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Review: The 2021 Cadillac Escalade – Everything a Tesla Isn’t

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Happy Valentine’s Day. We’re on our fifth year of our love-hate relationship with Elon and Tesla. After a second purchase of a Tesla with Full Self-Driving (FSD) and no cigar, it’s beginning to smell more like vaporware. Tesla now is morphing FSD into a "feature set" that includes Automatic Lane Changes, Summon from across the garage, AutoPark (maybe and sometimes), Traffic and Stop Sign Alerts, and AutoSteer on City Streets (coming soon). You’ll note that AutoSteer on the highways and interstates now has vanished even though Elon touted sleeping in the back seat while his Tesla drove him from California to New York. To juice end-of-year sales, Tesla even offered buyers a 90-day FSD subscription rather than making buyers fork over $10,000 for vaporware. In case you’re confused by Tesla’s new nomenclature, keep in mind that many vehicles have had most of these "FSD features" for years, but nobody else called it full self-driving much less charging $10,000 for it.
 
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Which brings us to General Motors and the 2021 Cadillac Escalade with SuperCruise for an extra $2,500. Guess what? On all major highways in the United States, it offers hands-free Full Self-Driving so long as you sit in the driver’s seat and keep your eyes on the road. Does it park itself? Yes. Does it have Automatic Lane Change? Yes. Does it have a HUD display? Yes. Does it have Night Vision? Yes. Does the dashboard look like a glorified golf cart? No. In fact, the dashboard sports curved OLED displays measuring more than three feet in total width. Any commercial airline pilot will be drooling. Can it really drive itself without your touching the steering wheel? Absolutely. Is it perfect? Damn near. Will you ever buy a Tesla again? Probably not. This is especially true considering GM’s new electric Hummer EV is just around the corner and will also include SuperCruise.
 
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Want to know more? Well, here you go. There’s a vertical wireless charging holster between the seats that works great with an iPhone or an Android phone. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto work perfectly without ever plugging in a cable. The Escalade dash now offers lots of apps and automatic updates. Welcome, Alexa. You now can say, "Open the Garage", or "Lock the Front Door", or "Turn on the Living Room Lights" from the comfort of your car. And our old favorite, Waze, works great to alert you to every speed trap on the road. Got a favorite radio station in a distant city? The Escalade has you covered with TuneIn. And Spotify and Pandora are as close as your dashboard. Every car these days has a backup camera. The Escalade has cameras everywhere, and you can view any of them from your dashboard. There’s even a zoom in and zoom out feature. The car has its own WiFi HotSpot, or you can connect to the Internet via a Personal Hotspot on your smartphone. And, yes, the car slams on its brakes before you hit something or someone in front of or behind your vehicle.

https://youtu.be/MDTmNBGvcUY

 
Finally, a word about Escalade fuel costs compared to Tesla Superchargers. If you’re planning to buy a Tesla to save money on fuel costs, DON’T. Back in 2016, Tesla touted that its superchargers would "never be a profit center." This may be Tesla’s biggest scam of all. Florida has some of the least expensive electricity rates in the U.S. Yet when you use a Supercharger in Florida, the cost is nearly 8 cents a mile. But that’s a mile according to the Tesla dashboard. Just because a Tesla shows 320 miles of range, don’t believe it. 320 miles of charge actually gets you about 240 miles of driving range at typical interstate highway speeds. When you factor that into the actual cost per mile, the number is closer to 11 cents a mile. For a vehicle such as an Escalade which can use regular fuel and still get 20 miles per gallon even by the EPA highway estimate, that translates into an almost identical cost per mile. Florida regular gas is selling for about $2.20 per gallon. While an Escalade is anything but fuel efficient, your actual cost per mile is nearly the same as driving a Tesla Model X using Tesla’s Superchargers for electricity. Funny how Big Oil has managed to make gazillions of dollars off gasoline sales charging the same prices as Elon’s "non-profit" superchargers.

For those that are wondering, would we buy the new Escalade? Absolutely. In fact, we already have. Put this car on your Bucket List. Or surprise your Valentine. It’s that good.

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UPDATE: And now there’s this:



 
Originally published: Sunday, February 14, 2021  Updated: Wednesday, April 14, 2021

The Autonomous Car: Move Over Tesla, Here Comes Cadillac

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It’s been six months since Elon Musk announced the new Tesla HW2 models with what he proclaimed would be the world’s first fully autonomous, self-driving automobiles. And, guess what? Tesla is not perceptibly closer to a fully autonomous car today than they were six months ago. In fact, the last six months have been consumed playing catchup to the first generation Tesla with its Mobileye technology which Tesla quietly dropped while Intel spent $15.3 billion last month acquiring the company and its technology. In ditching Mobileye, Tesla basically threw the baby out with the bath water leaving them with fancy new autopilot hardware and no code. To make matters worse, their top two guys in the autonomous driving division abruptly left the company. And then along comes the Cadillac Easter Bunny last week to announce the fall availability of Super Cruise, a fully self-driving automobile for 160,000 miles of U.S. interstate highways.


Having just returned from an 1,100 mile Interstate journey through Florida in our four-month-old Tesla, I thought it might be helpful to document the progress that has been made toward realizing Elon’s "I Have a Dream" speech from last October in which he, too, promised a hands-free coast-to-coast drive in a Tesla by the end of 2017.

Spoiler Alert: Don’t be misled by our license plate. It’s not gonna happen this year!

If you’ve been following along in our Autonomous Car series of articles, you already know that there have been some hiccups in the Tesla saga. But there’s some good news today. Our Florida trip confirmed that Tesla vehicles with AutoPilot 2 technology are close to achieving parity with the first generation Tesla automobiles. That’s not to suggest that you would ever want to take your hands off the steering wheel unless you have a death wish. There were at least a half dozen incidents where your wish would have been realized during our trip. What is particularly disturbing is that Tesla apparently has made a conscious design decision to automatically turn off AP2 whenever it encounters a situation it can’t handle. One can only assume this has been done to afford the company deniability when you and your passengers are lying face down in a ditch somewhere because AP2 did something stupid while your car was barreling down the road at 70+ miles per hour. Your Tesla’s log would show that AP2 was not engaged at the moment of your untimely demise. Never mind that it might have caused it and then turned itself off. But keep in mind that Tesla has warned you not to take your hands off the wheel, and that’s what they’ll tell the jury. In the meantime, Cadillac will actually be deploying hands-free cars to its customers.

By design, AP2 is not a system that gives you even a second’s warning that your autonomous vehicle is about to come unglued. In fact, you get no warning other than a beep signifying that AP2 is no longer functioning. Meanwhile, cruise control takes over and keeps your Tesla zipping along at your previous AP2 speed regardless of the direction in which your Tesla may be headed. Tesla AP2 also has an uncanny ability to abruptly veer left whenever AP2 fails. Your only salvation is two hands firmly locking down the steering wheel to assure that the car can’t dart into another lane of traffic, a retaining wall, or a ditch on the side of the road. While we’d give the Tesla a solid A on 99% of our 1,100 mile adventure, that wouldn’t have been good enough to keep you out of the hospital or mortuary if you had elected to make the trip a hands-free adventure. You’ve been warned!

The good news is that we didn’t experience a single incident where the Tesla slammed on the brakes after detecting an overhead sign that it believed was sitting in the roadway. Nor did the Tesla try to take every interstate exit it passed. These were marked improvements from the first few months with AP2 when both were regular occurrences. The other good news is that, during 1,100 miles of use, we only encountered a handful of incidents where AP2 failed, and most of those were predictable if you were paying full attention to driving. Keep in mind that AP2 still cannot handle anything more complicated than a very minor curve in the highway, and there is little to no reliance upon map data in the current AP2 design. This is "follow-the-dotted-line" technology on straight roads, and nothing more. We’ve documented this on the I-26 interstate around Charleston where we live:




As this Google Map of the roadway makes clear, we are not talking about sharp curves in the highway. These are sections of interstate which do not even warrant a curve warning.

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What’s still missing from the Tesla AP2 self-driving methodology is any reliance upon maps, cameras, radar, or sonar to detect or inhibit collisions with objects, merging vehicles, or vehicles traveling anywhere except directly in front of your vehicle. Watch the video above again and count the tenths of a second that elapsed between the time AP2 disengaged itself while the Tesla veered left until the car immediately beside us passes our Tesla in the left lane. You will note there was no driver alert of any kind that the car was there nor did our Tesla feel shy about veering directly into the other car’s path. We’ve documented the current state of AP2 development primarily to warn would-be Tesla drivers to be extremely careful. As we’ve noted before, drive a Tesla with AP2 enabled using the same care you would use if holding a toddler in your lap with their hands on your steering wheel. AP2 has roughly the same driving acumen as that toddler.

And that brings us to Cadillac and why last week’s announcement is especially newsworthy. Cadillac is poised to snatch the crown of the first truly self-driving vehicle from the hands of Tesla. Cadillac, like many other car manufacturers, is headed in a very different direction with autonomous driving. It’s roughly the same map-driven autonomous driving technology that Elon Musk demonstrated in his infamous Tesla self-driving video from last October. Make no mistake. The current Tesla AP2 design has no similarities to either the Cadillac technology shown above or the Tesla vaporware shown in the following video clip:



Maybe some day but, absent a miracle and not just a sales pitch, it won’t be this year for Tesla. In the meantime, Tesla is about to become part of a very crowded field. They will have not only Cadillac but also Mercedes, BMW, Audi, and the Japanese cars to contend with not to mention some add-on hardware from Google and perhaps Apple, Delphi, or perhaps a $999 add-on from George Hotz that will work with current generation vehicles. One thing’s for sure. It’s going to be exciting!

There is a silver lining to our Tesla story. We made the whole 1,100 mile journey at the same pace as any other automobile without spending a nickel on fuel of any kind. That in itself is quite a feat and a testament to Elon Musk’s EV vision. For those headed down I-95 to Florida in a Tesla, here are a few tips. The hands-down winner for Worst Supercharger goes to the Savannah, Georgia airport. Charging time was about 100 miles in an hour with a single (lousy & overpriced) restaurant inside the airport. You can get your parking pass stamped at the Information Desk in the terminal to get out of the airport for free. Don’t miss the Supercharger in Kingsland, Georgia and Malson’s BBQ. And no Supercharger can top the Port Orange, Florida specs of 300 miles in under an hour while dining at any of more than a dozen terrific restaurants. Positioned next to the Tesla superchargers in Port Orange was an RV exhibition with dozens of Class A (6-9 MPG) motorhomes including $400,000+ Winnebagos from LaMesaRV. And look whose Collision Avoidance System Winnebago is using. 🙂 Thanks, Philip Mascioli, for the great tour.


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Published: Monday, April 17, 2017


BREAKING NEWS: Not the best week for Tesla…



 

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FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

blankBOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

blankThe lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

blankVitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

blankSpecial Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



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Mobile WiFi Shootout: Torture Testing the Best WiFi HotSpots for Your Vehicle

What a difference a few years make. Bringing Internet connectivity to those in a vehicle who need Internet access but lack cellular data connectivity now is at the top of virtually every Road Warrior’s Wish List. Today we embark on our first major road trip of 2016 to test mobile WiFi hotspots from the four major carriers in the United States: AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile. We’ve decided to use a variety of devices with the carriers in order to give you a good picture of what’s now available in the marketplace. One reason we decided to mix apples and oranges was because few providers actually manufacture their own devices, and the actual manufacturers (Netgear and Novatel among others) tend to produce almost identical devices for every carrier.

You’ve got a number of options to set up a WiFi Hotspot in your vehicle. Here are the main ones:

  • Tethering through an existing Smartphone
  • Connecting through a dedicated MiFi device
  • Connecting through a 4G LTE router
  • Connecting through a vehicle’s 4G LTE service

As long as you’re paying by the byte, virtually all of the cellphone providers now support tethering on a wide variety of smartphones. The major drawbacks are you’ll want a high performance smartphone if you plan to use it for tethering. And tethering eats through battery life in a hurry. Unless your phone is connected to a charger or wireless charging pad in the vehicle, this can be problematic on a long trip.

Virtually all of the car manufacturers, domestic and foreign, now offer some sort of WiFi connectivity in their higher end vehicles. But you’ll typically pay a fee for their middleware plus the cost of your actual Internet usage using either your existing smartphone plan or a dedicated 4G connection in the vehicle. If you remember the price gouging on cellular calling directly from your vehicle, you’re going to love Mobile HotSpot pricing. It’s worse.

With the Audi Mobile Internet Plan, we can sum it up in five words: Hold On to Your Wallet!

Ford takes a different approach and uses your existing smartphone via Bluetooth as a Mobile HotSpot with SYNC® and MyFord Touch® (for a fee).

Chrysler’s UConnect® takes the Ford approach and is offered on about two dozen new vehicles including the popular Jeep Cherokee and Grand Cherokee.

Choosing WiFi Hotspot Platforms for Our Road Test

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For AT&T, we’ve chosen the integrated hotspot that is featured in many of the latest GM vehicles from Chevy, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac. For the complete 2015 and 2016 vehicle list, visit this GM site. Yes, trucks are included. On a monthly hotspot plan through GM’s OnStar service, 5 gigs of data runs $50 whether you subscribe to OnStar or not. Another option is to purchase a bucket of data which must be used within a year (which won’t be difficult). That runs $150 for 10 gigs of data with OnStar, or $200 without an OnStar subscription. A third option is the daily plan which costs $5 for each 250MB of data. Luckily, there is a more sane option for those that already have an AT&T Value Plan for one or more phones. You can add the hotspot in your vehicle for $10 a month, and it uses your existing bucket of data from your plan. The AT&T unlimited data plans for those with DirecTV service are not available for vehicle hotspots or any other hotspots or tethering for that matter. The two main advantages of the GM approach over many of the competitors are you’re not dependent upon a smartphone for your hotspot and there is a cellular antenna mounted on your roof which will generally provide better performance.

StraightTalk’s Mobile HotSpot which also uses the AT&T network flunked on the basis of cost. $75 buys you 7GB of service for up to 60 days.

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For Verizon, we’ll be using the Verizon 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot MiFi® 5510L (aka JetPack) from Novatel Wireless. An excellent review of the device is available at PC Mag. For those that travel internationally, you may prefer the 4620LE which reportedly has double the battery life. We leave ours plugged into a USB port in the car so battery life is not really a concern. We’ve previously written about Verizon’s grandfathered unlimited 4G data plans and, if you’re lucky enough to have one, this option can’t be beat. Otherwise, like all things Verizon, data plans are expensive. $100 gets you 10GB which must be used within two months. $60 gets you 5GB for use within the same period. Although pricey, it’s half the cost of the GM plan without OnStar. And, trust us, Road Warriors won’t have to worry about not using up their bucket of data in two months.

We’ve previously tested Verizon’s Tasman T1114 Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Broadband Router with Voice which is manufactured by Novatel. The main drawback of this device was that it required a 110 volt connection using a beefy 3 amp power brick. Our testing and that of PC Mag suggests it isn’t the best choice on the basis of performance either. Preliminary testing suggests the 5510L provides almost triple the data performance under identical conditions. And we found that to be true even after we added dual external antennas to the T1114. Don’t waste your money.

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For Sprint, we initially chose one of their MVNOs, Karma Go. And we were looking forward to giving it a workout on the highway. But it was not meant to be. If you follow the trade rags, you know that they originally promised unlimited data with their WiFi hotspot for $50 a month. That lasted about 45 days, and they cut the data rate from 5 Mbit to 1.5 claiming that some folks were using too much data. Duh! That approach lasted about two more weeks, and they implemented a 15GB cap on 4G service with throttled service thereafter that would have you yearning for your old 28.8 modem. Generally speaking, Sprint’s network isn’t that bad from a performance standpoint IF you have service at all. But, in light of all the bad karma surrounding this service, we wouldn’t recommend it to anyone at this juncture. We returned our device within the 45 day trial period for a refund. We’d suggest you do the same. In its place, we’ll be trying out the RingPlus phone that we wrote about last week and that also uses the Sprint network. Unfortunately, our phone lacks tethering capability.

Boost Mobile’s MiFi offering which also uses the Sprint network didn’t make the cut either. It only supports 4G LTE which means you’re dead in the water once you’re out of range of a 4G LTE tower.

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An unlimited* 4G LTE data service on the T-Mobile network which we first considered was MetroPCS at $60/month ($55/month on a Family Plan). However, MetroPCS pulls the same stunt as AT&T in the fine print of their so-called "unlimited" plan. It indicates that your service will be "deprioritized" after reaching 23GB of LTE data usage. That’s the new word for crippled and throttled which these providers just can’t quite bring themselves to say.

We saved the best for last. If you do have T-Mobile 4G service in your area (and most folks do as of the 2015 expansion), here’s a deal you can’t refuse. For $35 a month on the Simple Choice (post-paid) Plan, you get 6GB of data at 4G speeds and unlimited (throttled) data for the balance of the month. But there’s a silver lining with a 6GB or greater post-paid plan, you also get unlimited video streaming at DVD quality without additional cost for a couple dozen services including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, ESPN, HBO, and numerous other providers. If you have kids and travel, this is a no-brainer! The complete list of BingeOn providers is available here. For our WiFi device, we chose the ZTE Z915 4G LTE Hotspot (above).

HINT: Use our referral link and we both get $25 when you sign up. 🙂

Data Usage in a Nutshell

Before we hit the road, let’s provide some points of reference on data usage. The simplest to understand is NetFlix. At their lowest streaming video rate, you will burn through .3GB per hour. At the medium SD rate, it’s .7GB per hour. At the best video HD rate, you’ll burn through 3GB per hour. And Ultra HD gobbles up 7GB per hour. You can set the playback rate in your account under Profile -> Playback Settings. At the very lowest data rate, you’ll get about 11 movies out of 5GB of data. With a 4G connection and the NetFlix automatic data settings, you’re unlikely to make it through 2 movies with a 5GB plan. So you’re well advised to hard-code your playback rate before you hit the road if your family is into movies… unless you choose the BingeOn option with T-Mobile.

A Few Words About T-Mobile’s Binge On Service

The reported Gotchas with the Binge On feature are that it’s a lower quality video stream and once you use up your 4G data allowance for the month, the Binge On feature ceases to function. So you’d want to carefully choose your plan and monitor your data usage to avoid any surprises. As for the quality of the video stream, we’ve read the complaints about this. But it’s a red herring in our testing. Video playback is at DVD quality, and we’re having a hard time believing most folks need something better for a ride in the car, particularly on smartphones and tablets. And we noticed no appreciable degradation even on a 13″ notebook. There’s also been some squealing that BingeOn violates the FCC’s Network Neutrality rule. Our reading of the rule suggests otherwise. First and foremost, BingeOn is an optional service. Any consumer that doesn’t want it can turn it off. Second, for anyone that has ever managed a network with limited bandwidth, the first thing you come to appreciate is the need to control streaming media content. T-Mobile is well within the network neutrality guidelines in doing so, and they’ve done it in a vendor-neutral manner by applying a throttling mechanism to all streaming content that can be identified as such. For those that use encrypted communications for streaming, T-Mobile has offered to work with them to find a way to identify their streaming content so that they, too, can be included in the BingeOn program. Others have suggested that providing video streaming for free while charging for data associated with web browsing also violates network neutrality. We believe the clear intent of the rule was to outlaw discrimination in favor of particular vendors with regard to similar types of Internet content. Any other interpretation would mean that services such as free calling and free text messaging would also violate network neutrality. While this might thrill the Bell Sisters (Verizon and AT&T), it’s difficult to see how this benefits any consumer using the Internet.

Ready, Set, Go: Let the Journey Begin

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For our 300-mile trip today, we’ve chosen a travel path that provides a good mix of interstate highways and less traveled state highways. The topography ranges from flat terrain to sparsely populated mountain areas where cellphone towers are few and far between. In between, there are a few metropolitan areas including Charleston, Columbia, Spartanburg, and Asheville. These are mixed with tiny towns including Waynesville and Sylva, North Carolina near our destination. Interestingly, these small towns reportedly boast some of the best cellular data performance in the country. We shall see.

At the Nerd Vittles home base in Charleston, South Carolina, the data performance of the four major carriers is fairly consistent depending upon the time of day and day of the week. During business hours, a typical 4G LTE speed test looks something like this, not great but not that bad either. It’s certainly adequate for any type of activity one would typically need while traveling in a vehicle:

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We’ll be heading up I-26 from Charleston for over three hours before making a left turn in Asheville, North Carolina to head west via the Great Smoky Mountain Expressway. During the 300 mile journey, we’ll have non-stop movies playing with our T-Mobile BingeOn account in the back seat while the other cellular services are used for more mundane (and less costly) tasks such as checking email and surfing the net. From point A to point B, it’s all four-lane highways or better, quite a change from 30 years ago. In fact, you can even make the trip in a Tesla with a one-hour free charging detour:

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We’re big Spotify fans so most of our AT&T testing will involve listening to the latest Spotify playlists using Apple CarPlay. If the music hiccups, we’ll know we have an AT&T problem. From time to time, we’ll activate a WiFi network connection on our iPhone to check out performance of the Verizon and T-Mobile HotSpots. One of our travelers is a big Facebook gaming enthusiast and, to support that endeavor, we’ll configure her tablet to use the AT&T WiFi HotSpot built into the vehicle.

Mobile Internet Scorecard

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Well, the results were pretty much what we expected. Sprint calling and T-Mobile streaming worked well along the interstates and went from bad to worse once we hit the state highways. AT&T and Verizon didn’t miss a beat door to door.

T-Mobile remains the best bargain for streaming unless you have an unlimited data plan without throttling. Even then, the cost difference is staggering. Our unlimited Verizon plan now runs over $100 a month while T-Mobile is a flat $35. There were some random hiccups in the T-Mobile streaming from time to time which we never experienced with Verizon. But you can’t beat the price! Both AT&T and Verizon have dramatically improved their "mountain coverage" in the past year. In the past, Verizon coverage at our cabin was non-existent and AT&T only worked by strategically placing your smartphone on the outdoor fireplace mantle. Now both have reliable 4G service. Our Verizon HotSpot provides consistent 10Mb download and 5 Mb upload speeds, about 5 times the performance of the DSL connection provided by the local telephone company.

Originally published: Monday, February 15, 2016




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Special Thanks to Our Generous Sponsors


FULL DISCLOSURE: ClearlyIP, Skyetel, Vitelity, DigitalOcean, Vultr, VoIP.ms, 3CX, Sangoma, TelecomsXchange and VitalPBX have provided financial support to Nerd Vittles and our open source projects through advertising, referral revenue, and/or merchandise. As an Amazon Associate and Best Buy Affiliate, we also earn from qualifying purchases. We’ve chosen these providers not the other way around. Our decisions are based upon their corporate reputation and the quality of their offerings and pricing. Our recommendations regarding technology are reached without regard to financial compensation except in situations in which comparable products at comparable pricing are available from multiple sources. In this limited case, we support our sponsors because our sponsors support us.

blankBOGO Bonaza: Enjoy state-of-the-art VoIP service with a $10 credit and half-price SIP service on up to $500 of Skyetel trunking with free number porting when you fund your Skyetel account. No limits on number of simultaneous calls. Quadruple data center redundancy. $25 monthly minimum spend required. Tutorial and sign up details are here.

blankThe lynchpin of Incredible PBX 2020 and beyond is ClearlyIP components which bring management of FreePBX modules and SIP phone integration to a level never before available with any other Asterisk distribution. And now you can configure and reconfigure your new Incredible PBX phones from the convenience of the Incredible PBX GUI.

blankVitalPBX is perhaps the fastest-growing PBX offering based upon Asterisk with an installed presence in more than 100 countries worldwide. VitalPBX has generously provided a customized White Label version of Incredible PBX tailored for use with all Incredible PBX and VitalPBX custom applications. Follow this link for a free test drive!
 

blankSpecial Thanks to Vitelity. Vitelity is now Voyant Communications and has halted new registrations for the time being. Our special thanks to Vitelity for their unwavering financial support over many years and to the many Nerd Vittles readers who continue to enjoy the benefits of their service offerings. We will keep everyone posted on further developments.
 



Some Recent Nerd Vittles Articles of Interest…