Switching to T-Mobile

T4rd

T4rd

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So the only phones I'm interested in right now are the Moto X Pure and Nexus 6P. I have 3 lines on Verizon, 2 of which are on unlimited data still (wife and I), and I have my mom on my account on a 2GB line. My unlimited line is out of contract (month to month now), wife's unlimited line is on contract until May 2016, mom's 2GB line was just renewed a few months ago. We've been transferring all of our upgrades to my mom's 2GB line to keep renewing our contracts while keeping unlimited data.

I was originally planning on getting an iPhone 6S to renew my contract and then sell/trade towards the 6P, since I can get a 16GB iPhone for $250ish (after the retarded $40 activation fee and taxes) and it should resell for around $600 new. and pretty much cover the cost of a 64GB 6P. There's also the LG G4 that I can get for $150ish on contract right now with a promo they have going on, along with a $200 gift/Visa card rebate, and then sell the phone for around $300. Which I'll spend about the same after adding another $100 to ($300+$200) in order to get the 64GB 6P, so comes out about the same either way, but Apple doesn't get a sale if I get the LG, lol.

Or I'm considering dropping my line and financing a 6P through Project Fi. I use at least 4-5 GBs/month though, so not sure that will save me much money and I really like to tether to my laptop occasionally when I'm away for work or doing school work on the road. I would prefer to go to T-Mobile, but alas I can't get the 6P or Moto X Pure still through T-Mobile and would have to come $450+ out of pocket for either phone.

My current phone is an HTC M8, which I'm still happy with and don't mind keeping for a while if need be. I just replaced the USB port and battery in it, so it's basically good as new now. It will only get me about $150-$200 if I sell it too, so doesn't help much if I leave Verizon.

So what suggestions do you all have for getting these phones? If I'm going to stay on Verizon, I want to at least extend my contract. I may just ask my mom if she wants to upgrade her Moto X (2013) right now so I can at least extend my contract and I'll keep my M8 until I can upgrade again next May. I'm sure once the 6P supply issues get ironed out in the next month or two, I'll be able to get it on Swappa or something for a bit cheaper too. I'd rather not buy one now when Google is making it a PITA to order one and everyone else is just flipping (price gouging) them just to exploit the supply issues they have.

Sorry for the wall of text, it took me just a couple mins to type all that and it didn't seem like much, lol.
 
If you are anywhere near solid T-Mobile signal there lte coverage has come a long way. The only other option that might work is something like cricket aka att. Solid discounts and no overages for multiple lines. I love my T-Mobile service here in socal
 
At this point I'd ditch Verizon. They're only going to keep increasing the price (I'm betting yearly) until all unlimited users are gone because they're pricks.

Best thing would be watch for T-Mobile to do another promotion for unlimited. My wife and I are $100 for two devices. Unlimited talk/text/LTE and 7GB tethering both lines.
 
The area I live in has good TMo coverage, but a lot of family and friends I visit away from here does not. The whole southern half of my state has Edge only on TMo, which is where my bro and dad live. Plus since TMo doesn't offer the Nexus and Moto phones, I'm going to have to buy them outright still.

My Verizon bill is $190/month right now and my mom gives me $55/month for her line because my bill was only $135/month for my wife and I before we added her to my plan.

I just discovered a cool method of extending the contract without buying a new phone though. Apparently there's some commentators on the Droid Life article that were able to extend their contract by 1 year just by calling and adding a "Loyalty 100 Minutes or Text promo" to their line. Worth a shot.
 
Seriously check out Tmobile- I get 90Mb+ on my N6, here's a speedtest from my Z3.

Udh0uRLl.png


The network has come a LONG way and coverage is nearly everywhere.
 
Meh, download speeds don't mean much to me, anything past 5-10 Mb/sec is pretty excessive for a phone and there's not much benefit past that. That said, I've seen over 100 down on Verizon while tethered and I consistently pull 20-30 down around where I live.

4784305477.png


And like I said, TMo is nearly nonexistent where a lot of my family lives still. If I can get a hold of a Nexus phone though, I might try to get a TMo SIM and try prepaid for a month while I'm down there just to see if their coverage map is accurate. But it shows nothing in the southern part of my state.

I think I should have used a different thread title, because I think I'm just trying to find the best/cheapest way to get a Nexus phone on Verizon rather than deciding if it's better to switch. TMo's biggest incentive for me to switch is their Jump program, but when the phones I want aren't available through TMo, then that's basically useless to me.
 
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Wanted to bump this since it seems T-Mo has added a LOT of coverage since I made this thread. They seem to cover pretty much all of the areas I travel to and where my family/friends live.

So since my other unlimited data line contract expires next month and I can expect Verizon to tack on another $20/month to my bill because of it, I'm switching to T-Mo. Bastage told me about their current promo for 2x 6GB lines for $80/month and I can add my mom's 2GB line for another $20/month, making it $100/month total, which sounds good to me as long as I can bump up my plan to unlimited whenever we take trips and stuff. My kids used 25GBs tethering their tabs to my phone in the car on our vacation last week, lol. Some of that was tethering my laptop and Fire Stick in the hotel room too though.

T-Mo will have to buy my mom's line out of contract still though because it doesn't expire until August 2017. They said it can take up to 8 weeks to reimburse you for the ETF, does anyone know if it normally takes that long or not? Not sure what phone to get her since she doesn't want to pay $600+ for a new phone and wants a smaller phone too, not much bigger than her 2013 Moto X. I guess she could get by with financing a GS7 or iPhone 6S for $25ish/month, but I would rather buy a cheaper $250ish phone on Swappa like I did for her Moto X a couple years ago. Any suggestions? I really like the Oneplus X for her, but I think I remember seeing it missing a band or two for T-Mo. I know that if T-Mo is going to buy her contract out, would they let me finance a phone for my line and let her bring her own device if I find one instead? I'm hoping the HTC 10 comes through so I can get it next month and I can just do that, because none of the current phones really interest me that much.

Another question about T-Mo though; is there any way to see what areas use band 12 or not? I think my wife's Verizon GS6 will work on T-Mo minus Band 12 (haven't checked yet), so I'm hoping it will work in most areas still without it.
 
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You can keep unlimited, renew your contract, avoid the $20 hike and get the 6P on Verizon for cheap if you want. Bit of a hassle, but worth it, for me at least. Get 130mbps/35mbps at my house, and travel fairly often, so no interest in switching.
 
BeavermanA said:
You can keep unlimited, renew your contract, avoid the $20 hike and get the 6P on Verizon for cheap if you want. Bit of a hassle, but worth it, for me at least. Get 130mbps/35mbps at my house, and travel fairly often, so no interest in switching.
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Yeah, I could do that, but honestly Verizon has given me every reason to leave them now and I'm tired of jumping through hoops to keep my unlimited data and dealing with their shitty policies and pricing. I've already been hit with the $20 hike on one line and will be again on my other line next month, so I'd rather just vote with my wallet at this point, even if it means getting slightly less coverage and usable data. There's some other strong appeals to T-Mo for me too, like WiFi calling, more root-friendly phones, and the ability to use any GSM/unlocked phone I want like the Oneplus and Sony phones.
 
T4rd said:
Yeah, I could do that, but honestly Verizon has given me every reason to leave them now and I'm tired of jumping through hoops to keep my unlimited data and dealing with their shitty policies and pricing. I've already been hit with the $20 hike on one line and will be again on my other line next month, so I'd rather just vote with my wallet at this point, even if it means getting slightly less coverage and usable data. There's some other strong appeals to T-Mo for me too, like WiFi calling, more root-friendly phones, and the ability to use any GSM/unlocked phone I want like the Oneplus and Sony phones.
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Like I said, you could avoid the $20 hike for 2+ years if you renew the contract before it gets hit with it. As shitty as Verizon has been with all their fees and other bs over the years, don't think my bill has changed since my original contract in 2010. Other than losing employer discount when I changed jobs, and taxes. And I've upgraded every year subsidized, avoided the upgrade fee, am paying less than new customers with crappy share everything plans all while using 200+gb a month.

If you think you're getting a better deal elsewhere and the coverage is acceptable, then by all means go for it though. Would consider switching to T-Mo myself as I could get 2 unlimited lines instead of 1 UDP/1TDP like I have on Verizon. But it's still more expensive than Verizon and I believe they throttle/cap LTE after a certain amount as well.
 
BeavermanA said:
Like I said, you could avoid the $20 hike for 2+ years if you renew the contract before it gets hit with it. As shitty as Verizon has been with all their fees and other bs over the years, don't think my bill has changed since my original contract in 2010. Other than losing employer discount when I changed jobs, and taxes. And I've upgraded every year subsidized, avoided the upgrade fee, am paying less than new customers with crappy share everything plans all while using 200+gb a month.

If you think you're getting a better deal elsewhere and the coverage is acceptable, then by all means go for it though. Would consider switching to T-Mo myself as I could get 2 unlimited lines instead of 1 UDP/1TDP like I have on Verizon. But it's still more expensive than Verizon and I believe they throttle/cap LTE after a certain amount as well.
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I know, I've been doing the same thing since they killed the UDP. I was paying $135/month for 2 lines on unlimited data originally, then I added my mom on my account with a 2GB line, which bumped it up to $190/month and I've been using her line to transfer all of my upgrades to so I can keep unlimited data on my other two lines. Then I let one contract expire last October when they added the $20/month price hike to UDP lines and now it's at $210/month.

On T-Mo, right now I can get 2x 6GB lines and a 2GB line for my mom for $100/month before any phone payment plans are added. So even if my mom and I get new phones, it will still only be $150-$160/month (since most new phones are $25-$30/month on their payment plans). Or I can upgrade to unlimited data for another $30/month if I need to. So it seems that any way I go, I'm going to be paying a bit less on T-Mo than I am currently on Verizon. I just hope I can trust their coverage map that's showing LTE coverage pretty much everywhere I would ever go. I may see if they're still doing that 1-week trial there where they give you an iPhone to test out coverage for free just to make sure before I switch.
 
The best way to see what T-Mobile is doing or plan on doing with Band 12 is reddit and this:
Map of T-Mobile's 700 MHz spectrum

I unfortunately live in a major metropolitan area that TMo still has no plans to deal with channel 51; seems like one of the only 3 metro areas. The FCC details shows that Sprint has a band 12 leasing deal in place for another 8 years or something that they are not currently using... Seems like a way for Sprint to continue to fuck me.
 
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If and when T-Mobile does an unlimited promo jump on it as its for life and since I have mine for 2 years they have not up the price yet. I have 2 lines unlimited everything 100$. As they tend to not keep there unlimited promos around. And once its gone you can't add it :)
 
T4rd you have to finance a phone for tmo to pay off the ETF from VZN.. You dont have to finance a high end phone though (ie the Galaxy Core Prime or the LG K7 are both 140 at retail so its like 5 & change a month) and then you can get whatever afterwards & use something else if you can get it for a good enough deal to be worth it.

The Unlimited upg from the 6gb plan is 45 a month. You can up it any time, but to drop it back down you have wait until the end of your billing month.

Vengance_01 is totally right about the unlimited promo's.. That 2 for 100 unlimited deal was sweet, but I just changed mine about a month ago when it was 4 for 150 unlimited (added my mom & my little brother to drop from 50 per line to 37.50 a line). With the Tmo plan promo's like these once they are added your locked in until you opt to change it so it will not expire. If you watch SD every time Tmo has a good plan promo pop up there ends up being a front page deal posted about it.

BeavermanA T-Mobile does not throttle you on unlimited no matter how much you use. What does happen is after 23gb you get deprioritized. Most of the customers this happens to do not even realize it happens. Basically all it means is that if you are on a congested tower you have a lower priority in data usage then the users who have not hit that limit. Places where most people would notice it would be at things like a major sporting event where there is 60k people hitting the same couple towers at once bogging everything down. that of course resets on the billing cycle day every month as well.
 
5+ years with T-Mobile using their $30/month plan the whole damned time and still going, never had one single problem with this plan, the service, or anything, never had any reason to call them for support for anything, etc. Just totally satisfied and praying they don't dump this plan anytime soon and if they do that they'll "grandfather" us long time users of it for a few more years. While I don't have any use for full blown max speed LTE (HSPA+ in my area has slightly better coverage and building penetration with T-Mobile), if I do a speed test it'll typically be in the 60-90Mbps down and 20-40 Mbps up with crazy consistency. I ran 10 speed tests in a row recently and they were between 79 and 86 Mbps down and 35-40 Mbps one right after the other, was pretty amazing considering where I live and I ran the tests in the late afternoon on a weekday.

Now with BingeOn and Music Freedom (yes, I do get video streaming on this $30 plan, I didn't ask for it, was told my plan didn't qualify but damned if I can't watch movies off Netflix and it doesn't ding my 5GB allotment at all which is damned awesome. And of course the fact that I can do speed tests using the Speedtest.net app as much as I damned well please that's cool too and it helps their network or so they say. I must have done 11GB of speed testing last month, no harm no foul on my plan. ;)

They have bandwidth to burn and they don't give a fuck anymore hence the great deals. I'm sure a few years from now they might hurt for it but for the moment it's a win-win situation for 'em.

AT&T is taking note of the boost in T-Mobile's subscriber base with that new Cricket "unlimited" plan for $70 a month ($65 with autopay), they are swearing up and down it's truly unlimited and you can use as much as you want but there's two negatives: 1) it has no hotspot or tethering support at all, none, and 2) it's capped at 8 Mbps all the time. Now, I'm not too worried about the hotspot thing personally and I could live with a rock solid 8 Mbps connection without limits, that would be fantastic. I did the math and I think that if you could pull down 8 Mbps solid 24 hours a day for a month that's like 2.4 TB or something close to it - I wonder what Cricket would do it someone actually did that legitimately (meaning just the phone, using data 24/7 constantly at max speed of 8 Mbps, no tethering at all).

But that price is crazy for that low speed cap, at least to me. I'd pay about $40 a month for that kind of service myself, not $65 and certainly not $70 but Cricket is part of AT&T (a few year nows) so it's expected they have that bloated pricing structure.

Still to this day I've yet to find a better deal for me and how I use my smartphone than the T-Mobile $30 plan. I use Google Voice so I don't give a damn about the piddly 100 minutes of talk time my plan comes with - the only number I even give out is my Google Voice number. My actual carrier number for T-Mobile is known to like a handful of people, works better that way.

They're definitely making big waves, I just hope they don't end up getting pulled under in the process.
 
T-Mobile is hit or miss here in Vegas. Most the time I get good coverage except in some of the casinos. For the most part I usually hover around the 12-15Mbps up/down speeds. The good thing about T-Mobile is that they let you stream music and video (YouTube and Netflix are the ones I use) without it using your data and I have the family 10GB plan with each line having 10GB for essentially web browsing and downloading with each line having a 10GB data stash with unlimited talk/text and I only pay $120 for just the service for four lines. But I pay far more because of the phones I'm leasing and insurance on three phones.

Overall, for the price you can't go wrong unless you absolutely need the best coverage non-stop or the fastest of fast speeds , even then T-Mobile might be up there. Plus, they have that unlimited data plan for a measly $30 more than what you would pay normally, so something like $80 here in Las Vegas.

Their customer service has been top notch with me as well.. they literally credited me for my S6 when I traded it in although at the time they hadn't received my phone through the mail just yet. All in all, compared to Sprint and AT&T, while the download speeds no where near AT&T and Sprint offering to cut your bill in half (although that's just for the service, nothing else) T-Mobilr is to me the lesser of all cell phone company evils.
 
bastage said:
T4rd you have to finance a phone for tmo to pay off the ETF from VZN.. You dont have to finance a high end phone though (ie the Galaxy Core Prime or the LG K7 are both 140 at retail so its like 5 & change a month) and then you can get whatever afterwards & use something else if you can get it for a good enough deal to be worth it.
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After May 4th, I'll only have one of my three lines on contract, which is my mom's line, so she'll have to finance a phone for her line when we switch. I'm just wondering if they'll care which phone line I'll finance on so I can finance a new phone for my line instead and get her a cheaper one off of Swappa like I did last time and buy it outright.

I'll prolly have to finance a new phone for my wife too now though, because while her Verizon GS6 will work on T-Mo, it looks like people have issues with SMS/MMS messaging doing that and it will be missing band 12 support as well. I wish T-Mo would just let us trade her Verizon S6 for a used/refurb T-Mo S6 outright, that would be nice since she really don't need a newer phone than that.
 
The dev will have to be financed on your moms line, but tmo couldnt give a shit less where you use it so your fine there..

As for swapping your wife's phone... Put an add on CL & see if you can find someone switching carriers the other way.
 
T-Mo has been awesome- the only place I've had spotty service has been in Montana and Maine (north of Portland)- even then though there was roaming on ATT, so I still had voice service (and 200MB of data). In SLC I can get nearly 100Mb down while my VZW work phone on 'XLTE' struggles to pull down 4Mb.
 
marshac said:
T-Mo has been awesome- the only place I've had spotty service has been in Montana and Maine (north of Portland)- even then though there was roaming on ATT, so I still had voice service (and 200MB of data). In SLC I can get nearly 100Mb down while my VZW work phone on 'XLTE' struggles to pull down 4Mb.
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I've always been confused as to how you can tell you're on "XLTE" on Verizon. It doesn't designate it anywhere in the status bar or in the network info menu in the phone as far as I can tell. We're supposed to have it near where I'm at, but the best speeds I've ever seen are in the 30s, which is normal to see on regular LTE networks.
 
Got my T-Mo SIMs today. Waiting for my wife's free Note5 from the Samsung Mobile Insights program to arrive now and for the HTC 10 to come out on T-Mobile so I can upgrade from my M8. So far her Verizon S6 works great on T-Mo in our area with LTE and everything. My Verizon M8 is missing Band 2 LTE though, so I'm stuck on Edge network until I can upgrade.

The reason I got my new SIMs/lines already is that I'm selling my Verizon UDP lines (through an Assumption of Liability) and sold one today and hopefully the other here shortly.

I told the rep in the T-Mobile store just to put us on 6GB plans for now. Not sure if there were any promos in effect for it, but it seems that 3 lines on a family 6GB plan is $100/month, which I thought sounded a bit high. The rep also told me that I cannot downgrade my mom's line to 2GBs (more than what she needs) and I cannot upgrade my line to unlimited if I want, which sounded wrong to me. Now that I'm home and logged into their site, it looks like I can easily upgrade my line to unlimited data if I want anytime, but it is not letting me downgrade my mom's line down to 2GB.

Bastage, do you know of any current promos or better deals I can get since my mom doesn't need anywhere near 6GBs of data?
 
Nope.. Your on a family match 6gb plan. Base days for the plan is 6gb.. Here's the thing though. Without the 6gb you would have a base of 2gb per line and be paying 90 a month. To upgrade just one of those 3 lines to 6gb would put you at 105. So leaving your mom's line at 6gb is saving you money.

As you saw you can definitely upgrade to unlimited on a line if you need it. I would say though don't do it yet, see if you actually exceed 6gb once music and video are removed from your usage.

I have truly unlimited on 4 lines and the only one that ever exceeds 6gb is my daughter because of a single app called music.ly which is all streaming video and uploading video.
 
Just watch for deals. T-Mobile will throw out specials for unlimited data plans. Just need to watch.
 
bastage said:
Nope.. Your on a family match 6gb plan. Base days for the plan is 6gb.. Here's the thing though. Without the 6gb you would have a base of 2gb per line and be paying 90 a month. To upgrade just one of those 3 lines to 6gb would put you at 105. So leaving your mom's line at 6gb is saving you money.

As you saw you can definitely upgrade to unlimited on a line if you need it. I would say though don't do it yet, see if you actually exceed 6gb once music and video are removed from your usage.

I have truly unlimited on 4 lines and the only one that ever exceeds 6gb is my daughter because of a single app called music.ly which is all streaming video and uploading video.
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Thanks for the response. I had another friend on t-mobile tell me that tethered data doesn't count for devices like tablets. Is that true? Because that was literally like 25 GBs of the data I used last month from the kids streaming youtube and Netflix in the car while on our vacation. Would that data from their tabs not count with Binge-On too?
 
So tethered binge on is sketchy.. It depends on the device and app. Generally speaking if is Netflix on an Android or iOS tablet using an actually Netflix app then your probably ok. Basically it's got to do with if the Netflix servers detect it as a mobile device.
 
bastage said:
So tethered binge on is sketchy.. It depends on the device and app. Generally speaking if is Netflix on an Android or iOS tablet using an actually Netflix app then your probably ok. Basically it's got to do with if the Netflix servers detect it as a mobile device.
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Cool, hope I don't have any issues with the kids then.

Have you heard anything about the HTC 10 launch on T-Mobile? There was a guy claiming to be a T-Mo rep in a tech blog article last week saying he was just "trained" on it and it was launching on the 18th with a free ice case and extra charger or something. I tweeted T-Mo about it and they just came back with they're still "lab testing" it. I'm about to just pick up a 64 or 128GB 6P on Swappa instead and save a little dough.
 
I havent seen nor heard anything at all about it..

I can tell you though from the things I have seen about it I would go with the 6p over it.. THough honestly they are completely different classes of phones. The 10 is tiny in comparison where as the 6p is very large.
 
T4rd said:
Cool, hope I don't have any issues with the kids then.

Have you heard anything about the HTC 10 launch on T-Mobile? There was a guy claiming to be a T-Mo rep in a tech blog article last week saying he was just "trained" on it and it was launching on the 18th with a free ice case and extra charger or something. I tweeted T-Mo about it and they just came back with they're still "lab testing" it. I'm about to just pick up a 64 or 128GB 6P on Swappa instead and save a little dough.
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May 18th.. Free case and charger too with promo
 
bastage said:
May 18th.. Free case and charger too with promo
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Nice.. you know if it will be available in black too (unlike Verizon)? I'm still really tempted to order a 6P on Swappa.. decisions..
 
Eh, just ordered a 64GB 6P on Swappa for $430. Might switch to the 10 if there's a deal on it at some point or something in the future.

I know the 6P supports WiFi calling on T-Mo, but what about HD Voice/VoLTE?
 
Traveling around to areas for the first time yesterday and so far the coverage map seems mostly accurate. Did drop down to Edge in a few spots where T-Mo's maps say I should have "fair" LTE coverage. I kinda assumed I would see 3g/HSPA in at least a few areas instead of Edge, but so far all I've ever seen on any of our phones is LTE or Edge. Is HSPA being phased out for LTE in most areas now or something? Just thought it was odd I haven't see any sort of HSPA/HSPA+ areas yet. I made sure in the phone settings it was set to 2G/3G/LTE auto too.
 
HSPA is being phased out, and all the backhaul is mostly gone. I can barely hit 500K on HSPA now, it's almost as worthless as Edge. Fortunately, the NY/NJ area is blanketed with 50Mb+ LTE
 
Well about 6 weeks into being on T-Mo, I have to say I'm kinda disappointed in their coverage in comparison to how they have it portrayed on their coverage map. There's several spots that show "fair" LTE coverage where I don't get anything and/or consistently drop calls, some of which are on a major highway that my mom commutes on a lot and was complaining to me about dropping a call 6 or 7 times, whereas on Verizon she would never drop a call. Now I expect a few more dropped calls compared to Verizon, but it's pretty annoying when it's dropped that many times on the same road where the coverage map shows it being covered, yet she said there were long stretches where she had zero signal. I'm wondering if she's dropping calls going from LTE to Edge networks too. Should you drop a call if you're using HD Voice (VoLTE) and transition to the Edge network?

I know the Edge network is supposed to be virtually useless, but I've found it to actually be useless, hah. Seems it's basically only for calls/texts, because I can't even get a simple web page like the forums to load on it. I just realized by looking at that coverage map Changed linked to above that T-Mo can't deploy Band 12 in most of my state (KY) either because of some TV station broadcasting on the 700 MHz block. How convenient that the TV broadcast covers the two major areas where I live and visit a lot. :rolleyes:

For the $100 or so I'm saving over Verizon though, I'm willing to deal with this stuff though, as I'm hoping T-Mo will continue to improve coverage in my state soon.
 
Realize that coverage maps are done by the carriers themselves using their highly tuned and specifically designed hardware, not just a bunch of techs in the field with smartphones in their hands checking shit out and calling in to ask "Can you hear me now?" :D

I've had situations with T-Mobile where, let's say I have a smartphone A and a smartphone B, I take smartphone A and power it up and get a given level of signal and do the same thing, standing in the same place with LOS to a T-Mobile cell site with no obstructions in the path at all and yet smartphone A has a signal that's almost 9 dB weaker than smartphone B. So, to be honest, it's not always the carrier that's to blame, a lot of the time it's the actual device (and no I won't go so far and be stupid enough to say "You're holding it wrong..." like Steve Jobs did tell an iPhone 4 user once).

As for checking signal coverage, obviously using the carrier's own tower and coverage maps will only present them in their best light so using a site like Sensorly which gets data from actual cell phone users running their app (there are other apps and services that do the same thing, of course) provides a much more honest and realistic overview of how things would be in your area (assuming you have people in your area using Sensorly, that is):

Coverage Maps

For example, where I am in downtown Las Vegas one might expect it to be a fairly heavy coverage area and of course T-Mobile's site shows this:



while Sensorly shows something like this:



and I can tell you the Sensorly one is vastly more accurate based on me being a contributor to their data sets and having some issues when walking around in the downtown area - I have a BlackBerry Z10, a Sprint LG G Flex 2 (accessing T-Mobile's network), and a Motorola Moto X 1st gen (Verizon unlocked model using T-Mobile) and they all use the Sensorly Android app for the testing. All three of them have vastly different signal strength levels (the Z10 has the best, actually, go figure for 4 year old device I still love to this day).

They ain't perfect, nope, not even, but they've been a good carrier to me personally in the ~6 years I've had service with T-Mobile myself. Still on the $30/month plan and still getting great service overall.
 
Yeah, I didn't expect their maps to be 100% accurate or anything and I've actually compared signal levels between my old (Verizon) One M8, wife's old (Verizon) while on T-Mobile, and also between our new phones (Nexus 6P and Note5) and they seem to stay within 5-6 dBm. My mom is on a GS7 and I haven't compared ours to hers yet, but regardless, they all seem to drop signal/calls in the same spots, so I'm pretty sure it wouldn't matter what phone you have, it would drop signal no matter how good its reception is.

I forgot about Sensorly, I'll check that out for my areas as well. I did notice on T-Mo's maps that they have a similar "customer verified" icons throughout their maps to add at least some reassurance to them. But I also see some spots where I see those icons, yet none of us can get signal there with any of our phones.
 
Sensorly isn't exactly comparable. Sensorly is mapped by user data, so it only graphs the roads that those brave volunteers travel on. (By "brave" I mean that I was like the only person in my city giving data to Sensorly on Sprint, and everyone knows where I live and work... )
 
T-Mobile upgraded all of my lines to unlimited data with no change in price...
 
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