I'd gladly pay $10/mo more for Verizon if it means I can have coverage inside my own house, in a relatively suburban area. It's absurd how spotty T-Mobile is.
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T-Mobile Offered Fastest LTE Speeds in the First Half of 2017
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T-Mobile recently ran billboards around the Twin Cities claiming they now have 4x the coverage! AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint could never do the same because you can't have something like 348% coverage. It's a great accomplishment when all of your competition has offered that for 5+ years now and they're still behind the pack with coverage.
I switched to T-Mobile about a year ago in Boston and found it to be nothing but stellar. They offer free incentives, last summer I had $10 Lyft rides for about 4 weeks. Plus unlimited video and audio streaming that doesn't decrease your data plan. Crazinesss. I highly recommend making the switch.
Aaaaaaaah yes, your anecdotal singular experience represents the source of truth even though T-Mobiles own coverage maps show your claim doesn't represent that of the truth across the US.
Yeah, it works great*.
* - if you live in an area where they provide service. Suffice to say that I don't. Additionally, some of the bandwidths they use don't have the greatest penetration through structures. I can't count the # of people I know who say it works GREAT..until you go inside. LOL
* - if you live in an area where they provide service. Suffice to say that I don't. Additionally, some of the bandwidths they use don't have the greatest penetration through structures. I can't count the # of people I know who say it works GREAT..until you go inside. LOL
Where in NYC are you? What phone do you have? I have excellent service in Manhattan below 101st (never go north of there so I can’t comment) on the east or west side all the way down to the financial district. Same in the Williamsburg/Greenpoint area in Brooklyn and LIC in Queens. iPhone 7 Plus here. Speeds are super fast and I’ve always got great signal strength. If you’re using a 6 or older though you’re missing out on LTE band 12 capability aka 700MHz spectrum that travels longer distances and through buildings better.
When was the last time you tried it? You may want to go grab a prepaid SIM and give them a try again if you have a 6s or newer.
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Getting ready to try Virgin Mobile's $1 a month deal. TMobile is ok, but I'm starting to realize the level of service in terms of speed and reliability seems to be the same for all of these companies - at least in the places I travel to and I'd rather pay $1 a month for something I don't use often than $75. Then when it doesn't work, I'll just go "Eh, it's only $1."
Define "mid-west".
My brother-in-law is an operations director with a large wireless tower company (they build, maintain, lease space, etc towers for all of the big boys) so I may ask him about this - the part about VZW using US Cellular's network.
if you happen to live and work in a market where the switch wouldn't leave you in the cellular dark.
I live about 20 miles north of Reno. I have about 2 bars of coverage at my house with Tmobile. Since I spend about 95% of my time between my house and my work in South Reno, Tmobile's coverage is sufficient for me. But if you drive 5 miles outside of Reno, signal drops like a rock. Granted I live in the Sierras so the terrain is rather mountainous, but my wife use to be with Verizon and she got at least 3G just about anywhere where as I would be vacillating between GPRS and No Service.
Am I gonna switch back to Verizon? No because they are more expensive and I'm mostly satisfied with Tmobile's coverage. But I have to admit that Verizon is years ahead in deployment in the region I live.
Am I gonna switch back to Verizon? No because they are more expensive and I'm mostly satisfied with Tmobile's coverage. But I have to admit that Verizon is years ahead in deployment in the region I live.
T-Mobile was the carrier with the fastest mobile network in the United States during the first half of 2017, according to a new U.S. Market Report for Mobile Broadband shared this morning by Ookla.
The carrier scored a 23.17 using Ookla's new "Speed Score" metric that combines low-end, median, and top-end performance for both upload and download speeds. Ookla says this is a comprehensive metric combining all factors that "matter to a good network experience" into a single score.
Coming in after T-Mobile was Verizon, with a Speed Score of 21.13, while AT&T came in third with a score of 20.05 and Sprint brought up the rear with a score of 15.39.
According to Ookla, T-Mobile's "tightly-spaced cell site grid" and smaller subscriber base gave it an edge over Verizon and AT&T, both of whom are dealing with higher traffic loads since their unlimited plans were introduced last year.
While Verizon has managed to deliver "consistent and reliable performance" across its network despite the unlimited plans, the rollout of AT&T's unlimited plans resulted in a "notable drop in performance."
Sprint, unsurprisingly, had the slowest mobile network with a Speed Score of 15.39, despite improvements made over the course of the last year. From June of 2016 to June of 2017, Sprint LTE speeds improved by 23.7 percent, but the carrier still can't match the big three.While the above chart information covers the United States as a whole, Ookla also compared mobile performance data in the 100 most populated Cellular Market Areas within the country. The rankings were the same, but T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless were nearly neck and neck. Across the board, users in populated cellular markets see higher speeds.
Mobile performance by carrier varies greatly from area to area, so while T-Mobile may have the best overall network speeds, AT&T or Verizon could have a significant edge depending on where a user is located. All four carriers are aggressively pursuing improved LTE speeds and network expansion through spectrum purchases, refarming legacy spectrum (like ending 3G networks), network densification, relay solutions, and other techniques.
Across all carriers in the United States, there was a 19.2 percent increase in average mobile download speeds between the first half of 2016 and the first half of 2017, with an average speed of 22.69 Mb/s.
Average mobile upload speeds didn't see quite as much improvement, coming in at 8.51 Mb/s for a four percent improvement year over year. When it comes to average mobile download speeds, the United States is ranked 44th in the world. That rank drops down to 65th for average mobile upload speed. In rural areas, performance can be significantly worse, with speeds that are 20.9 percent slower than the nation as a whole. Verizon (51.6%) and AT&T (27.3%) have far more coverage in rural areas than T-Mobile (11.5%) and Sprint (9.6%).
In addition to looking at network performance by carrier, Ookla also shared some data on LTE speeds across carriers on two popular devices: the iPhone 7 and the Galaxy S7. On T-Mobile and Sprint, broadband speeds were on average slightly faster for the Galaxy S7, with little difference on Verizon and AT&T networks.
Both the iPhone 7 and the S7 see higher mobile network speeds than other devices because they aggregate three component carriers to improve peak and average speeds. On T-Mobile, Samsung has an edge because the Galaxy S7 enables features like higher order modulation and 4-Layer MIMO.
Ookla's report is based on data gathered from its popular Speedtest Intelligence benchmark during the first half of 2017. More than 3 million unique devices performed more than 14 million user-initiated cellular network tests, giving the company a lot of data to work with to figure out trends during the year. For the S7 and iPhone 7 comparison tests, data from 250,278 iPhones was collected and compared to data from 134,742 Galaxy devices.
Additional test results covering minimum acceptable experience, the impact of unlimited data, fastest carriers by city, and more can be read in the full report.
Article Link: T-Mobile Offered Fastest LTE Speeds in the First Half of 2017
Well good for them! I just dont know how the speed really helps me when I only get one-two bars a lot of the time 
I want to see more coverage from them as I dont even get service where I work (got 2 bars back when I had ATT).
I want to see more coverage from them as I dont even get service where I work (got 2 bars back when I had ATT).
Do you know that T-Mobile doesn't work in your area? I travel quite a bit for work have been to LA, San Diego, Las Vegas, Chicago, Austin, NYC, Philly, DC, and Raleigh - All those major cities it works great...
So many defend their [more expensive] carrier choice, like wild dogs fighting for red meat.
Here is my use case:
1. I have T-Mobile. Using my lovely iPhone SE.
2. I just run SpeedTest against the speedtest.net backend (there are other backends, I chose speedtest.net)
3. Inside my office building, sitting at my office, not outdoors.
4. Located at a Metro Service Area -- Northern Virginia.
5. It is 10:30AM EST, prime time in this area.
6. Two test runs, with results showing almost perfect up/down symmetry! (actually, up results were slightly better!)
Average SpeedTest result (two samples, 0930 and 1030):
ping: 10ms
up: 21mbps
down: 25mbps (see NOTE)
NOTE: the OOKLA report shows up typically 1/3 down. That would heavily penalize my use of archival and storage. The SpeedTest samples prove that not be the case under T-Mobile for my use case.
Economics: My current plan (the Walmart Plan): $30 Unlimited Data and International Text (5GB-month at 4G). 100min Cellular Voice and Wi-Fi calling. No taxes.
Just my use case. And my wife's.
Here is my use case:
1. I have T-Mobile. Using my lovely iPhone SE.
2. I just run SpeedTest against the speedtest.net backend (there are other backends, I chose speedtest.net)
3. Inside my office building, sitting at my office, not outdoors.
4. Located at a Metro Service Area -- Northern Virginia.
5. It is 10:30AM EST, prime time in this area.
6. Two test runs, with results showing almost perfect up/down symmetry! (actually, up results were slightly better!)
Average SpeedTest result (two samples, 0930 and 1030):
ping: 10ms
up: 21mbps
down: 25mbps (see NOTE)
NOTE: the OOKLA report shows up typically 1/3 down. That would heavily penalize my use of archival and storage. The SpeedTest samples prove that not be the case under T-Mobile for my use case.
Economics: My current plan (the Walmart Plan): $30 Unlimited Data and International Text (5GB-month at 4G). 100min Cellular Voice and Wi-Fi calling. No taxes.
Just my use case. And my wife's.
I live right in the middle of Dallas (within a mile of downtown, but in an area with no tall buildings).
I get two bars from Sprint and two bars from Verizon :/ and my download speed from both is between 6-9Mbps
Apparently I'm not close enough to the magic cell tower . . .
I get two bars from Sprint and two bars from Verizon :/ and my download speed from both is between 6-9Mbps
Apparently I'm not close enough to the magic cell tower . . .
same with me as well .... I will never leave a company who stand by their customer to offer more.... we never asked John L to give us all these perks and won't charge us, we never asked him to include the taxes and fees in billing amount..
and people talking about speed on iphone 8 ... wait for 600 MHZ spectrum kicks on .... when carrier wise congestion will occur, every carrier will be reduced to slow speed except us, guess why ... because we OWN the 600 mhz spectrum.... ..
When was the last You ever you had T-Mobile, I have access in rural areas. Especially since I like to see new places a lot. Rarely have a issue
Tmobile is far from reliable. I rather have 25 Mbps EVERYWHERE as opposed to 75 Mbps in some places. In building coverage is nonexistent and in crowded city spaces, it barely connects.
I used to have them here in Chicago and waited for all their "magical" upgrades and didn't see any difference. I used to constantly worry about going into buildings knowing I would completely lose service. I had dropped calls just walking down the street in the Loop.
Switched to Verizon and it's 100x better in every single way. I pay a lot more but guess what, premium networks like Verizon actually work.
I used to have them here in Chicago and waited for all their "magical" upgrades and didn't see any difference. I used to constantly worry about going into buildings knowing I would completely lose service. I had dropped calls just walking down the street in the Loop.
Switched to Verizon and it's 100x better in every single way. I pay a lot more but guess what, premium networks like Verizon actually work.
Sounds like you're making excuses for paying too much with another carrier.
I am with T-Mobile now for 6 years and have been very happy with them. They consistently offer the best deals imo and are a reliable service.
P.s. I don't own any T-Mobile shares. Just a happy customer
P.s. I don't own any T-Mobile shares. Just a happy customer
I switched from Verizon to T-Mobile. Absolutely zero complaints. I'll be the first to admit that when it comes to coverage, Verizon is king. That being said, in the past 2 years, I have seen massive improvement. My wife and I drove from UT to OR when we first switched and music cut out a lot, but it wasn't a big deal because we were happy to actually even stream at all (before we were 6 people sharing 8 GB of data). Did the same drive a year later and had music going almost the entire time. Same goes for when we drove to CA from UT. Used sensorly and had LTE about 96% of the time (if I remember correctly).
It's not for everyone though, but for me it sure as hell can't be beat by any other provider. I constantly see 100 mbps down and 35 up with T-Mobile at my house. My internet goes down and I just use data.
I do love that so many people just hate on T-Mobile since it used to be complete crap. 4 year ago I tried the 1 week free with T-Mobile when they lent out an iPhone 5s or whatever it was. The service was crap. That is in the same spot that I live now where it's awesome. They have made huge improvement, there is no doubt about that. To each their own. I'd just say that if you're going to judge it, do it with current info. I'm all for seeing current results where people say carrier X, Y, or Z is better for reason A, B, or C, but let's not compare 2013 networks to 2017 networks.
It's not for everyone though, but for me it sure as hell can't be beat by any other provider. I constantly see 100 mbps down and 35 up with T-Mobile at my house. My internet goes down and I just use data.
I do love that so many people just hate on T-Mobile since it used to be complete crap. 4 year ago I tried the 1 week free with T-Mobile when they lent out an iPhone 5s or whatever it was. The service was crap. That is in the same spot that I live now where it's awesome. They have made huge improvement, there is no doubt about that. To each their own. I'd just say that if you're going to judge it, do it with current info. I'm all for seeing current results where people say carrier X, Y, or Z is better for reason A, B, or C, but let's not compare 2013 networks to 2017 networks.