Had to cancel SIMple service. There was an inappropriate use of network classification, to control my use. That’s not ethical. I can’t trust a company involved in any of that. Of course, we all know, when it comes to mobile communication services, there isn’t a true competitive market in the USA, it’s virtual. Despite that some MVNOs are still better than others. [edit]
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Can you provide more details about your claim?
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I had various problems using the service, some are documented in other posts I made to this forum.
I was generally able to place calls, however on many occasions the recipient’s phone would not ring, or I would hear no ring until the other party answered. I was told by a couple people that they had unusual problems calling me. There were multiple financial services with which I could not use SMS to validate myself, despite paying for the plan, I would have to use another number for SMS to reach those particular services. Importantly, I was unable to sign up for certain encrypted messengers that wanted my number. I remember sending text messages that the recipient later said they did not receive. Some of these issues went away after I reported them. But the encrypted messenger and financial services 2FA problems persisted for me over a long period of time.
I don’t want to report everything I know right here, because this will actually help bad actors involved do the same thing, more unaccountably, to other people. I can’t put all the blame on Puri.sm, I think it’s really a market problem, but I believe the market problem also impacts culture.
I did some traveling around Europe and other countries before these ridiculous wars. I’m being kind by using the word ridiculous, and my position on that is the real reason I run into strange issues with various monopolized services. I have sharp criticisms. But to encourage these strange issues, the reason is portrayed as something else.
Anyway, the mobile infrastructure I experienced in other countries taught me that our market in the USA is more tightly controlled than I had realized before. When you go into a store and there are thousands of cool and unique phones, and so many one-offs with interesting designs, from different companies, and then you purchase any SIM from a number of different service providers at any street vendor, also selling hot dogs, and it’s all very cheap, you realize market protectionism is not as effective there, and those products and services are not attached to one another. Then when you go to such a store in the USA and see ten or twenty or so devices, each of which must be purchased with an activated plan, you begin to understand it’s the carriers running the show. Like I said I don’t put all of this on Puri.sm and I can’t take anything away from positive things they’ve done.
Remember AT&T was broken apart for anticompetitive reasons. I think not effectively enough. Over time reconsolidation has occurred, many times it’s even off the books. Some of the consolidation is ideological and starts with things like guidelines or community standards intended to protect certain folks more than other, my guess is it’s those folks being used to abuse the system most.
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Thank you for your feedback.
In that case it may be better to email feedback@puri.sm since you can then outline explicitly the companies that you had problems with and any other examples of badness and any other problems.
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It’s not really clear to me what you consider unethical cellular network practices vs known technical limitations of the software. The former has malicious connotations whereas the latter does not; can you please clarify?
Regarding ringing, this is a well-known issue. Ringing used to be managed by the carriers but many have dropped the onus onto the software stack. This is not yet rolled into byzantium and I would have to verify with the devs if this has already been implemented in later versions.
We’ve seen complaints that certain 2FA SMS messages are not being received by certain services. Signal account creation/verification is one known example. Again, I would have to check in with the devs and the MVNE to pinpoint the root cause.
Yes, please message Purism directly if you haven’t already. They are more than happy to address your concerns.
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Sounds dropping service for bad service, that I understand.
I wonder if Bell Telephone would have succeeded 140 years ago if customers avoided using the telephone because of unethical practices? When every call was handled by an operator who could listen in without telling you, every call was hand-logged (for billing) and there were party lines?
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Thanks for responses. Again I don’t want to reveal a whole lot. Except I do use multiple devices. I had 2 SIMs sent to me. There was info proprietary to the SIM relayed to me via email. There are a number of factors which open up possibilities. I’m not any kind of important person, but I do have some history and familiarity with telco networks, including at mgmt level. The extended outage raised my antennae. Also, recently I’ve seen too many this side vs that side funny things going on. The bottom line is I can’t use it, something is continuously wrong with the service, I don’t think it’s coincidental, nor can I expect a satisfactory explanation, it’s possible this result may have even been desired, it’s not anything for me to lose sleep over. I don’t think communications networks that disrespect users by design are ideal, and I know that’s not your ball of wax. I definitely can’t hold grudges either, that’s too much overhead to carry all the time. I would sing a song about the whole thing but I’m a terrible singer. I do stand by my use of the term unethical but I am not singling out anyone.
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Interesting question. Those were very different customers. The service came with much different considerations, plus the service territory, the tech, even the money, different. I’m sure there was unethical behavior but I’d wager it wasn’t as widespread as it is today. Probably significant “buy in” or faith in the collective of persons using it, out of necessity, would have been due in part to details you mentioned. But I also bet you’re right, customers did avoid using the telephone at various times for the sake of privacy, exactly as today. And they did succeed by some measures.
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