Baffled by Verizon Wireless prepaid with MiFi 8800L performance

[Neal]

I'm away from my coach traveling home for an event. I brought my MiFi 8800L with me that is on the Verizon Wireless Prepaid unlimited 70/mo (65 with autopay). I do a speed test with my MacBook Pro and I show 100 MB/s down and good upload speeds. Yet the actual Internet performance is horrendous. For example Mac Mail can't ever seem to show good connections and poll for mail and update accounts properly. Internet itself seems okay. Moral is something is very weird going on with Verizon's prepaid network connectivity. I'll hold on to this plan until something better comes along but I am just baffled at the crappy service this plan actually delivers. Verizon is doing something strange to the Internet connectivity on prepaid it appears. Maybe it's focused more on voice or texts then again I'm guessing on behalf of what the heck is going on with another cellular provider that I just don't know. I'm in a city area, there are no excuses, it is not a time of day or tower saturation issue. I'm in a very good area.

 

[Joe Hogan]

Neal mine was also a nightmare. Sold the 8800L and put sim in Pepwave Check to see if the Jetpack 8800L has the latest firmware. Verizon Jetpack MiFi 8800L - Update Firmware | Verizon Wireless

 

[CoreyinWP]

I have seen consistent decent speeds from it

 

[Neal]

Speed tests are one thing. Actual use such as for mail delivery, iCloud sync is another. Seems they are managing by ports/services even.

 

[Buly]

We had similar problems with ours. Sometimes it shows there is a connection, but no internet. Or dead slow to the point that we switch to using our iPhones

 

[CaptainGizmo]

Neal, if you recall, this is THE EXACT SITUATION I b$tched about so loudly ever since June, when I picked up that PP sim from VECTRA (VZ reseller). They told me “suuuuuree, no problem...use it however you want; Verizon could care less.”

One word: B$!

After literally getting shutdown with “anything” streaming, I called multiple times before I finally got an HONEST answer from their “LTE-canned” support reps! This guy said 100% they PRIORITIZE based on device as well as category of data!!!!

He said, in so many words, this is how we take care of (screw) our customers:

#1 phone calls
#2 data on A VERIZON SMARTPHONE!
#3 data on THEIR tablets
....and the rest of you can go pound sand.

BTW, a buddy just learned of FAST.com which is a speed tester that Netflix provides to test VIDEO streaming. Wanna see how poor your service is? Go ahead!

Hope this provides some clarity and consolation.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Gizmo]

Seating at home on Cox's internet that claims a 100 megabit connection. I have Icloud time out several times and youtube TV is been buffering. I checked with fast dot com it was 97 and speed dot com is giving me in the 70. I switched off Cox Cable to Verizon 8800 and acting the same with buffering on youtube TV so far no buffering with ICloud email.