Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

Is that a bird or a plane in the sky? It’s John Legere sending a message to Verizon Wireless

By

t mobile legere verizon skywriting plane
It was about two months ago that John Legere promised to send a clear message to one lucky rival carrier regarding overage charges. You know, those charges you get when you go over your caps for data, calls, or minutes.

Legere asked fans to help him decide how to send this message by voting via Twitter. He gave them a choice of either a skyline takeover, skywriting, or a monster overage counter. The votes have been tabulated, and skywriting was the clear winner. This method involves a plane flying over the headquarters of either AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint to skywrite a message.

Recommended Videos

Now it was just a matter of deciding which carrier’s HQ to fly over. Naturally Legere picked the largest, which is Verizon Wireless. Of course, it can’t be a shock to anyone that Legere went along for the ride to Tweet and take a few pictures. The mission took place earlier today.

Related

HEY @verizon! LOOK UP!! NOW DO WHAT CUSTOMERS WANT!! #AbolishOverages pic.twitter.com/ghg4xsx9kU

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) October 26, 2015

The message is a little hard to make out, but it basically tells Verizon to abolish overages.

This all started about a year ago when Legere and T-Mobile stopped overage charges for good. Legere also started a Change.org petition to get the rest of the carriers to do the same. Two months ago, when Legere announced his intentions for this stunt, the petition had about 250,000 signatures. Today it has reached over 330,000.

Verizon wasn’t about to watch Legere get all the attention. Vice President of Communications at Verizon Wireless Jeffrey Nelson fought back via Twitter. He said “You probably need to use the Verizon network if you want to send a pic of your artwork #NoTMoSignalHere.” Apparently there isn’t any T-Mobile coverage around the Verizon headquarters in Basking Ridge, NJ.

Shortly after, Nelson said, “That time you found yet another form of communicating more reliable than the TMobile network. #SmokeSignals #Skywriting #PonyExpress.”

Nelson didn’t stop there as he had more witty things to say …

And #Poof @JohnLegere is gone. Unfortunately, so is your TMo connection. #BetterMatters

— Jeff Nelson 🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈 (@JNels) October 26, 2015

.@JohnLegere Hey John! Do what customers beg for: a decent network! #PonyExpress #Skywriting #TMo https://t.co/0c3oWYL4an

— Jeff Nelson 🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈 (@JNels) October 26, 2015

And Verizon’s Twitter account also chimed in…

https://twitter.com/verizon/status/658668022916382721

Will Legere’s tactics end overage charges for good? Probably not, at least for now, but it makes for great water cooler talk. Legere promised to do this with only one of the carrier’s headquarters, but you never know … he might wake up tomorrow morning and decide to do the same with AT&T and Sprint.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Robert Nazarian
Robert Nazarian
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Robert Nazarian became a technology enthusiast when his parents bought him a Radio Shack TRS-80 Color. Now his biggest…
T-Mobile wants you to test drive its 5G home internet
T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert

T-Mobile is taking a bold new step into 5G home internet with a new program that will make it easier for broadband customers to “break up with Big Internet.”

During a live-streamed event today, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert unveiled the carrier’s new “Internet Freedom” initiative, which he hopes will fix the “broken” broadband industry by giving folks an easy path to move to wireless 5G home internet.

Read more
5G coverage map: Where you can get 5G on Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile
Qualcomm 5G at CES 2019

Gone are the days when 5G was just a buzzword and deployment was experimental. Today, 5G is an established worldwide networking protocol built into most high-quality and flagship mobile devices. 5G stands for fifth-generation mobile technology, and it's destined to replace 4G (and older protocols) worldwide with speeds up to 100 times faster.  Not only is it faster, but it is also more responsive for overall coverage and reception. That means faster uploading and downloading of documents, images, and videos. For home use, it means replacing fiber-optic cable with fast wireless connections.

There are two forms of 5G technology currently in use: Sub-6 relies on lower frequencies to deliver a much larger network, but the trade-off is that you'll receive only marginally faster speeds than you would with 4G. While mmWave connections rely on much higher frequencies that deliver dramatically faster download speeds, those radio waves can't physically travel long distances or make their way through obstacles like walls or even windows, which reduce signal strength.

Read more
Ookla’s Speedtest determines the fastest 5G provider in the U.S.
T-Mobile smartphone.

Ookla's third-quarter market report and Speedtest Intelligence tests have determined that T-Mobile is the fastest 5G provider among U.S. networks across both cellular and broadband providers. Opensignal and Umlaut have also confirmed T-Mobile to be the best 5G provider in many categories.

T-Mobile managed to dominate the competition on Speedtest with little to no contest at 135.17 Mbps median 5G download speeds. In contrast, Verizon only barely scraped past AT&T with 78.94 Mbps and 72.46 Mbps, respectively. That's not all Ookla tested; it also tracked mobile and broadband speeds, dependability, and latency among the providers. You can see the breakdown below.
Mobile statistics
T-Mobile's median download speeds came out the fastest at 62.35 Mbps, while AT&T sat at 47.42 Mbps and Verizon at 39.91 Mbps. For latency, T-Mobile and Verizon tied for first with a speed of 33ms. AT&T was barely behind at 34ms.
Broadband statistics
Verizon Wireless was the winning provider with a 178.38 Speed Score -- Ookla's unique test is meant to fully encompass a provider's range of speeds. Cox came in second and Xfinity in third. Verizon also took the best latency, with only 8ms with Cox at just 11ms. While Xfinity took the highest Consistency Score at 89.8%, Spectrum and Verizon were so close behind there wasn't much difference to note.

Read more