wireless carriers

T-Mobile is making changes that will impact subscribers' monthly phone bills, increasing costs per line between $5 and $10 per month. Those on older T-Mobile smartphone plans may soon find themselves switched to a newer, more expensive plan without their consent. While these involuntary "upgrades" are coming, there is a way to prevent this. Users can opt-out of these plan changes, and keep their existing data plan moving forward.

Curious what cellular band your iPhone is using in a particular location? The current radio band can be useful information when researching a cell phone signal booster. Cell signal boosters, otherwise known as cell repeaters can improve signal quality and cellular data speeds. These devices can be purchased and installed to increase the strength of signals coming from cellular towers, rebroadcasting them inside of a building. In any case, the iPhone features a Field Test Mode delivering information about your current cell connection.

The iPhone status bar delivers timely information in a user-friendly format. Cell phone signal strength is one of the metrics delivered quickly to users with a simplified bar graph. Fewer, smaller bars means a weaker signal strength, while more bars indicates the opposite. Of course, the better your iPhone signal strength on LTE or 5G the faster data is transferred. Stronger signal strength from a connected cell tower delivers increased call and video streaming quality to your device.

AT&T has made changes to its data throttling policies in response to complaints from unlimited plan users. Now instead of slowing down data speeds when a customer reaches 2GB of usage, the company will take this action at the 3GB mark. The policy changes brings data throttling of unlimited customers in line with the revised upper-tier 3G data plan which provides 3GB of usage.

Unlimited plans have been grandfathered in for some time now, with new subscribers required to select from tiered data plans and pay extra fees if they exceed the limit. The actions of AT&T, which slowed down data speeds for the top 5 percent of unlimited data plan users prompted criticism from several quarters, including lawyers.

Looking to unlock your iPhone 4S for use on other carriers? Now that unlocking fans are still waiting for a jailbreak software solution, familiar unlocking service CutYourSim has reappeared on the scene. In case you don't remember, CutYourSim had a brief business remotely unlocking iPhones for a price.

The company ended up refunding money and closed up shop after their "supplier" couldn't meet demand for its services. CutYourSim is now offering a permanent unlock solution within 15-20 days for AT&T customers for a cool $200.