After over 20 years with ATT as my cell phone service provider (and at various times land-line internet ISP also), yesterday I gave them the boot and moved all my Bizness over to GCI, the local Alaska Telecommuncations provider.
The proximal reason was that after getting my new phone hooked up (an HTC U11 I bought straight from the factory in Taiwan) it kept telling me that the phone was not hooked up to the web every time I left my digs and went off my own Wi-Fi. It was getting phone calls just fine, so it was hooked up to the cell phone network. So it was back over to ATT to see if they could diagnose the problem.
As it turns out according to the Sales Rep on the floor at the ATT Store, HTC phones have "compatibility" problems with the ATT network. Coincidentally, ATT does not sell HTC phones either anymore. Hmmm...
Now, the phone is basically little good to me if it doesn't access the web so I can monitor the Diner when roaming outside my cave and also use as a portable Hotspot to tether my computer to if my land-line service goes through an outage. I also pay for this privilege with ATT, an extra $10/mo not counting the bandwidth consumed. So I tell the rep that if she can't get my internet working on the phone, I am done with ATT. She couldn't, was mildly apologetic but didn't really seem to care that a 20+ year customer was walking out the door.
Over to GCI yesterday, after waiting about 45 minutes ( a Saturday is not a good time to visit a retail phone service store), the actual transition over only took around 15 minutes, and POOF, working 5G internet on my new Smart Phone!

Also the tethering works.
What's the story here? There's no technical reason the HTC phone shouldn't work on ATTs network, but you see they don't sell this phone. They only sell phones from certain companies, generally speaking Apple and Samsung, who are both charging outrageous prices for their latest and greatest phones. We're talking 4 digits here now for a fucking phone, which they generaly expect you to replace every 2 years. They also want you to buy the phone from THEM, and then it comes in a LOCKED version which you can't unlock until 2 years is up and your contract is up and even then they make it difficult. I know, I have had 3 phones unlicked, my original Iphone 4 and 2 Samsung Galaxies. They do NOT want you to buy unlocked phones straight from the manufacturer, and definitely not at 13rd the price of equivalent phones being marketed by Apple & Samsung.
Anyhow, I was able to keep my phone number so all you Diners who have that one, it still works. I also shaved $40/mo off my total communications bill with this change. As of now, it's a total Win for RE. The only issue may come in the form of coverage, ATT always had the best total coverage of any of the carriers, except in specific areas. It was the main reason I stayed with them so long. Not sure how good GCI's coverage will be, especially down in the Lower 48. Time will tell.
RE