This thread has the maturity level of a grade school lunch table
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T-Mobile questions!
- Thread starter canwe3
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If tmobile is good in your area, it's clearly the best option, if you pull in speeds that are good for you, why pay more? I canceled Verizon's insane rip off of a network and ended up saving a ton.... That and I'm very happy my data speeds basically doubled ;-).
I used to tweet about how bad Verizons speeds were and Verizon would reply on how they were constantly making improvements to their network. I wasn't willing to keep shelling out $85/month when I couldn't even get edge speeds.
I wish I would have switched to T-Mobile months before I did. I had no idea what life could be like with a phone that was made for their network such as the Nexus 4.
Yea, everything that I have seen in this thread proves that T-Mobile has a faster network over AT&T and Verizon. My experience has been no different. If that makes me lower class for this, than I guess I am.
Except I actually pay for TMobile service too, so... I'm just as qualified as you to make a statement about their poor service.
Post a speed test to back it up.
Like you and your bash T-mobile posts, I will continue my anti AT&T and Verizon posts. They are the worst carriers here in Denver.
Find me some 3rd party evidence before making a blanket statement like that. Why should I believe some anecdoctal evidence?
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Look it up on a coverage map. I'm in the Northern Northeast. The world doesn't revolve around Denver, NYC, or Miami.
Why is my Audi S7's Audi Connect service on EDGE right now, when my AT&T and VZW devices are on LTE? The only time I ever have 3G is when I get into Southern NH or near Boston. Everywhere else is EDGE.
thank god I was able to prepay service down to $15/month. What a joke to be paying the usual $30 for data.
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Root metrics says otherwise. So good luck. Hope that Magenta cape keeps you warm at night.
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lol, it's a MY13 S7.
before you start googling it, the radio supports HSPA on AWS and EDGE on PCS.
Obviously they are wrong. I have the proof. Remember my AT&T screen shot above showing AT&Ts crappy speeds? How about this amazing T-Mobile screen shot? I can post these all day.
Attachments
Audi could have done better with the hardware. And should have left it open to any GSM carrier.
Ceverage maps can lie. What matters once again is real world usage.
I will believe a speediest.net screen cap before I would believe AT&T and Verizons coverage maps.
I will believe a speediest.net screen cap before I would believe AT&T and Verizons coverage maps.
It's unlocked. I've tried an AT&T SIM in it and it works, but only gets EDGE. It's a shame they didn't use AT&T or VZW as their telematics provider (like BMW/MB/GM do)
So you're in Northern NH? I'm sure all 50,000 people up there is indicative of the nationwide performance of T-Mobile. No one on this thread claimed T-Mobile was great in rural areas, that's where Verizon and AT&T are clearly the best. So what are you even arguing about?
Fact is major markets like Denver, Miami, and NYC ARE what the world revolves around. If you're in one of them it is entirely possible for T-Mobile to outperform AT&T or Verizon. I've experienced it personally in some areas and I've been with all carriers except Sprint. Even rootmetrics which you cite has AT&T and T-Mobile pretty close in data speeds in quite a few metro areas with only Verizon being a large head above the rest.
As far as coverage maps, the only thing that is a LIE is the glob of red or blue that AT&T/Verizon show on their maps that give no hint as to how strong or weak your signal really is. Going by them you would think you should have 4-5 bars LTE in those areas when that's certainly not the case. Like Verizon not being able to explain why I could only get 1 bar of service in my entire neighborhood despite their coverage map showing the dark red "perfect" LTE coverage.
No one is saying T-Mobile has an overall better nationwide network than either Verizon or AT&T because we all know that they don't. However inside many metro areas they offer competitive and sometimes superior performance for a much lower price.
I live in Boston, but travel up and down the Northeast/Tri-state area for work/family, etc. It's not just up in NH and ME that TMobile is EDGE, it's most major highways all over the Northeast. I can drive from Boston to DC and never loose LTE on AT&T or VZW. T-Mobile is all EDGE (with some GPRS), unless I'm right by Boston/Hartford/NYC/Phily/DC. There are parts outside of NYC on EDGE. That is inexcusable in 2013.
Here's overall speeds from all tests in 2012. (http://www.rootmetrics.com/special-reports/2012-performance-review/)
Looking at these statistics, TMobile has only won ONE combined test (I think it was Providence, not 100% sure). That's it. Compared to VZW (120) and AT&T (51). I think it's safe to say T-Mobile is leagues behind the big 2 when it comes to several key things. Data speeds, call reliability, coverage, etc.
This thread has the maturity level of a grade school lunch table
But back to the topic at hand, I have T-Mobile, and the "4G" speeds on Long Island (essentially suburbs of NYC) are roughly 5mbps down and 1mbps up on my non-AWS 4S (so I have no experience with their AWS speeds and coverage, sorry)
Coverage is relatively good, with upgrades to 4G and whatnot happening often ( I had barely no coverage in my room when I got T-Mo, and all my house was edge, but about 2 weeks ago I got nice 4G all around my house, I use wifi here so it didn't matter but still)
Along the main road in the next town on my island (I live on a barrier island) there's a spot with no coverage, but since I'm always in a car when I hit that area, it only lasts for 5 seconds or so.
Pricing is cheap because T-Mobile needs to be competitive and because they don't subsidize the phones they sell (well not as much as the big 3 do)
I'd definitely recommend T-Mobile IF they have coverage in your area, so if you live in a rural area it might not be best for you.
Hope my input helps.
Attached is the best speed I've *recorded* in my area, it's usually a little slower than that, but still good.
I also live on Long Island and going to t-mobile was an awful experience for me. My ATT iPhone 4 loads things nearly 2x as fast as my iPhone 5 on T-mobile, and areas where I used to have 5 bars I'm lucky to have 1 or 2, but usually have nothing.
And i live in Levittown/Hicksville/Nassau County area - definitely not rural imo.
Planning on paying for my phone fully and switching back next month.
Glad it worked out for you though.
Not trying to be rude but you have only shown 3rd party statistics, but no first hand evidence of T-Mobile being bad.
Statistics don't matter to the end user, it's the experience that they actually get.
If T-Mobile has cruddy coverage/speeds in your area then I'd definitely say to not use them, but that doesn't mean that AT&T and VZW are unequivocally better than T-Mobile, or that they don't have good service anywhere, or that they'll never have good service near you.
And coverage maps don't mean jack, when I first got T-Mobile I was in their supposed 1900 MHz "4G" coverage area, but barely had any service at all, and when I did it was Edge, but after a few weeks they upgraded their towers (Anecdote: I had no signal at all just a few minutes before i was going out, and some guy in a diner I was in was complaining that his new T-Mo Samsung sucked because it had no signal, but it was clearly due to tower updates bc it came back on with "4G" instead of edge a little later)
First-hand experience trumps coverage maps and statistics because if everyone in your state has coverage but you, those stats don't help you connect to the Internet or make a phone call.
Just my two cents.
Edit: to the person who quoted me, I live in Long Beach and coverage there is fine for me, and while on the bus to my school (which is in Mineola so the ride goes through a fair amount of Nassau) I have decent coverage, although if you have the money for AT&T I'm sure it's much better than T-Mo in terms of speed and coverage.
So even the charts you're providing correlate to what many users are claiming here about download speeds on Tmobile. They're pretty good. It's their upload speeds that are not up to par yet due to not having LTE in 2012. A 10mbps download speed is pretty fast for a phone and Tmobile has that in most cities with their HSPA+42 network. I think we can all also agree that most tasks that involve using data on phones require more downloading than uploading.
I agree with you about them lacking in high speed data when traveling. They still have some Edge areas along I-85 here in the Southeast where I travel I think they need to seriously work on. For many though, they don't travel enough to make Verizon or AT&T worth the price difference.
I'm not talking about refarmed metro areas. I'm talking about the areas outside of them that are being left alone without any upgrades. There is no 3G on AWS or PCS. Just EDGE or in some areas, GPRS. T-Mobile hasn't upgraded them in years and hasn't pledged to upgrade them to HSPA. They've left them on EDGE.
Look at the coverage maps for highways in the Northeast. It's basically all EDGE or GPRS. What's the point of unlimited data, if I can't even stream Pandora in the car. I have to use my AT&T or VZW devices to do that.
Their "Nationwide 4G" commercials are the biggest lies in the industry.
I live in the suburbs, not the metro area.
Now that they've purchased Metro PCS, they're refarming that spectrum all around I believe.
And I've never encountered GPRS with T-Mobile, however I have encountered it with an AT&T MVNO (straighttalk) although that may have been because MVNOs are low priority.
EDIT: (this is directed towards your recent edit) You missed the whole point of my post, which was to NOT trust coverage maps and that your actual experience with data coverage and speeds is what matters
Again, MetroPCS only holds spectrum in big metro areas, that's about it. It won't help them deploy HSPA/LTE in suburbs/rural areas. In the Northeast, they basically only have a presence in and around Boston, that's it.
With the "dustbowl" comments made by Legere at CES, it looks like only people in top markets will enjoy LTE, etc, while everyone else are ignored.
That is more or less their strategy at this point. They want to cater to the markets where a majority of their customers live in. From a financial standpoint, this makes sense. So it boils down to the needs of the individual, if you absolutely need reliable service, and decent data coverage across the country, then perhaps AT&T and Verizon would work, but for a person living in one of these "hot" markets for T-Mobile, then what T-Mobile doing makes sense.
As for AT&T and Verizon being rather big names in wireless, I'm pretty sure they have the finances to fund all of this network upgrades to blanket as many places as possible. (Anybody want to pitch in regarding Sprint, I'm quite interested to know their speeds, coverage, etc... since nobody has mentioned them)
As for AT&T and Verizon being rather big names in wireless, I'm pretty sure they have the finances to fund all of this network upgrades to blanket as many places as possible. (Anybody want to pitch in regarding Sprint, I'm quite interested to know their speeds, coverage, etc... since nobody has mentioned them)
Actually there rates on the iPhone are lower cause they break out device costs as they should be. So if you buy full price etc you are paying less than subsidized folks which is considered a separate program on top of those rates