T-Mobile Aiming to Cover 90% of Americans With 'Ultra Capacity 5G' By 2023

[AllergyDoc]

Cellular reception really depends on location; i.e., how close you are to your carrier's tower. T-Mobile has no tower in my town so reception at our house was never more than one bar. We got one of their hot spot things, which gave us max bars (five now?), until you pulled out of the driveway, then back to one. We switched to Xfinity Mobile, my son got a free iPhone SE2, our bill is now $69 or $23 each. We share 10GB, more than enough for us, with my son taking most of his classes online. LTE speed is far superior to T-Mobile. May not make sense for many but so far so good for us. (We went to T-Mobile five years ago after many years with AT&T. I thought T-Mobile's customer service was the best.)

 

[imlynxy]

I went through that tunnel a few times in February on a trip to NYC and the Lincoln tunnel while there. Never lost coverage with T-Mobile. Was fine the entire time, they made a lot of progress over the past year from when I was there February 2020. The only place I had no service was on the D train going into Brooklyn.

Nice to hear that. I like that T-mo is improving, this is very good for the competition.

 

[imlynxy]

This is why we’ve stuck with Verizon. Don’t get me wrong, they do their own marketing shenanigans. They’re also not the fastest in a lot of areas. But their *total* coverage is still second to none (AT&T is close though). I would rather have slower average speeds and coverage everywhere than have the fastest speeds with a higher likelihood of losing service altogether when traveling in certain areas. T-Mobile has improved significantly over the last few years but still doesn’t have the broad coverage that Verizon or AT&T have outside of the cities.

Sidenote: Verizon and AT&T’s pricing is actually pretty competitive to T-Mobile’s now (thanks to T-Mobile’s real uncarrier moves a few years ago). It’s not a given that T-Mobile is always the cheapest any more.

100% agree. I just want to add that recent situation with power outage in Texas showed that T-mo has no power generators on their sites. They said nothing about that during last investor “brainwash”

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

IF they can offer that where I live - I will consider them ...
In my home, and I do not live in a rural area, I can't even run a SPEEDTEST - Verizon, what a joke!
ha, 3 min later, ping 368ms download 0.17Mbps, upload 0.01 Mbps - Verizon LTE

Why are you still paying Verizon for such bad service? If you're not in a rural area, surely you have a choice of T&T or TM...

 

[max2]

Where does Verizon have coverage that AT&T and T-Mobile does not?

Curious.

 

[lpolarityl]

I'm really happy with Mint mobile, which is basically just a cheaper T-Mobile. Win win.

 

[durvivor]

All those fancy words t-mobile uses. So many million people with 5G Ultra. However I cannot find an information source on where there are any millimeter wave sites.

 

[spinedoc77]

I'd be happy if they just covered 1 consumer with 3g/4g, me. I still can't believe I'm in a major metropolitan region 40 minutes away from NYC and still can't get Tmobile coverage in my house.

 

[jz0309]

Why are you still paying Verizon for such bad service? If you're not in a rural area, surely you have a choice of T&T or TM...

at home I use wifi calling, so not a big deal, and they had better coverage when I was traveling, a lot, but now, it's kinda like not as critical anymore but also pricing was not a big difference, but I will look into this again.

 

[Biro]

I had T-Mobile 15 years ago but went back to AT&T because T-Mobile's network was so spotty - even though the company was much more pleasant to deal with than AT&T. Ratchet foward to 2020 and T-Mobile's expansion on the low-end LTE bands suddenly made its network competitive. I reupped with T-Mobile just before the pandemic and have had no problems - even commuting into New York City through the Lincoln Tunnel each day.

In fact, apparently one or two signal bars on my iPhone 11 doesn't mean the same thing as it did with AT&T. Even at one bar, I can download web pages without issue. When my cable-provided internet went out one day, I used my iPhone as a hotspot and was able to keep working on my iMac without issue. With AT&T, one bar would be virtually unusable.

So I have high hopes for T-Mobile's implementation of 5G. My iPhone 11 is not 5G capable, of course. But by the time I trade it in (maybe 2023) 5G should be truly usable for most.

 

[macsound1]

Where does Verizon have coverage that AT&T and T-Mobile does not?

Curious.

I live in the SF Bay Area and there are places Verizon has service where others don't. Its usually one side of the street vs the other, like a coverage shadow from a distant building or mountain.
Other issues that I used to have were very densely populated areas like Disneyland, conventions, ball games, malls during Christmas time etc. Verizon used to have fewer issues with checking twitter, sending and receiving texts and iMessages etc. No carrier was able to do things like upload photos to Instagram during these examples I'm giving, it was just bare minimum connection vs failing connection.

 

[kltmom]

Has it been that way for a while. Since 2016, I've always had good service from Sprint along El Camino Real. I only had trouble near San Fran. I'm concerned about changing my SIM card and having worse service.

We switched from Verizon to Sprint back in 2013. Heard all the horror stories of bad bad bad Sprint service but we never experienced it. We have 5 lines of unlimited data (never throttled), each with 50GB of mobile hotspot per month. Always have had great service/coverage. When Sprint merged with T-Mobile, I was worried that things would change, but fortunately we still get great coverage (cross fingers). When I got my daughter the iPhone 12 it came with a T-Mobile SIM; my 12 Pro Max came with a Sprint one. I noticed that while I would get 5G coverage about 50% of the time, she would get it pretty much all the time. As I got my 12 Pro Max about a month before her 12, I previously thought my spotty 5G coverage was just due to our location. While my LTE coverage was good, I wanted to take advantage of the 5G capabilities of my iPhone so I went to T-Mobile and had them swap out my Sprint SIM for the T-Mobile one and sure enough, I'm on 5G almost all the time. The service is lightning fast and reliable! We have Spectrum internet at home but we turn off our WiFi on our phones because the 5G service is so much faster.

 

[mrow]

I believe this means T-Mobile will be raising rates. I think the new plans are to that end with the unlimited 5G highlight.

I am a happy T-Mobile customer. However, I have no problems looking elsewhere if I don't like any changes down the line.

T-Mobile just rolled out new plans a couple weeks ago. Not only did they not raise rates but you are now getting more for the same amount of money. They all get unlimited 5G data, just like their previous unlimited plans also get free access to 5G data.

 

[MacBH928]

5G is snake oil. In reality, at 50Mbps you won't see any difference at normal use case. Its only beneficial for downloading huge files like backing up your phone or downloading videos, which you can't since all carriers put a a cap limit. My current cap limit is like 15GB/month I think. At 5G speeds (400Mbps) this will be over in 5.5 minutes.

 

[tonyr6]

5g is all hype. In many places its slower than LTE and the same dead spots exist with 5g.

 

[SFjohn]

So what happens to the news about T-Mobile automatically enrolling users for targeted ad data collection?

T-Mobile will automatically enroll all users in targeted ad data collection under new privacy policy

The carrier will collect browsing and app usage data unless they opt out by April 26. Metro and Sprint subscribers are involved as well.

www.gsmarena.com

Their website has been down for the last 2 days so I’ve not been able to opt out yet. 🤬

 

[Reason077]

5G is snake oil. In reality, at 50Mbps you won't see any difference at normal use case. Its only beneficial for downloading huge files like backing up your phone or downloading videos, which you can't since all carriers put a a cap limit. My current cap limit is like 15GB/month I think. At 5G speeds (400Mbps) this will be over in 5.5 minutes.

I have true unlimited (£30/month) 5G data here in the UK. Some months I have used more than 1TB of data. Although admittedly I haven't seen 400 Mbps download speeds since the 5G iPhones came out. Since then my typical speeds are more like 150-200 Mbps down.

 

[Reason077]

5g is all hype. In many places its slower than LTE and the same dead spots exist with 5g.

This will change when 5G rolls out on low frequency bands (eg 600-900Mhz). Mid-band 5G (ie: 3.6 Ghz) is really for high density, high speed coverage. Low bands will extend range and fill in gaps.

 

[MacBH928]

I have true unlimited (£30/month) 5G data here in the UK. Some months I have used more than 1TB of data. Although admittedly I haven't seen 400 Mbps download speeds since the 5G iPhones came out. Since then my typical speeds are more like 150-200 Mbps down.

Maybe you are lucky in the UK. I just looked up Verizon(USA) unlimited plan and its £50

 

[JBGoode]

5G is snake oil. In reality, at 50Mbps you won't see any difference at normal use case. Its only beneficial for downloading huge files like backing up your phone or downloading videos, which you can't since all carriers put a a cap limit. My current cap limit is like 15GB/month I think. At 5G speeds (400Mbps) this will be over in 5.5 minutes.

I never understood why people say this. Assuming your phone habits don't change how is a faster speed going to eat up all your data so quickly? Faster doesn't mean more. That song you're listening to or video that you're watching is still the same size and will use the same amount of data as LTE.

 

[Reason077]

I never understood why people say this. Assuming your phone habits don't change how is a faster speed going to eat up all your data so quickly? Faster doesn't mean more. That song you're listening to or video that you're watching is still the same size and will use the same amount of data as LTE.

From personal experience, having faster data does itself tend to change your habits a bit. You'll enable the 4K option in YouTube, for example. You'll start using streaming gaming services like Stadia which eat huge amounts of data. You'll let all those multi-GB software updates download right away rather than putting them off till they're really necessary, etc.

 

[happygodavid]

I’d stay at LTE or even 3G for the next 50 years if it meant I’d have full signal everywhere.

I just went in a hike and wanted to find gas afterward, and I almost got stranded. Speed is good enough. Coverage is ABYSMAL with every carrier. I’ve had Att, Verizon, and Sprint. They’re all garbage, in that order, from garbage to unusable if I go more than 5 miles outside a major highway. I’d pay $1000 a month for a steady connection and speed wherever I went. I’d give up a decent car and drive a 30-yr-old Datsun with rusted out holes in the floorboard for good cell coverage. Until I read a headline about improved coverage (not speed), I couldn’t care less about speed improvements from carriers.

 

[MacBH928]

I never understood why people say this. Assuming your phone habits don't change how is a faster speed going to eat up all your data so quickly? Faster doesn't mean more. That song you're listening to or video that you're watching is still the same size and will use the same amount of data as LTE.

If faster speeds won't change your habit then why move to a faster speed? You want to take advantage of that faster speed. Its like saying buying a car over a bicycle, then driving the car at 5miles per hour. Why did you get the car in the first place?

From personal experience, having faster data does itself tend to change your habits a bit. You'll enable the 4K option in YouTube, for example. You'll start using streaming gaming services like Stadia which eat huge amounts of data. You'll let all those multi-GB software updates download right away rather than putting them off till they're really necessary, etc.

exactly this

I’d stay at LTE or even 3G for the next 50 years if it meant I’d have full signal everywhere.

I just went in a hike and wanted to find gas afterward, and I almost got stranded. Speed is good enough. Coverage is ABYSMAL with every carrier. I’ve had Att, Verizon, and Sprint. They’re all garbage, in that order, from garbage to unusable if I go more than 5 miles outside a major highway. I’d pay $1000 a month for a steady connection and speed wherever I went. I’d give up a decent car and drive a 30-yr-old Datsun with rusted out holes in the floorboard for good cell coverage. Until I read a headline about improved coverage (not speed), I couldn’t care less about speed improvements from carriers.

There are services that offer satellite phone that has a signal every where in the globe like this:

LeisureComms | Thuraya Mobile Satellite Communications Company

thuraya.com

I don't know if it has internet or not though I guess it does but a slow one.

I can't blame AT&T for not installing a 4G tower in every 4square miles in the USA, I dont think any one can. I think its amazing they actually can cover the main cities and high ways. The land is just too vast.

 

[JBGoode]

If faster speeds won't change your habit then why move to a faster speed? You want to take advantage of that faster speed. Its like saying buying a car over a bicycle, then driving the car at 5miles per hour. Why did you get the car in the first place?

Explain what change in habits you will have because of faster downloads. How are you going to use your 15 gb so quickly? You can't consume content any faster and the content is still the same size....this whole notion that one will blow through their data allotment quickly because it downloads faster is baffling to me but then again, I'm not a phone addict. I use less than 2 gb per month and can't imagine why having 5g speeds would increase that.

(and why move to a faster speed? I don't think the choice is going to be mine to make at some point....)

 

[I7guy]

If faster speeds won't change your habit then why move to a faster speed? You want to take advantage of that faster speed. Its like saying buying a car over a bicycle, then driving the car at 5miles per hour. Why did you get the car in the first place?

We're talking mobile phones, not home internet connection. There is one and only one use case I can see where, for example, a 150MB LTE download speed --which I get --is not sufficient, and I'll discuss that below.

exactly this

You don't need more than 150MB to use 4K in youtube. And that speed should be plenty sufficient for stream game services like Stadia. And what multi-gb software updates are you downloading to your phone, assuming your phone even lets you do this, that can't wait until you get home, so you don't blow past your allotment.

The one exception, and that applies to the ultra-high speed 1gig 5G service, is being able to download a movie to your phone for later viewing. But that use case requires you are in a very narrow zone of blanketed high speed coverage, which in the near future is not going to change in terms of widespread deployment.

There are services that offer satellite phone that has a signal every where in the globe like this:

LeisureComms | Thuraya Mobile Satellite Communications Company

thuraya.com

I don't know if it has internet or not though I guess it does but a slow one.

I can't blame AT&T for not installing a 4G tower in every 4square miles in the USA, I dont think any one can. I think its amazing they actually can cover the main cities and high ways. The land is just too vast.

OPS comments weren't far off-base. While I don't believe 100% of the continental US could ever have cell phone coverage, popular destinations and popular remote locations should have coverage without resorting to a satellite phone.