While testing the new carrier and their excellent customer web interface [app.usmobile.com], I learned something quite interesting. US Mobile in fact allows customers on their Unlimited plans to switch the network at any time. You can do it up to 4 times during a billing cycle but no earlier than 3 hrs after your last switch.
I had initially settled for US Mobile’s T-Mobile-based service (“GSM 5G”) because of the international roaming perks that comes with, but I still would have liked to test their Verizon-based service while staying here at home in the States. So I made use of this nice on-the-fly switching feature to switch to their Verizon-based service (“Warp 5G”) just to check things out.
Thanks to eSIM this all takes place within minutes and can be done entirely on their website (in the past I’ve been skeptical of eSIM, but this is an excellent example of something you can do much better than with a conventional hardware SIM). I couldn’t do it from within their app, perhaps they’re worried about people locking themselves out if the phone isn’t on wifi. But once I had initiated the switch from their web page using my MBP it took about 5 min for my iPhone to tell me that a new eSIM was ready. Two taps later and I was on the Verizon network.
At home inside (wifi turned off) no big difference. This week at work I’ll see how Verizon coverage compares to T-Mobile. I did have one big surprise though. Standing on my driveway (and with wifi still turned off) I noticed my iPhone was showing 5G UW. On T-Mobile in my experience that meant almost nothing. Perhaps 5 Mbps instead of the ~2 Mbps I would see for 5G or 5G UC. The very best 5G UW I had ever seen on T-Mobile was ~30 Mbps. But now on Verizon my iPhone was showing me 450 Mbps for 5G UW. That’s almost as much as my iPhone gets on my home wifi (802.11ac AirPort Extreme hooked up to gigabit fiber). I have never before seen such a data rate over a cellular network. Neat. 