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T-Mobile Introduces $70 Unlimited Data Plan, But HD Video is $25 Extra
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No, there is absolutely nowhere unless you have a tower attached to your building and never leave that building where TMO has better coverage than ATT or VZW. Nowhere. You may find a lot of places where you get better speeds, but coverage has nothing to do with speeds, and vice versa. I travel the country 2 weeks a month and have been to most cities large and small and I find AT&T puts TMO to shame every time.
A network is pointless for providing 70mbps if you have to drive around to find it.
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Your reply baffles me.... why do so many people reply to posts without researching?
For one, 4 lines with Verizon with a "large" data plan (without any worry of overages) would run you about $150 per month, barely more than TMO. No overages, north america coverage, rollover data, etc. And the VZW network is not even in the same realm as the half-baked TMO network.
As for AT&T, again with the uneducated post. I encourage you to research and see. I have ATT and TMO. My ATT phone works just about everywhere and I travel a LOT. TMO on the other hand is hit or miss. Elevators and downtown buildings are a don't even bother with TMO. To even compare TMO and ATT in the same group shows you've clearly got bias toward TMO to even think that.
Believe me, I'd love to go TMO for all 11 lines (only 3 with TMO now), but it's not reality, my users would kill me, and I couldn't live with myself having such limited coverage. I turn it on every couple weeks to see if it's gotten better in San Francisco, NOPE.
Bold statement.
I would say to you that at my house, where there is no tower attached or bolted to the side of my home, I have 2 bars of VZW and 2-3 bars of T-Mobile. Now, I am not partial to any cell phone provider. They are a business, they are for profit, but I can tell you that T-Mobile has been phenomenal in our home. I would have DROPPED calls on my VZW iPhone!
The Village that I live in is the same way, too. T-Mobile is better and provides more coverage overall compared to VZW, ATT, and Sprint.
Perhaps, though, I live in Nowhere.
Verizon is better overall, I get it. Like you, I travel, but where I live, T-Mobile wins out.
Bold statement.
I would say to you that at my house, where there is no tower attached or bolted to the side of my home, I have 2 bars of VZW and 2-3 bars of T-Mobile. Now, I am not partial to any cell phone provider. They are a business, they are for profit, but I can tell you that T-Mobile has been phenomenal in our home. I would have DROPPED calls on my VZW iPhone!
Perhaps, though, I live in Nowhere.
Wait, so Verizon would drop the calls at 2 bars but TMO wouldn't? Doesn't make sense. Why would either carrier drop calls with 2 bars?
It's not a bold statement... nobody is going to take you seriously if you make claims that TMO has better coverage than Verizon... it's just not reality. It's not to say TMO is bad, it's just not nearly, in any way, as good as Verizon.
I've been with T-Mobile for 4-5 years now. I had to quit AT&T because I could never get LTE at my house. Verizon was the same. T-Mobile was the only one who could get me LTE here. The coverage here in Colorado anywhere I go here has been perfect.
I have 5 lines for $140 with 10GB data each line. I also have 20 GB data stash which I will never ever get a chance to use and I see no reason to ever lose this excellent plan by switching to the new limited unlimited plans. T-Mobile is quickly losing that uncarrier status.
I have 5 lines for $140 with 10GB data each line. I also have 20 GB data stash which I will never ever get a chance to use and I see no reason to ever lose this excellent plan by switching to the new limited unlimited plans. T-Mobile is quickly losing that uncarrier status.
Thanks, although that's a bummer and deal breaker! Next.
No need to wait, here are answers to two popular questions.
You made a blanket claim indicating that VZW is better than T-Mobile everywhere unless you live in a building an antenna attached to it. I am simply saying that is not true. In my village, ONE PLACE, one spot, that T-Mobile coverage is MUCH better than VZW. I have had several dropped calls with the SAME exact iPhone 6s when it was on VZW and none on T-Mobile in my home!
Well, I feel lucky now..
Here in Ireland I pay 15€/mo for 30GB of 4G data (tethering allowed) and I don't know how many minutes/text because I mainly use FaceTime and WhatsApp.
Speed could be better, but.. I won't complain!
The advantage is your service provider only needs to provide service to a population that's less than the population of 50% of the states in the United States, so their cost to provide you this service is low.
You compare prices in other bigger countries like China or even Canada, then you'll see the US prices are actually better.
Yea the days where you can easily rip apart T-Mobile are pretty much gone. Obviously no one can disparage Verizon for coverage obviously but for the most part T-Mobile is still just lacking in low frequency spectrum and some rural areas. It's kind of hard to compete with the big 2 who own it all
So does a VPN really bypass the BingeOn for video? For example if I have a VPN on and watching Netflix I can stream it on HD?
Yeah but then the system doesn't know it's video traffic so you'll hit your throttle pretty fast.
Does the current SC unlimited throttle? I don't know cause I'm on the 2GB plan. The bottom line is everyone who thinks they're circumventing the system talking about using VPN to disguise the data from being downscaled isn't thinking about the flip side. Using VPN means you're masking the traffic so they don't know what it is... it'll just look like unmarked packets, so they'll charge it against your regular plan.
For example, if you watch a HD Movie that currently would be under binge-on free data.. say it's a 2 hour movie and uses 1.5 GB of data. It'll be billed as no data usage because TMO sees it as video zero rate data. Say you switch to the new plan. If you watch the same movie it'll scale down to say 500 MB of data, but still be billed as a zero rated data because it sees it as video data that's free. If you use VPN, it bypasses the detection method, and therefor will look no different than app or web page data, thus going against the 21 GB before they start throttling you. So if the new plan starts throttling you at 21 GB, watching this same movie via VPN will retire 1.5 of 21 GB of data in ONE movie.
Make sense now? It's a six on one hand, half dozen on the other.
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I wish people would educate themselves as to what VPN does. It bypasses traffic packet and header detection. It basically makes all your data look the same. So if using VPN there's no "free movie watching" ... anything you do while you are connected to VPN will appear as regular data traffic and count toward your allotment or threshold toward throttle.
The UK is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, and from that point of view the price difference could possibly be explained by the population density.
However, the explanation does not seem to be that good with some other European countries. For example, Sweden, Finland and Norway are all relatively sparsely populated countries (61, 46, and 36 people per square mile) with very good cellular coverage and low cost unlimited data plans. Sweden has probably one of the highest population coverage of LTE networks at the moment (two different networks with both > 99 %).
One could argue that the geographic size of the US makes things different. It is possible, but only if the average geographic distance of a phone call is longer than that in Europe (and even in that case only if the distance effect is not offset by the economy of scale). In that case more fibre would be needed to transfer the data. But even this explanation seems to be ungrounded, as the cost of transferring data in the net does not seem to depend much on the distance.
The telecom companies in Europe do not receive public subsidies because it would be against the EU legislation. In some countries the frequency licence fees are extremely high (most notably in Germany), which reflects on the consumer prices. Not all countries are equally inexpensive.
It seems that the reasons behind the price difference over the Atlantic are mostly historical. Especially the Nordic countries have made their living on cellular phones and networks (Ericsson, Nokia), and the legislative environment has been quite favourable since the early 90s. The companies have 20+ years of experience with GSM-based (GSM/2G/3G/4G) technology, and the expensive infrastructure investments (roads, fibres, masts) have been carried out earlier. The tradition of unlocked phones and ease of swapping to another operator have kept the margins low.
In the long run it seems likely that the European prices will go up (due to investments required to alleviate network congestion) and the US prices will come down. Usually almost all consumer prices are significantly lower in the US, and unless the US regulators mess things up, this will at some point apply to mobile networks, as well.
Wow, so much has changed since then and the pricing for an individual line has raised significantly; I'm glad I kept my Select Choice Unl TT+D $25 plan, which I think only a handful are left. I even thought I was getting ripped off when T-mobile they asked me to change it to that plan years ago lol
It should be noted unless you have a phablet phone like the iPhone 6+/6S+ or the Samsung Galaxy Note series, paying an extra $25/month for unlimited resolution for streaming video is NOT worth the money. 480p already looks pretty good on the iPhone 5, 5S, SE and 6/6S series anyway.
No it does not. You need your eye's checked. I can easily tell between 720p and cruddy 480p even on a iPod or 4" iPhone screen.
However in the sense of agreeing just watching some YouTube clips should not matter. However I will never watch a movie or TV show on the cell network at 480p.
For me, if it means I can watch as much as I want whenever I want, then 480p will do. However, if it's something like sci-fi or fantasy that requires you to enjoy it in HD, I'd probably wait until I'm at home or at a Wi-Fi access point.
I notice a difference, too, but that doesn't mean that you or anyone else should be throwing out insults in this forum.
Sorry about that. I can get heated when people say that they can't tell SD from HD. Same thing when I had streaming issues with Netflix years ago and people use to say SD looks fine why are you complaining when I said it looks like mud worse than DVD up covert which blows it away.
[doublepost=1471725247][/doublepost]Also back on topic will this affect music freedom for those on the Simple Choice plan? I hope they don't decide to get rid of that saying but you can get "unlimited streaming" including music. Music streaming is the more important feature as I don't care about video.
[doublepost=1471725247][/doublepost]Also back on topic will this affect music freedom for those on the Simple Choice plan? I hope they don't decide to get rid of that saying but you can get "unlimited streaming" including music. Music streaming is the more important feature as I don't care about video.