrier with decent (and I use the term lightly) coverage is AT&T.
If I ever had a roadside issue or just needed to call or text HA, even from the parking lot of the grocery store, I was out of luck. That seemed not just inconvenient, but dangerous.
WiFi calling
Fortunately, WiFi calling has come a long way. One reason I liked my previous MVNO is that they were one of the first to fully and seamlessly support calls and SMS (texting) over WiFi. As long as I was in range of WiFi at home, my phone was useful. The place is spread out, hilly, and includes a lot of rainforest, though, so “in range of WiFi” wasn’t trivial. I currently have four WiFi access points connected by 500 feet of fiber to cover the places where we and guests spend time, but there are still some areas of the compound without coverage.
satellite service
But all that has been solved by satellite service, you say? No, it hasn’t. I mentioned rainforest. Most satellite services don’t really work when you’re in rainforest or indoors. They have a long way to go before they can substitute for tower coverage in any but an emergency situation.
Consumer Cellular
After the horrible and spendy experiences I’d had with AT&T (back when they were the only option for iPhone users) I wasn’t ready to switch to their service. I had some friends visiting from the mainland, though, and they could actually use their phones from our house. They were using Consumer Cellular (“CC”), an MVNO that uses the AT&T network.
It took me a while, and I was very careful. I created a new account with CC with a new number and tested it thoroughly for a couple of months to make sure everything would work right, while keeping my regular number active with my old carrier. I sure didn’t want to lose access to all phone calls and texts.
I set aside a day to port my regular number to the new account. You can only access customer service for CC via phone (limited hours from my perspective) or online chat. And, of course, I hate phones. I was emphatic that what I wanted to do was replace the temporary number with my permanent one.
Things seemed to go well, except for visual voicemail which they couldn’t get to work no matter what, even after a couple of hours of online chat. They finally blamed the fact that I didn’t buy my phone from them. Further research has revealed that it’s an incompatibility between CC and GrapheneOS, the security-enhanced operating system I run on my phone.
I suppose I can live without visual voicemail for the three calls I get per month, so I thought all was well. That is, until Monday when I needed to access my financial accounts.
SMS overload
I tried to log on to my bank account and never received the multi-factor code that they send via SMS (text). I couldn’t get it via a voice call, either. I tried other accounts. HA tried calling me, but my phone never rang and she and got a “the subscriber’s voicemail is not set up” message. I tried calling voicemail and it wouldn’t accept my password. I tried a password reset and was told that a temporary password was sent to my temporary, now deprecated phone number. There is no way to reach CC customer service in the early afternoon our time, and I was freaking out over the notion that somebody might be mounting a SIM-swap attack against me.
Early the next morning I called CC and discovered that, in spite of my SPECIFICALLY ASKING AND DOUBLE-CHECKING THAT THEY WERE CANCELING THE OLD NUMBER, and being assured that they had, the old number was still on my account, I was being charged for an extra line, but I could in no way access that number even though it was the only one they would use for MFA. They asked if I wanted the number deactivated. I asked again to be sure that wouldn’t cut me off from accessing my CC account, and was assured it wouldn’t. Then the phone made a sad beep, and the call ended.
I tried to call back, but couldn’t. Maybe a problem with WiFi calling? I walked outside until I had cellular signal and deactivated WiFi, but I still couldn’t make a call or send a text.
Fortunately, at some point I had managed to log into my CC account on the web and was still logged in, so I was able to get on the customer service chat. Had I not been logged in, I would have been unable to access the web site as they require SMS verification to log in. The next customer service agent had me change to a different eSIM and that got texting working again, and we ended the chat. Alas, incoming calls were now getting a “this number is no longer in service” message. Sigh.
Another online chat eventually resulted in everything working — so far. Oh, visual voicemail still doesn’t work but, whatever.
SMS uses
I used to use texting a lot, and texting apps automatically maintained their own address book. If I wanted to text “Mary,” I could just scroll down until I saw our last text exchange. Now, if I scroll down my text message, I get
- 729725 is your login code. NEVER reveal this number…
- Citi ID Code: 197847 Only enter online…
- Bank of XXX: Don’t share with anyone…
- Thanks! We’ll contact your Dr to refill…
- I love you, too [from me to HA]
- Thank you for ordering with retailer.com…
- 450323 is you Amex SafeKey Verification…
- The last several weeks I’ve had… [from one of my sons]
- ConsumerCell: Your security code is 3334…
- Fidelity Investments: If anyone asks for this…
- Barclays: DON’T share this code. We’ll NEVER…
- Hello, XXXXX invites you to a secure video…
- You have an appointment with XXX…
- Amazon: Your profile security code is…
- You have an appointment with XXX…
You get the idea. Doctor offices, pharmacies, and any website too incompetent to offer MFA by anything other than SMS (a cheap, cheesy, and insecure second factor if ever there was one) have co-opted text messaging to the point where actually finding a conversation that I elected to participate in is like a needle in a haystack.
And it’s not harmless, as it has opened the door to SIM-swap attacks and means that any problem with your cellular service can mean getting locked out of nearly every financial and healthcare service with an online presence. Oh, and getting locked out from the technical support crew that might be able to help fix your service.
“Network trouble reports will only be accepted via email.”
—2p