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Carrier T-Mobile has more LTE Towers than Verizon?

A

avanpelt

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Jun 2, 2010
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Anyone catch this ad during the Super Bowl?

How is this possible? Do they have more towers in major metro areas? Are they counting those microcells they're handing out now as towers? T-Mo must be fudging the numbers somehow because their coverage is still nowhere near what Verizon's is. There is still a lot of rural/semi-rural America that has no coverage with T-Mobile but does have coverage with both Verizon and AT&T.
 
I caught this as well. You can make statistics say just about anything. Reminds me of the local Sprint ads I see touting how they're faster than AT&T and Verizon. I'm sure there's some city somewhere where if you stand on one foot with one hand in the air while hopping that Sprint is faster, and they appear to use those statistics during the ad.
 
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mingoglia said:
I caught this as well. You can make statistics say just about anything. Reminds me of the local Sprint ads I see touting how they're faster than AT&T and Verizon. I'm sure there's some city somewhere where if you stand on one foot with one hand in the air while hopping that Sprint is faster, and they appear to use those statistics during the ad.
Click to expand...

Hahaha, so true. I had Sprint when they first announced their new "Verizon-beating speed" and to my surprise, my city was one of the first to have the new coverage.

Never one did I see anything close to the speeds they advertised, I didn't even see a slight increase. That, combined with crappy coverage, was more than enough reason to leave them.
 
avanpelt said:
Anyone catch this ad during the Super Bowl?

How is this possible? Do they have more towers in major metro areas?
Click to expand...

There's two ways you can work out the numbers with this:

1. T-Mobile has to have a more dense network, so overall they have more towers to provide the coverage they do.

2. Not all of Verizon's towers were converted to LTE. The same is true today. They initially provided just enough LTE coverage to put some red on the map and provide basic blanket coverage, but a lot of the cell towers in between were still CDMA-only. This is changing as Verizon fills in their coverage.

Remember when VoLTE on Verizon kept dropping calls? This is partially why.

T-Mobile has the same issue in rural areas, but they have it easier: in most cases the towers can be upgraded with a software update and changing a few panels. With Verizon, it was almost entirely a rip-and-replace operation.

Ultimately, this is also why both carriers can claim all kinds of "bests." Verizon definitely blankets the nation with coverage, including rural areas. But, in the urban areas where T-Mobile provides LTE will usually get you better throughput and speeds than Verizon.
 
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It's another meaningless statistic in the grand scheme of things. I am on TMO and I am fully aware that their overall coverage is still behind ATT and Verizon, though the gap is rapdily closing, as is also vidence with TMO's gradual price increases for new customers. The reality is that this number, while it may be true (I don't know), is irrelevent in terms of user experience.

TMO v ATT v VZW ads now are like the Mac v PC of the early 2000's.
 
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Its actually simple and true. TMo says they have more LTE towers. Verizon says they have more towers (hence better coverage). Both can be true and are not contradictory.
 
Yeah it's a true statement, T-Mobile has more towers and a denser network out of necessity due to their midband frequencies. Verizon still has better overall coverage even though T-Mobile has gotten much closer than they were a few years back.
 
Ahhh, so T-Mobile is leading the viewer to hopefully make the false assumption that having more LTE towers than Verizon equates to T-Mobile having equal or better coverage than Verizon. Pretty slick there, Legere. It's amazing -- as much as John Legere says the big two are slimeballs, it looks more and more like Legere is just playing the game right along with them except some people give him a pass because he's "cool".
 
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In the end all commercials with colorful balls rolling around, statistics, graphs and other gimmicks are just meaningless.
If you're not traveling throughout the US every week then the coverage that matters to you is how it is in your home area and areas you frequent and use your cellphone the most.
Do I care if Verizon or Sprint has better coverage in south dakota or seattle or other areas that I will never get to spend any of my time at?
No.
Individual results will vary by location, just gotta figure out what works best for you.
 
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avanpelt said:
Ahhh, so T-Mobile is leading the viewer to hopefully make the false assumption that having more LTE towers than Verizon equates to T-Mobile having equal or better coverage than Verizon. Pretty slick there, Legere. It's amazing -- as much as John Legere says the big two are slimeballs, it looks more and more like Legere is just playing the game right along with them except some people give him a pass because he's "cool".
Click to expand...
I don't know that I would call it misleading more than playing the numbers game Verizon seems to have started. They want to invalidate meaningless statistics by giving their own meaningless statistics. So, I guess, yeah, misleading by responding toa misleading statistic lol.
 
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At least T-Mobile had the "balls" :D to have two Super Bowl commercials whereas the other carriers had none.

Sprint is the one that really needed a commercial. Just look at their stock price! (2.55 down 10.53%)
 
Well my experience with Verizon is just amazing. Every where I go with them, I get a solid LTE signal & LTE speeds are promising. For T-Mobile, I been to a variety of places with them & they have a promising LTE signal but some places are garbage compared to Verizon. Verizon will always be Number 1.
 
lordofthereef said:
I don't know that I would call it misleading more than playing the numbers game Verizon seems to have started. They want to invalidate meaningless statistics by giving their own meaningless statistics. So, I guess, yeah, misleading by responding toa misleading statistic lol.
Click to expand...
Except that the commercial in question (regarding the balls) isn't one of thos conflating meaningless numbers; it's the commercial bragging about VZW's Root Metrics results. Those results are consumer/user generated and via a 3rd party app.

Does VZW play the game the same as all of the others? You bet they do.

However, Legere is setting up a straw man in this instance.
 
scaredpoet said:
There's two ways you can work out the numbers with this:

1. T-Mobile has to have a more dense network, so overall they have more towers to provide the coverage they do.

2. Not all of Verizon's towers were converted to LTE. The same is true today. They initially provided just enough LTE coverage to put some red on the map and provide basic blanket coverage, but a lot of the cell towers in between were still CDMA-only. This is changing as Verizon fills in their coverage.

Remember when VoLTE on Verizon kept dropping calls? This is partially why.

T-Mobile has the same issue in rural areas, but they have it easier: in most cases the towers can be upgraded with a software update and changing a few panels. With Verizon, it was almost entirely a rip-and-replace operation.

Ultimately, this is also why both carriers can claim all kinds of "bests." Verizon definitely blankets the nation with coverage, including rural areas. But, in the urban areas where T-Mobile provides LTE will usually get you better throughput and speeds than Verizon.
Click to expand...

100% agree. Thats why if T-mo add 700A to every tower they will get the network with better characteristics than Att/VZW.
I also want to add that VZW has a very bad voice quality. Also people I know complain about drop calls since they started to use volte.
I have t-mo now and the voice quality is better than Att has.

BTW I don't like this T-mo's commercial, this guy didn't make me believe them more at all. Also I think it was better they spent 143 millions on their network rather than commercials. Take Costco, they have had zero commercials, but people go there.
 
willmtaylor said:
Except that the commercial in question (regarding the balls) isn't one of thos conflating meaningless numbers; it's the commercial bragging about VZW's Root Metrics results. Those results are consumer/user generated and via a 3rd party app.
Click to expand...

Well see, that's just it: the data was NOT user-generated. Rootmetrics provides two kinds of data: the user-generated stuff you'll find in their app, and commissioned tests where Rootmetrics does a traditional drive-along in a vehicle, testing devices in controlled environments... and whoever is paying for the test can define the parameters, like turning off VoLTE, and not testing specific frequency bands of your competitors. The latter is the kind of test Verizon is using for their "ballsy" ad. The data from this test is also up to a year old.

However, Legere is setting up a straw man in this instance.
Click to expand...

Properly-Sourced data seems to disagree. Same here. And here.
 
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scaredpoet said:
Well see, that's just it: the data was NOT user-generated. Rootmetrics provides two kinds of data: the user-generated stuff you'll find in their app, and commissioned tests where Rootmetrics does a traditional drive-along in a vehicle, testing devices in controlled environments... and whoever is paying for the test can define the parameters, like turning off VoLTE, and not testing specific frequency bands of your competitors. The latter is the kind of test Verizon is using for their "ballsy" ad. The data from this test is also up to a year old.



Properly-Sourced data seems to disagree. Same here. And here.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. Some good sources that I appreciate you sharing and will definitely look into. I'll still take info from Legere's press releases with a grain of salt if you don't mind though.

Finally, I still laugh at all of the braggadocio of T-Mo being fastest when most of the results are differences in Kb and VZW's coverage is far more ubiquitous in my areas of work and play. Each to his own though. In the end, competition is best for US (the consumer), and since I own no shares in any mobile corporation, that's all I really care about.
 
First, I will say that I believe these ads are good for consumer in the end. It proliferates competition, and it's up to the consumer to do his/her own research to find out what works best for them.

I live in the west metro suburbs of the twin cities..MN. currently have both VZ and ATT, but have done my own testing with TM in the same areas or home/work/travel/and play. All three carriers work very good at home. VZ and TM being the fastest, att slightly behind. However att shows a stronger dbm signal throughout. VZ is the most consistent with speed in all of these areas. Fast the majority of the time. With TM I had even faster speeds in some areas, but then in others it was slow, even crawled. That quickly ruled out TM for my usage for now- for me, reliability is complete key. Att has some slower pockets too, but it's still good HSPA speed in these few test areas. I imagine TM will improve over time, but I bet the speed in those faster areas will level off.

What is interesting about root metrics is that the data shows att being very slow (3-4 mbps) in some of the areas I measure as being fast 50-60 mbps...and it has reported that way for at least a year. Verizon is the winner for my metro area and I would agree with this overall. But RM does have its faults.

I think these statements are a lot like politics, you can twist the numbers around to make it "fact"
 
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willmtaylor said:
Thanks for the reply. Some good sources that I appreciate you sharing and will definitely look into. I'll still take info from Legere's press releases with a grain of salt if you don't mind though.

Finally, I still laugh at all of the braggadocio of T-Mo being fastest when most of the results are differences in Kb and VZW's coverage is far more ubiquitous in my areas of work and play. Each to his own though. In the end, competition is best for US (the consumer), and since I own no shares in any mobile corporation, that's all I really care about.
Click to expand...
That's the whole point of this thread. It's all ********. It's the pot calling the kettle black. Theyv'e all decided they want to play into the same ridiculous game.

As easy as it is to try any network out for free I am not sure I even understand how these ads even help change a person's opinions on the matter.

To add my own anectoatl evidence, where TMO is strong, their speeds are far ahead of Verizon. WHere TMO isn't strong you are laible to see no network, where at least Verizon will let you get a call out. Niehter network is goin g to compare their own weaknesses. Faster is faster. More towers is more towers. Better real world coverage is better real world coverage. Sell what you have better than your competitiors. Not what you don't.
 
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All I can says is wow, tmobile lte is fast.
Just got my sims and ported my numbers from AT&T.
Booya:D
 

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