T-Mobile

[JGoodish]

I've heard DenverPilot's pirep from out in CO, but does anyone else have recent experience with T-Mobile in other parts of the country?

I've never really considered them because their coverage was poor and their network was slow, but it seems that they've been aggressively upgrading their 2G network to LTE. Rural coverage still looks thin, but perhaps better than it was a few years ago. I'm especially curious about spectrum, and how well the service actually works in practice.

T-Mobile's pricing model appears attractive, but I do depend on mobile voice and data for work. I'm still somewhat apprehensive about overall quality of service for that purpose, especially since their target market appears to be the 18-24 crowd.


Thanks,
JKG

 

[catmandu]

I put my aviation only iPad on their 200mb free plan. Excellent in big metropolitan areas, fair in large towns, crappy in my suburban-bodering-on-rural homestead. 50% of the time I still use my Verizon Android as a hotspot to get past the poor performance.

 

[romacpher]

For me, it's T-mobile on the cell phones, AT&T data on the iPad w/ForeFlight. One backs up the other. (Big plus for me with T-mobile: cheap roaming charges so long as you disengage LTE data).

 

[wsuffa]

Where I am, TMo is fine in the urbanized areas, but thin once you get way out in the country (with decent coverage along the interstates). At my rural property, AT&T and Verizon are better (ATT has a tower that I can see from my land).

Because I travel internationally a fair amount, I am on TMo and I'm generally happy. Verizon is on the second phone.

 

[denverpilot]

After a couple of months with it, agreed on all of the above. Also iPhone is a poorer choice than Andoid in that TMo is working on lighting up their 700 MHz spectrum in some areas and iPhone doesn't have the band. Not even the 6/6+. Not that many Androids do either but if you're going for max coverage on their network, get the latest phones with the "new" band.

Tech wise they simply can't compete with VZ. They don't have the bandwidth. They probably bid on a lot of it in the recent AWS auction but it'll be a while until that comes online and of all things, Dish Network just snapped up a crap-ton of that auction and no one is quite sure just why yet.

- Coverage in DEN is good. Typically 10x10 which gives about 20 Mb/sec LTE.

-VoLTE issues: There are gaps between some LTE towers and iPhone is defaulted to VoLTE so calls sometimes drop. They do not have their LTE to lower tech handoffs working. Forcing the phone to use LTE only for data and not voice can help on this regard if you're regularly in gappy LTE coverage areas. I'm not so I leave VoLTE on for the HD audio when calling TMo VoLTE to TMo VoLTE which is 70%+ of my calling. If I know I really need a call not to drop I'll go into settings and kill VoLTE.

- Coverage at my house is nonexistent but they maintain a roaming agreement with Viaero/Cellular One of NE Colorado. iPhone gets confused for a minute or two on my commute trying to decide if it should hold on to TMo's network or switch. One can also play games with forcing a carrier in the settings screen but it takes just as long as waiting it out.

- When roaming you'll get almost no data speed but voice will work flawlessly. Text also. But... And this is a big but for iPhone users...

- Spotty data means spotty iMessage. iMessage uses data not SMS. So expect weirdness with iMessage. I don't care but it'll drive some crazy in spotty coverage that they can get a standard SMS message but not messages from other iPhone users.

- Coverage in LNK was virtually nonexistent. It was really bad. Never lost voice/SMS coverage but data was usually useless.

They're most assuredly an "also-ran" carrier. You need to be careful to see if your usage and individuals care levels match okay with their coverage in your area. They do have a try before you buy thing where they'll ship you an iPhone 5C or 5S and let you try it for a week. Highly recommended.

As for me, still happy with it. Works well enough for half the price of VZ that I'll keep it. I'll probably augment it with a VZ based wifi hotspot device at some point when I go traveling just to make sure I have data coverage. Nobody beats VZ on that. AT&T is close but they have some technical challenges in some areas.

One plus to using VZ as a backup unless they're blocking it, and I doubt it... TMo devices will connect to their network and route calls via WiFi. Analyzing the packets, what they're doing is nailing up an IPSEC tunnel on port 4500 outbound to their network and then routing calls to the device over that. At home I poked some QoS rules into my pfSense firewall to give the IP addresses of the iPhones some "guaranteed" bandwidth at all times and so far it's working pretty well. We have good enough actual cell coverage at home to get low speed data and voice just fine so it's not really needed there and I keep VoIP calling off for the most part. I've also routed the Voip thing through network sharing from a Mac running Yosemite at the office (double NAT, once at the Mac, once at our corporate firewall) and it works fine there also.

The IPSec tunnel is NOT smart enough to try an alternate port number if all 4500 traffic is blocked like say, Skype will do, nor masquerade as port 80/443 traffic. Too bad. But it is what it is.

The VoIP connectivity WILL do HD quality audio codecs. Sounds nice. Uses just under 200 Kb/s with overhead.

There ya go. More geek info than you probably wanted.

Oh. VOIP calling also worked on a certain Nebraska tech company's guest Wifi network. I just happened to have it turned on and it connected.

 

[denverpilot]

^^ by the way, one of the people I call regularly is my wife, of course. With the difference in audio quality with HD in LTE coverage, I can tell before I ask if she's still in the city on her commute if I'm running behind her and in LTE coverage.

Heh. She sounds awesome on VoLTE and not as awesome on The older tech.

I can also tell if I've called someone and they're a TMo VoLTE subscriber. Data leakage via audio quality. They're usually surprised when I ask how they like their TMo service. Heh heh.

 

[Speed]

My brother and I both had T-Mobile for about a year... I live in Dallas (not the suburbs) and frequently found areas that had little to no coverage. Really don't expect that when you are in town! It was bad enough that we ended up switching over to AT&T when the rest of the family members contracts were up. All of us on a family share plan with unlimited talk when divvied out equals the same price I was paying for TMo, and much better coverage!

 

[Mrs. SixPapaCharlie]

We had T-Mobile for a few years, and it was alright when we lived in Lewisville, about 15 miles closer to Dallas. Then we moved closer to Denton, and the reception was awful. Lots of dropped calls, and our home line with VOIP worked about 5% of the time.

Bryan's on-call phone was AT&T, and the reception was great, so when our contract was up, we switched. It's been much better. I don't know that my phone has dropped a call yet.

 

[olasek]

Where I am, TMo is fine in the urbanized areas, but thin once you get way out in the country

I confirm that. I have a hard time making calls with TMo while I ski in Tahoe/Nevada, other skiers next to me who have different carriers are doing just fine.

 

[schmookeeg]

On my 8th year with Tmo. They only **** me off every 3rd year or so -- other carriers managed it within months. (this is Sprint and ATT for me -- never tried Verizon)

Works for me in LA, Canada, England, and of course Germany.

Doesn't work for me in the sticks of the USA. Works GREAT in the rural parts of Canada and England.

There is a really weird feature of their roaming, whereby you get a limited amount of data when roaming -- so while trying to get out of that hole known as Idaho, I ended up chewing up all of my data roam (by downloading a 50mb PDF trying to get road conditions... didn't notice I was roaming, oops) -- and I didn't get back to "unlimited" until Canada. The allotment is per billing cycle, and they were happy to sell me a pass to get data back. Very strange to be denied something that they gave me for free in a foreign country.

Saving me the headache of buying a sim card overseas is worth the occasional irritation with their service -- an irritation that comes less and less frequently.

Data from the airplane is difficult, but getting better. I can leave my phone on the glareshield and a text msg will usually get out in a few minutes.

$0.02

 

[Henning]

I've heard DenverPilot's pirep from out in CO, but does anyone else have recent experience with T-Mobile in other parts of the country?

I've never really considered them because their coverage was poor and their network was slow, but it seems that they've been aggressively upgrading their 2G network to LTE. Rural coverage still looks thin, but perhaps better than it was a few years ago. I'm especially curious about spectrum, and how well the service actually works in practice.

T-Mobile's pricing model appears attractive, but I do depend on mobile voice and data for work. I'm still somewhat apprehensive about overall quality of service for that purpose, especially since their target market appears to be the 18-24 crowd.


Thanks,
JKG

I've been using them over a decade and don't have issues with coverage globally. For service, they cannot be beat, and the international data roaming on rate plan (throttled but fast enough to work Google Maps and such) and texting, along with the support of Wifi Calling make them by far the lowest cost carrier when traveling. Now they have also started a rollover Data plan that hopefully will work out well.

In US areas with no coverage, they always seem to have a roaming provider, although the data plan may not apply like in Alaska.

 

[weilke]

In the digital pleiozaen, I used to have a sprint phone that ran on their PCS network but would roam on AMPS if no PCS was available. At least this got me phone service in the boonies. I know AMPS is extinct, but do the crummy providers like sprint and t-mobile offer that kind of fallback in their current models ?

 

[airdale]

I tried them twice, a couple of years apart. Both times they lied to me about their coverage. When I called to complain they blew me off and would not give me a refund. In both cases I had to contest the charge through my credit card company in order to get rid of it. Their only goal is to separate fools from their money.

 

[hockeyrcks9901]

I'm a big fan of T-Mobile but they have their limitations.

I live in a major city (Tampa) and I generally only travel in the vicinity of major highways or near a fairly large town. This generally keeps me in their service area.

For the price, they can't be beat. My wife and I have unlimited talk, text, and data and my bill is $100/month including all taxes. They throttle (slow it down) our data after 1GB per line.

This summer I'll be travelling to Europe and we get free unlimited data and text in all the countries we're visiting. Can't beat that.


All that being said, if you're not in a decent sized town they're service can be spotty. I've heard they are working on building a lot of towers but that may be a few years down the line.

 

[ethosunum]

Traveling internationally they can't be beat. I recently did NZ, austrailia, Brazil, Ecuador all with free data roaming and texts.
I tend to find the same results, in the metro area it is great one getting out though it falls off quick.

WiFi calling I have found to be excellent.

 

[Henning]

Traveling internationally they can't be beat. I recently did NZ, austrailia, Brazil, Ecuador all with free data roaming and texts.
I tend to find the same results, in the metro area it is great one getting out though it falls off quick.

WiFi calling I have found to be excellent.

Wifi calling is a biggie that keeps me with them, middle of the ocean, my phone rings over the V-SAT.

 

[JGoodish]

Thanks to everyone who has replied.

It appears that T-Mobile may have dramatically improved the quality of their network over the past year or so, but there sure seem to be a lot of "partner" areas, including in some not-so-rural locations and along major roadways (such as the PA Turnpike). I'm not sure how easy it is to determine when you're in a roaming area, but I think that the data allowance in those areas is rather low.

The other issue is that T-Mobile appears to be deployed mostly on the PCS bands, which means relatively short range and poor building penetration compared with ATT and VZ in many locations. The 700MHz deployments should help with those issues, but as Nate mentioned, there are very few compatible handsets which support that band at the moment. In addition, it appears that T-Mobile is temporarily blocked from deploying 700MHz in quite a few markets where they own the spectrum, due to conflicts with broadcasters. However, I suspect that those conflicts will eventually be resolved.

If I was a frequent international traveler, the advantages with T-Mobile may be worth the sacrifice in domestic coverage. Although 90+ percent of my use would likely be in strong T-Mobile areas, I suspect that I may notice the loss of ATT's blanket coverage in many areas.

I may still do the free trial just to see how T-Mobile performs during my weekly travels, and whether saving $25-$35/month over AT&T might be worth the sacrifice in coverage.


JKG

 

[denverpilot]

Thanks to everyone who has replied.



It appears that T-Mobile may have dramatically improved the quality of their network over the past year or so, but there sure seem to be a lot of "partner" areas, including in some not-so-rural locations and along major roadways (such as the PA Turnpike). I'm not sure how easy it is to determine when you're in a roaming area, but I think that the data allowance in those areas is rather low.



The other issue is that T-Mobile appears to be deployed mostly on the PCS bands, which means relatively short range and poor building penetration compared with ATT and VZ in many locations. The 700MHz deployments should help with those issues, but as Nate mentioned, there are very few compatible handsets which support that band at the moment. In addition, it appears that T-Mobile is temporarily blocked from deploying 700MHz in quite a few markets where they own the spectrum, due to conflicts with broadcasters. However, I suspect that those conflicts will eventually be resolved.



If I was a frequent international traveler, the advantages with T-Mobile may be worth the sacrifice in domestic coverage. Although 90+ percent of my use would likely be in strong T-Mobile areas, I suspect that I may notice the loss of ATT's blanket coverage in many areas.



I may still do the free trial just to see how T-Mobile performs during my weekly travels, and whether saving $25-$35/month over AT&T might be worth the sacrifice in coverage.





JKG

I don't think $25-$35 a month would be worth it. We're saving $100/mo over the VZ plan, especially after my prior employer's corporate discount fell off.

That said, VZ offered a HUGE discount when it was clear I was leaving and I said the magic word "T-Mobile".

I highly recommend anyone who actually wants to stay with their carrier call up and say you're leaving for the T-Mobile plan that meets your needs the best and let them "talk you into" staying with a nice discount.

Just like dealing with Dish/DirectTV/Cable back when I had that. And often insurance companies.

 

[JGoodish]

That said, VZ offered a HUGE discount when it was clear I was leaving and I said the magic word "T-Mobile".

I highly recommend anyone who actually wants to stay with their carrier call up and say you're leaving for the T-Mobile plan that meets your needs the best and let them "talk you into" staying with a nice discount.

Just like dealing with Dish/DirectTV/Cable back when I had that. And often insurance companies.

You must be more persuasive. The last time I threatened to leave ATT, I was asked by at least two different reps for the date that I would like to have my service terminated. Of course, that was before T-Mobile was a threat.

I might be able to save closer to $50/month with corporate discounts factored in, but that number should shrink slightly as my contract ends later this year, and ATT's lower handset rates kick in (for off-contract phones). Any savings from switching now would be offset by the depreciated ETF, so I'd probably wait a few months until I'm out of contract to switch (and take my iPhone 5s with me).


JKG

 

[denverpilot]

You must be more persuasive. The last time I threatened to leave ATT, I was asked by at least two different reps for the date that I would like to have my service terminated. Of course, that was before T-Mobile was a threat.



I might be able to save closer to $50/month with corporate discounts factored in, but that number should shrink slightly as my contract ends later this year, and ATT's lower handset rates kick in (for off-contract phones). Any savings from switching now would be offset by the depreciated ETF, so I'd probably wait a few months until I'm out of contract to switch (and take my iPhone 5s with me).





JKG

Check the 5s bands carefully also. It will move to TMo but I think it's missing one of the PCS bands they use in some areas.

Probably the best info out there is buried in the forums over at HowardForums.com. Strange name, great cell tech forums. And at least as many useless arguments as here, but about what carriers and plans are the best. LOL.

 

[JGoodish]

Check the 5s bands carefully also. It will move to TMo but I think it's missing one of the PCS bands they use in some areas.

Probably the best info out there is buried in the forums over at HowardForums.com. Strange name, great cell tech forums. And at least as many useless arguments as here, but about what carriers and plans are the best. LOL.

That's a good point. If I have to buy a new phone to get decent performance, it's probably not worth it to move. In any case, I'll probably give it a few months and see if they fill in more of their 2G areas with HSPA+/LTE, but I'm not holding my breath that they'll do significant build into rural partner areas.


JKG

 

[bullwinkle]

I was with T-Mobile in the greater Atlanta area for a long time, because my wife liked them and they had good packages. We recently switched back to AT&T...it was like the scales fell from our eyes. Literally we didn't know how abused we were by terrible coverage and even worse customer service until we got away from it.

For example, there was ZERO data connectivity from my phone the entire week at Oshkosh. ZERO. Could not check e-mail, could not load a single web page. Nothing. I called them and they could not care less that there was a week long event involving hundreds of thousands of people and there was no data. They said call back if it did not resolve in 3-4 days...

AT&T is not all sweetness and light, but they deliver what they say they will and their customer service is reasonable. I cannot say either for T-Mobile.

 

[JGoodish]

I was with T-Mobile in the greater Atlanta area for a long time, because my wife liked them and they had good packages. We recently switched back to AT&T...it was like the scales fell from our eyes. Literally we didn't know how abused we were by terrible coverage and even worse customer service until we got away from it.

For example, there was ZERO data connectivity from my phone the entire week at Oshkosh. ZERO. Could not check e-mail, could not load a single web page. Nothing. I called them and they could not care less that there was a week long event involving hundreds of thousands of people and there was no data. They said call back if it did not resolve in 3-4 days...

AT&T is not all sweetness and light, but they deliver what they say they will and their customer service is reasonable. I cannot say either for T-Mobile.

In a nutshell, those are my biggest concerns--that T-Mobile won't provide reliability sufficient for my use as a domestic business traveler, and have little sense of urgency to respond when problems arise. If my use case was more casual, then I'd likely prefer savings over reliability.

In the end, it's not surprising to learn that you get what you pay for with cellular service.


JKG

 

[bullwinkle]

In a nutshell, those are my biggest concerns--that T-Mobile won't provide reliability sufficient for my use as a domestic business traveler, and have little sense of urgency to respond when problems arise.

Your concerns are entirely justified here.

 

[denverpilot]

In a nutshell, those are my biggest concerns--that T-Mobile won't provide reliability sufficient for my use as a domestic business traveler, and have little sense of urgency to respond when problems arise. If my use case was more casual, then I'd likely prefer savings over reliability.



In the end, it's not surprising to learn that you get what you pay for with cellular service.





JKG

I wouldn't use them if traveling on business. Their network simply isn't as big and underwritten by the taxpayers who handed VZ and T their original spectrum for a song. (Via mergers anyway. The original A and B side AMPS spectrum led to a game of catch up that no one will ever be able to accomplish.

Even if that's not the real root cause, no matter how much they spend, they can't catch the other two. Every day you don't gain spectrum, the price goes higher. He who dies with the most Erlangs wins.

They'll always be an also-ran, but they work for what I'm doing. And my phone will easily hop back to VZ or even T if needed. That's a big deal nowadays. The compatibility is a good thing.

I have mixed feelings about their attempt at a merger with T being blocked by our government. Our government likes to pretend telecom isn't a natural monopoly and that there's real competition, but at the end of the day, either TMo or Sprint are going under and will be consumed by someone.

All Judge Greene did was take a horizontally stratified telecom world and vertically stratify it. In the middle years there were many pieces operating separately like a giant sheet of shattered glass, but eventually they all end up back under three names. Like the second Terminator movie. It all puddles back together and becomes the nightmare again.

TMo has significant financial trouble ahead in a few years. It's inevitable. Sprint already has significant financial trouble already. Out of the two TMo doesn't seem to be as big of a bunch of bumbling idiots as Sprint, just undercapitalized and under-spectrum'd.

 

[JGoodish]

No question that T and VZ have a legacy spectrum advantage, but I don't think that's TMO's biggest problem. With an owner who wants to dump them and no other lines of business, I'm not sure where they're going to get the capital to acquire significant spectrum or build significant infrastructure. On the other hand, I don't think that they need the rural footprint as much, they just need to do a good job at covering the bulk of the population.

T-Mobile's recent performance has obviously put downward pressure on consumer prices in the wireless industry, but that can only go so far. I would agree that longer term, a merger is probably inevitable. DT has essentially stated that they're planning to wait a couple years in hopes of a more favorable regulatory environment in the US.


JKG