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Carrier T-Mobile in WA
- Thread starter MJedi
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Hey I live in federal way near wild waves, the tower near are house just got LTE like a week ago and my speeds are about 30-40 Mbps down and about 5-10 up. Tmobile has great service in the whole Seattle/Tacoma area. They have a lot of LTE live in Seattle, Auburn, Kent, downtown Tacoma, puyallup, bonneylake, and are expanding everyday(no joke). Seattle is auctally one of tmobile best markets, they have lots of spectrum here and their current LTE deployment here is 2*10 LTE. They should be able to get 2 by 20 or 2 by 15 running by next summer in are area. Also in areas that are not covered they have extremely fast hspa+. Tmobile is really good in the Seattle/Tacoma area and You won't regret switching.
The LTE here in the Seattle metro is actually decent, I can't say it's the best just because building penetration is really bad, i.e. when you get inside a building in downtown Seattle the reception goes back to Edge or worse.
Thanks! I work near where you live, so it's good to know that LTE is there now.
Hm, that's not good.
As far as building penetration when on LTE it's not bad and I do get bumped down to 4g sometimes when in buildings but I barley ever get bumped down to edge. Also some phones are having rough transitions from LTE to 4g but I do believe it will get fixed.
I really want to switch to T-mobile, and probably will, but I don't want to end up just missing the coverage I have with ATT. I live in the Seattle area - on T-mobile's coverage map they show my neighborhood as having excellent coverage. Once my girlfriend and are in our house however, she only gets 2-3 bars at most on the upstairs level, and practically nothing in the basement. I really want to switch to t-mobile for a few reasons, but yeah, dilemma.
My dilemma is that we get bad AT&T reception at our house. We miss calls and text messages arrive hours later, if they ever get to us. My in-laws have T-Mobile, and have no trouble at our house. But when we are outside, AT&T has better reception overall. I'm still on the unlimited data plan, but I'm aware of that AT&T throttles and can never get Personal Hotspot. With T-Mobile, you get true unlimited, right? And Personal Hotspot is included in the plan. Plus their family plan is less expensive, especially once you pay off the phone.
So, we got our T-Mobile service. While it's great at home, my iPhone 4S only gets EDGE inside the building at work in Federal Way. I can get 4G on it when I'm near a window. I reported the problem to T-Mobile, and they will supposedly have engineering check on this area. If the put up a new tower nearby as mentioned, then I hope this gets resolved.
And it's not just here at work. My wife volunteers at a church at University Place, and she only gets EDGE on her T-Mobile iPhone 5s. I reported that issue as well and suggested that T-Mobile have engineering check it out like in Federal Way, but the rep said I would need to call Technical Care first for additional support. I got a different rep this 2nd time, so he wasn't as helpful as the first rep.
At these 2 places, having great reception is important to us. If these don't get fixed soon, we may have to stick with AT&T.
And it's not just here at work. My wife volunteers at a church at University Place, and she only gets EDGE on her T-Mobile iPhone 5s. I reported that issue as well and suggested that T-Mobile have engineering check it out like in Federal Way, but the rep said I would need to call Technical Care first for additional support. I got a different rep this 2nd time, so he wasn't as helpful as the first rep.
At these 2 places, having great reception is important to us. If these don't get fixed soon, we may have to stick with AT&T.
Check out this coverage map. Put in the zip code and it will show you T-Mobiles LTE coverage.
http://sensorly.com/map/4G/US/USA/T-Mobile/lte_310260
I switched to T-Mobile when the iPhone 5s comes out. I have been an AT&T subscriber since the iPhone 3G and its network is better and better in the Seattle-metro area.
Now I have been using my iPhone 5s under T-Mobile network for a month, I can say it is no AT&T especially indoor. I'm surprised T-Mobile doesn't do a good job even in the Bellevue area.
Weeks ago, I gave my iPhone 5 (w/AWS band) to my mum and also switched to T-Mobile from AT&T (iPhone 4S). Commuting between downtown Seattle and Bellevue, she noticed her iPhone 5 showed No Network quite more often.
I am a bit worry since the company is doing all these 'un-carrier' promotion and forget the network coverage/quality.
Now I have been using my iPhone 5s under T-Mobile network for a month, I can say it is no AT&T especially indoor. I'm surprised T-Mobile doesn't do a good job even in the Bellevue area.
Weeks ago, I gave my iPhone 5 (w/AWS band) to my mum and also switched to T-Mobile from AT&T (iPhone 4S). Commuting between downtown Seattle and Bellevue, she noticed her iPhone 5 showed No Network quite more often.
I am a bit worry since the company is doing all these 'un-carrier' promotion and forget the network coverage/quality.
If we had to decide right now, I would stick with AT&T. It's a frustrating situation, but if we can't get good reception in the places we always go, then why pay for the service? Yeah, it's annoying at home, but we have wi-fi and a landline. I really wanted to like T-Mobile, but they need to improve their coverage.
I switched from AT&T to Verizon back in June because I was able to take over an unlimited plan from a friend and I kind of regret it. Sure Verizon has LTE everywhere, and I do mean everywhere around here. But the LTE speeds leave much to be desired. In downtown Tacoma, sure I can up to 50Mb/s but I would say the average LTE speed I get around Tacoma/Olympia/Seattle is well below 10Mb/s.
This is the reason I stopped using verizon for my iPad data. Their LTE is all over sure, but their speeds are drastically inconsistent. In some areas it's as slow as 3G... At least AT&T has mostly consistent LTE speeds. And their 4G/HSPA+ network has much improved over the years.
T-Mobiles network is undergoing a huge network upgrade right now and that's the reason for seeing a lot of edge and no service on your phone and waiting like 30 seconds for it to connect to their 4g or lte network. This happened with their original 3g rollout but got a lot better over time.
I from experience can say that tmobiles network 1 year ago was a lot better here in seattle before the lte and network modernization started. Since then my phone has had rough transactions between 4g and lte and oftens drops to edge or no service or 4g hspa has been pretty crappy lately.
This will get fixed overtime.
I from experience can say that tmobiles network 1 year ago was a lot better here in seattle before the lte and network modernization started. Since then my phone has had rough transactions between 4g and lte and oftens drops to edge or no service or 4g hspa has been pretty crappy lately.
This will get fixed overtime.
Oh yes I know what you mean. During the day here at my home, I have 4 to 5 bars of LTE, and the speeds average about 0.8Mb/0.6Mb until about midnight.
That would be nice. I'd love to switch to T-Mobile when my AT&T contract is up next year.
I tried T-Mobile 6 months ago, and my iPhone 4S was only picking up EDGE. Today, I'm getting 4G on it. So, they are making progress. Maybe in another 6 months, they'll have better coverage at the places we go. But until then, we're stuck with AT&T.
Where it works, it works GREAT. Where it doesn't, life is miserable.
I use it for my iPad as I tried cutting over from ATT to TMO, and it just doesn't work where I need it (SFO is searching for service or EDGE\4G, no reliable LTE). SeaTac coverage is ok around the airport, mostly LTE, but once you cross the bridge north of downtown Seattle it gets iffy.
My major beef with T-Mobile is the indoor coverage, or lack thereof. If you live in a wood construction building with nothing around you'll likely be okay, but if you live in a building that's modern and cement\block\metal studs, you're going to have an issue.
But with all that said, it is what it is... drastically less expensive than ATT or VZW (and even Sprint), and on top of that you get some great bonus extras (international data unlimited, international texting, etc)... so those extras could mean $500 a month to you comparing to ATT, or they could be completely meaningless.
What is good is the fact that a carrier is doing this in America, and when ATT gets customers in the thousands each day, calling to cancel and go to T-Mobile, they're going to take notice, and have to do something to at least stave the exodus.
I use it for my iPad as I tried cutting over from ATT to TMO, and it just doesn't work where I need it (SFO is searching for service or EDGE\4G, no reliable LTE). SeaTac coverage is ok around the airport, mostly LTE, but once you cross the bridge north of downtown Seattle it gets iffy.
My major beef with T-Mobile is the indoor coverage, or lack thereof. If you live in a wood construction building with nothing around you'll likely be okay, but if you live in a building that's modern and cement\block\metal studs, you're going to have an issue.
But with all that said, it is what it is... drastically less expensive than ATT or VZW (and even Sprint), and on top of that you get some great bonus extras (international data unlimited, international texting, etc)... so those extras could mean $500 a month to you comparing to ATT, or they could be completely meaningless.
What is good is the fact that a carrier is doing this in America, and when ATT gets customers in the thousands each day, calling to cancel and go to T-Mobile, they're going to take notice, and have to do something to at least stave the exodus.
I'm using the same iPhone 4S that I used back then with T-Mobile, so they most likely refarmed the Puget Sound area to support non-AWS HSPA devices.
Their reframed pcs 4g is nowhere even close as good coverage as their aws band. Going from a non aws iPhone 5 to aws iPhone 5s was a night and day difference for me as far as 4g coverage.
