3G

Most people I know are using smartphones. I do know several people though that are using flip phones. While I would hate to be without my smartphone, I get that some folks just don’t want that.

3G was a phone technology introduced nearly 20 years ago. 4G followed suit, and just recently 5G has been introduced. I know 5G has had quite a bit of controversy, and its share of conspiracy theories, however, it’s here and being used, though it’s not fully implemented everywhere.

Whether 5G will take over the internet remains to be seen, it will undoubtedly be an adjunct to it, especially in the beginning. It promises superfast speeds, and superior coverage. But then, I live in Abiquiu, so it may take a bit more time.

If you are interested, an article on the end of 3G can be found HERE.

It’s likely that even your flip phone can do 4G. And hopefully, 4G is to be found where you live. I have a Samsung/Verizon range extender in my house that gives us a Verizon bubble here, but it’s a 3G bubble. Since it then feeds it into the internet, I am assuming it will still work next year, as it really isn’t feeding 3G to Verizon, but we’ll see. In any case, I can use WiFi calling which will functionally perform the same thing as the range extender.

To turn on WiFi calling, it usually is just a system setup toggle. A Verizon How-to is HERE.

Current smartphones can do WiFi calling which means they use an internet connection to call, instead of a cellular connection. Those are 2 different things but they do have some overlap sometimes. If that’s confusing, don’t worry about it, just try it out. Calling on WiFi doesn’t use minutes, just like doing searches on your phone while on WiFi doesn’t use data. Making a phone call on cellular DOES use minutes, and doing searches on cellular uses your data plan.
If you aren’t connected to WiFi, then whatever you do on your phone is using cellular.

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