Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I would absolutely love to switch to T-Mobile from AT&T here in NYC but it simply isn't nearly as good in coverage. AT&T consistently overcharges for slow speeds when they truly need to dump more money in their networks in big cities especially here in NY. The day T-Mobile improves their coverage here, I'll definitely jump ship. T-Mobile's speed is definitely great here.
 
Because they offer LTE in the least number of places across the US. Fairly easy to offer the highest speeds if you only need to supply it to major metro areas.
Not sure if one enables the other, but I agree that lately T-Mob's problem isn't speed so much as distribution. I'd switch from AT&T in a heartbeat if they had a broader network.
 
I tried Tmo and had to switch back to at&t because I didn’t have service whenever I would go inside a building in NYC. That was a couple of years ago, maybe I should try them now and see.
 
  • Like
Reactions: AlphaGuitarist
320 million people is a nationwide rollout, not just "metro" areas. The whole "metro" issue hasn't been true in about three years. 2017 TMobile is nothing like 2014 TMobile.

http://www.tmonews.com/2017/04/t-mobile-lte-comparison-map-compare-coverage-carriers/

I love Tmobile. So much so that I signed up for a business account and have 11 family members on the account I manage. With that said, their coverage is non-existent anywhere that's not within 50miles of a major city. Which is great, but still pales in comparison to coverage of ATT/Verizon.
 
  • Like
Reactions: burgman
That would be great if TMO had credible coverage.
Very true and I don't know for how long everyone has been saying "it's getting better".

Most price comparisons I’ve done had T-MO & VZW within $5 or so of each other. Sometimes VZW was actually cheaper.
I did the same thing a few months ago and had the same results - Verizon (our current carrier), T-Mobile, and ATT all were within $5-15 of each other. Even if T-Mobile was the cheapest, the up-front costs were an absolute deal-breaker ! I am copying and pasting this from a post I made at another forum from when I did the comparison. Again, these are numbers that I got, not something I found on the internet.

...and my wife asked me to check T-Mobile. With them, we would get unlimited data and our bill would be only $12/mo less than with Verizon. As far as getting new phones go, if we have perfect credit (we don't), it would cost us $450 up-front for phone down-payments (2 - iPhone 7, 1 - iPhone 6, and 1 - Galaxy S7) and their $25 "SIM" fee. If we have "average" credit, are you ready ? It would be $2125.87 up-front !! But, our bill would be $100 less (because we paid 75+ % of the phone's value up-front) than what we pay VZW today !! After I laughed at that, I told my wife we'll check the 'no-credit-check' option - $2905.97 up-front.
 
  • Like
Reactions: willmtaylor
I recently switched from AT&T and so far the speed on T-Mobile's network has been underwhelming, with simple web pages often taking forever to load. I've heard that telecoms can somehow game those speed-test apps. I wonder if that's at play here. Or maybe the tests focused on large metropolitan areas with good reception.

Sprint LTE speeds improved by 23.7 percent, but the carrier still can't match the big three.

Remember the days when Sprint WAS one of the big three?
 
I tried Tmo and had to switch back to at&t because I didn’t have service whenever I would go inside a building in NYC. That was a couple of years ago, maybe I should try them now and see.

They tried to upgrade service but in my experience around DC buildings, subway stations, back of big box stores are still go slow or dead zones.
[doublepost=1504790065][/doublepost]
Or maybe the tests focused on large metropolitan areas with good reception.

Or just areas with good reception. I'm in a large metro area and I can tell you service is very spotty.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 5105973
Funny. I just drove from Detroit to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and back, which is roughly 850 miles each way. My wife and kids were streaming Netflix/Amazon the whole way there and back, and only lost LTE coverage maybe 2-3 times for a minute or two on each leg of the trip (so maybe 20-25 miles worth of downtime).
I always emphasize that T-Mobile's coverage is adequate in major metro areas and along most major roadways. That said, if you went through PA and MD to get to NC, you were on major interstate highways and you had minimal mountain crossing.

We live in SW OH and on a recent trip to Myrtle Beach, with Verizon, we lost coverage for many miles, multiple times, but only when thousands of feet up in the mountains. I'm not talking about 'data' service either, we had no voice/text service even !
 
  • Like
Reactions: 5105973
AT&T has been horrible lately in NYC. I attached a recent speed test I took while walking in Long Island. Even in Queens I see speeds drop as low as 2 MB/s in a lot of areas.
 

Attachments

  • fullsizeoutput_dc8.jpeg
    fullsizeoutput_dc8.jpeg
    24.2 KB · Views: 89
  • Like
Reactions: WannaGoMac
Very true and I don't know for how long everyone has been saying "it's getting better".

I did the same thing a few months ago and had the same results - Verizon (our current carrier), T-Mobile, and ATT all were within $5-15 of each other. Even if T-Mobile was the cheapest, the up-front costs were an absolute deal-breaker ! I am copying and pasting this from a post I made at another forum from when I did the comparison. Again, these are numbers that I got, not something I found on the internet.
Yup. Precisely.
 
I couldn't care less about speed. Even 4G is more than enough.

The coverage of T-Mobile is very bad. Every time I take a road trip with my friends using T-Mobile, they would ask me to turn on my AT&T mobile hotspot
 
I would absolutely love to switch to T-Mobile from AT&T here in NYC but it simply isn't nearly as good in coverage. AT&T consistently overcharges for slow speeds when they truly need to dump more money in their networks in big cities especially here in NY. The day T-Mobile improves their coverage here, I'll definitely jump ship. T-Mobile's speed is definitely great here.

You must be kidding? I have ATT in NYC and its HORRIBLE especially compared to my friends on T-Mobile. I constantly get less signal, drop outs, and slower speeds whenever we do head to head tests (I am talking 1.5m vs 20-30m on T-Mobile). I will say service got even worse (if its possible) when i switched to their horrible ATT prepaid service from the postpaid. Their prepaid uses 4g and not LTE for voice calls, turns off wifi calling (the only thing making ATT usable in buildings here), and the voice quality is horrific.

I am counting down the minutes to get off of ATT next month. One thing important for T-Mobile, you must have an iPhone which supports LTE Band 12 which the ipHone didnt get until after the 6s.
 
Last edited:
AT&T has been horrible lately in NYC. I attached a recent speed test I took while walking in Long Island. Even in Queens I see speeds drop as low as 2 MB/s in a lot of areas.
How is 7mb/s horrible? You can do everything with that speed.

or do you mean compared to 30mb/s?
 
I was a T-Mobile customer once...for a weekend. Those three days were awesome. But the beginning of the 4th day proved that I was lied to as coverage at work was 0%. No way I'm going to spend 10 hours of my day outside of a serviceable area, so I switched to Verizon. So far, no regrets at all.
 
320 million people is a nationwide rollout, not just "metro" areas. The whole "metro" issue hasn't been true in about three years. 2017 TMobile is nothing like 2014 TMobile.

http://www.tmonews.com/2017/04/t-mobile-lte-comparison-map-compare-coverage-carriers/

If you believe this map, you are fooling yourself bad. Our local T-Mo offered a month free recently so you could try out the network in order to try to show people their Network was up to snuff.

I took a weekend to drive around about a 75 square mile radius to see how the service was compared to my Verizon work phone. Needless to say, it not only rarely hit LTE, it rarely had any bars at all.

You can color in a map of the US and say you have coverage everywhere. That doesn’t mean you actually have coverage. The area I did my test is shown under their LTE map as solid red.

The test was done on an iPhone 7 that had coverage when the Verizon sim was re-inserted. Granted, even Verizon is spotty out in my area, I ALWAYS have coverage. Not always LTE, but I have coverage.

If I was in an emergency situation I could die before I found a signal in the area T-Mo advertises they have LTE coverage as most of it in my area there is no service. At least I can get a call out with Verizon, while tweeting and instagramming my life threatening injuries.
 
  • Like
Reactions: willmtaylor
I have been saying this for a while now: http://speedsmart.net/wireless_index

T-Mobile became the fastest in the US shortly after Verizon and AT&T started to offer unlimited data. Verizon tho with there changes recently will likely take back the top spot shortly.
 
AT&T has been horrible lately in NYC. I attached a recent speed test I took while walking in Long Island. Even in Queens I see speeds drop as low as 2 MB/s in a lot of areas.

My finding as well. I cant wait for the iPhone 8 so i can get off ATT. The service is just horrible in NYC
 
320 million people is a nationwide rollout, not just "metro" areas. The whole "metro" issue hasn't been true in about three years. 2017 TMobile is nothing like 2014 TMobile.

http://www.tmonews.com/2017/04/t-mobile-lte-comparison-map-compare-coverage-carriers/


You're quoting TMobile's interpretation of the maps, not the maps themselves. The maps clearly show TMobile has large gaps in rural coverage. Just follow the links you provide back to the original source.
 
If you believe this map, you are fooling yourself bad. Our local T-Mo offered a month free recently so you could try out the network in order to try to show people their Network was up to snuff.

I took a weekend to drive around about a 75 square mile radius to see how the service was compared to my Verizon work phone. Needless to say, it not only rarely hit LTE, it rarely had any bars at all.

You can color in a map of the US and say you have coverage everywhere. That doesn’t mean you actually have coverage. The area I did my test is shown under their LTE map as solid red.

The test was done on an iPhone 7 that had coverage when the Verizon sim was re-inserted. Granted, even Verizon is spotty out in my area, I ALWAYS have coverage. Not always LTE, but I have coverage.

If I was in an emergency situation I could die before I found a signal in the area T-Mo advertises they have LTE coverage as most of it in my area there is no service. At least I can get a call out with Verizon, while tweeting and instagramming my life threatening injuries.

Does the Verizon iPhone 7 have LTE band 12 support for Tmobile?
 
Funny. I just drove from Detroit to the Outer Banks of North Carolina and back, which is roughly 850 miles each way. My wife and kids were streaming Netflix/Amazon the whole way there and back, and only lost LTE coverage maybe 2-3 times for a minute or two on each leg of the trip (so maybe 20-25 miles worth of downtime). I guess I didn't realize all 850 miles was all "major metro areas", by your definition.

Might I suggest you actually look into what things are really like, before you make ridiculous, untrue comments based on your opinion of the network status from years ago.


Someone linked to some maps from TMobile themselves. The maps showed good rural coverage in the Eastern US (where you were) but MAJOR gaps in the West. This is information provided by the company itself.
 
Just a shame that T-Mobile's 3G service sucks, at least for international roaming users. When I was travelling around WA and OR a few weeks ago T-Mobile data service would regularly disconnect after a few minutes. My other option, AT&T, wasn't stellar, but at least it was more likely to stay connected. I couldn't get LTE from either carrier, despite the iPhone 6s.
 
Someone linked to some maps from TMobile themselves. The maps showed good rural coverage in the Eastern US (where you were) but MAJOR gaps in the West. This is information provided by the company itself.

I read elsewhere that Verizon is actually using US Cellular networks in the mid-west, but in the contract the phones keep displaying Verizon in the display bar. So Verizon just roams... I think Tmobile has a setting you can set to enable roaming as well which isnt on by default.
 
320 million people is a nationwide rollout, not just "metro" areas. The whole "metro" issue hasn't been true in about three years. 2017 TMobile is nothing like 2014 TMobile.

http://www.tmonews.com/2017/04/t-mobile-lte-comparison-map-compare-coverage-carriers/
I like koolaid too, if playing Pokémon in urban settings is your use case T-Mobile works, if wanting the ability to make a phone call or play in buildings, parking structures, large areas in the western US, not so much.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.