Verizon $5 3G apocalypse

A few days ago Verizon started shutting down flashed devices.  My wifi puck died on the first day of the apocalypse.  Even though my smartphone was still showing $15/mo and was working I started sniffing around.

After seeing the excellent coverage of Verizon I decided to stay with them or, more likely, a reseller (MVNO).  My criteria are:

• maximum coverage
• don’t care about speed
• tethering (even unoffcially) – I am pretty careful with bandwidth; no streaming, youtubing, or D/L over mobile data.
• cost should be sane.  I ain’t payin’ $80 for internet.

I narrowed it down to two Verizon MVNOs;  Total Wireless and US Mobile.  The latter’s lowest “unlimited” tier is $35 at 1mbps speeds, throttled at 12GB (!).  Sounds good to me.  They also have a 5GB offer with a hard cap but no speed limit and hotspots are allowed.

I ordered their SIM kit and it arrived today, along with a used 32GB Nexus 6 I picked up for $99 (!) off amazon.  The one I received is perfect and actually has 64GB of internal storage.  It’s been a very good couple of weeks…

It’s a good thing all that gear showed up today because the $5 3G smartphone was shut off today.  :-0  So now I am running on the Nexus + verizon connection.  I like it so far.

The phone’s built-in hotspot tether is shut down quickly by the carrier; they have an “unlimited” tier for that, about 50% more, or folks can use the abovementioned hard-capped plan with the hotspot.  Total Wireless is set up like USM’s hardcapped plan, maybe a couple bucks less.