Tech News and Commentary

Dave and the team discuss Amazon Alexa and medical advice, AT&T and 5G, flood management via tech, Facebook removing 1 million accounts per day through AI, USB removal, Sonos and Ikea's speaker, hotel website privacy issues, Garmins new watches from adventurers, and more.

Justin in Ore City, Texas listens on 97.5 KTBB and asked: "I bought a new Moto G7 and use it on StraightTalk. It was unlocked. I'm wondering why it's only pulling in like 656Kbps instead of 2G and 4G speeds, When I used to have StraightTalk phones with faster speeds."

Justin, if you were getting better speed right up to your upgrade your G7 may just be using different bands or even different technology.

Straight Talk uses towers from AT&T,Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint all you’ll see is Straight Talk but who you’re using in the background and the quality of the service they offer in your area will vary.

Straight Talk is also a low priority carrier, they purchase bandwidth but with a low quality of service, which means that if there is traffic in the network you’re the lowest priority customer as far as the background carrier is concerned. If you happen to be getting your service routed to a carrier that has suddenly done better in your area and has to handle more traffic, you quality of service may drop by quite a bit.

Motorola does sell the G7 as a budget phone, but it is LTE capable and should be able to get you normal speeds if they service allows it. It’s also capable of using something like 17 different LTE bands, so the problem here is most likely to be with Straight Talk’s agreement with whoever they are subcontracting to provide your service.

Either you or Straight Talk is probably hitting a limit with whichever carrier you’re being routed to.

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