i was wondering what people’s experience with T-Mobile is in NYC area. Is is worth it coming from Sprint?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Carrier T-Mobile vs Sprint in nyc?
- Thread starter Zaft
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Get a temporary number from T-Mobile and travel around for a day with it.
If it is better, then port your number.
T-Mobile allowed me to do this before I switched.
If it is better, then port your number.
T-Mobile allowed me to do this before I switched.
If you have a good price with Sprint, I’d say stay there as they are going to eventually all be one anyway.
I don't live in NYC, but I spent a week there last summer. TMobile was pretty reliable, even in most buildings.
Most of my time was spent in Manhattan, with one outing to the Bronx and a couple stops in Queens and Brooklyn.
No experience with Sprint to contrast.
Most of my time was spent in Manhattan, with one outing to the Bronx and a couple stops in Queens and Brooklyn.
No experience with Sprint to contrast.
It has been a number of years since I have had both services in NYC, but in my past experience, Sprint had better penetration in apartment buildings and elevators. On the street, they were comparable. I do recall T-Mobile speeds being ridiculously fast on LTE.
[doublepost=1544488781][/doublepost]For context, my assignment took me all over the 5 boroughs through a large number of neighborhoods. From densely populated areas in Manhattan to the far end of Staten Island near Jersey.
Was not a fan of ATT and Verizon was king.
[doublepost=1544488781][/doublepost]For context, my assignment took me all over the 5 boroughs through a large number of neighborhoods. From densely populated areas in Manhattan to the far end of Staten Island near Jersey.
Was not a fan of ATT and Verizon was king.
https://www.whistleout.com/CellPhones/Guides/Best-Coverage-in-New-York-USA
The maps confirm that AT&T provides the most robust coverage in New York, followed closely by Verizon. T-Mobile has pretty decent coverage, while Sprint lags a ways behind, although it still performs in New York compared to some other states.
New York is broadly covered by both 3G and 4G LTE technology. 3G is the network that some older phones run on, and the one newer 4G LTE-capable devices fall back to when unable to reach a primary network.
Last edited:
This link is two years old and may have been true at that time, but things changed dramatically. Part of my job requires me to be on the road, and i am all over the 5 boroughs. There's no way at&t is even near verizon, not even close. My iPad has a verizon sim and at&t embedded sim. Whenever I am on AT&T, i can tell the difference, and it's not a good difference. Trying to get online is so slow, at times I ask myself why i even switched to the AT&T SIM. I had at&t on my iphone for the longest time as well, and switched to vzw a little bit after that video was made because the service went to complete crap. phone calls were always ok on both services, it's the data that vzw is excelling at
Try it out for yourself in midtown, just go to Times Square and you’ll see. Regardless of what root metrics is claiming.
So I think you're saying the results they publish are unreliable, but I partially disagree on that. Yeah, there's no substitute for first hand experience. All coverage maps are suspect, but the Rootmetrics data is good, but not crystal clear about what it's really telling you.
You have to read it carefully to understand what you're getting. You can't just look at the color and assume that because a square is green or blue that it means you'll get great performance in that area. A closer look will often yield that a zone is green, but there's only 7 data points in the entire area, that the actual signal strength is barely crosses the threshold for acceptable and some nearby zones have reported low quality.
There are many ways a really bad zone can end up "green (good)", but if a zone is truly excellent, there are some easy signs you can spot. If a zone has an excellent average signal strength and has a lot of data points (especially if its surrounded by similarly excellent zones), it's probably a reliable service area.
How could a bad zone show up good? Well, if it's really bad, you might not get any coverage at all or the coverage is so spotty that most people who run their tests won't even bother. If the service is literally non-existent in 95% of the zone, nobody will be able to add a zero service result to the data, but if there's just one lucky spot in the entire zone where people are getting service, you could get a few random people adding good data points back to the results in the middle of a crap zone.
You just have to learn how to spot a weak result fom a strong result. They really should come up with a more nuanced color coding system to clear up the ambiguity though.
Last edited:
Fully agreed with what you wrote, especially the last paragraph. Most people aren't going to analyze the root metrics data square by square. That said, most of the people that comment on howard forums and reddit on this topic will agree that Verizon is king of coverage in NYC. Location is extremely important, as not every carrier is going to cover every inch of real estate, but I literally travel by car and by foot throughout the entire 5 boroughs, and when I am using the AT&T SIM, I ask myself why I am wasting my money on it.
That video is several years old. When that video came out the device used didn't support B41 carrier aggregation when there was other devices that do plus NY didn't have 10x10 B25 yet.
The video even then wasn't fair. The phone used didn't support CA Sprint. Plus Sprint didn't have 10x10 B25 like they do now, so that makes all the difference.