Places You've Been Surprised Your Phone Worked

mountainbikermark

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Coming from Verizon (cdma) and it's reputation for signal everywhere (except my tiny dot on the planet) and T-Mobile (gsm) reputation for dead spots all over I've been pleasantly surprised at some places I've actually been able to use my phone.
Yesterday I visited a church that was deep inside of a school auditorium and though I had 0 bars showing I was actually able to use the phone for phone calls and had 2g data. When the doors were open I had 4 bars but once the service began and they shut the doors the reception dropped instantly.In the past when I visited this school I had to put my Verizon phone on airplane mode so it'd stop searching for a non existent signal, with or without the doors being opened.
Out in Petersburg in an area that with Verizon had good both cdma and lte numbers but was almost unusable due to congestion I had very good gsm numbers but the data kept jumping back and forth between lte and whatever their non lte 4g data network is but calls were clear and data connections were consistently at 3+Mbps down and 1 up
The only place I've been so far where I had no call ability was inside my local grocery store near the freezer section and there only Sprint has any signal at all (my oldest son who has Sprint works there) . With Verizon as a family we'd always make sure any calls or texts about the grocery list were done before going in because it was a dead zone inside the entire store. With my G2 I simply logged into their WiFi and enabled WiFi calling and talked to my wife easily about a discrepancy on the list. I was very pleasantly surprised when I noticed once away from the freezers my call service came back and at sub -100dBm numbers. Still no lte but my phone was usable over their network for calls and 2g data.
At work I've been very happy with my reception being equal to what I had with Verizon even deep inside the store, both carriers having very strong call and lte data reception.
My biggest reason for switching to another carrier was Verizon shutting down 1lte cell and 3cdma cells within proximity of my house, basically turning it into a dead spot within a 3 mile radius of my home. I looked at T-Mobile to see if the Wal-Mart phone plan my wife was interested in was going to work for her, tried out a SIM card in my Verizon Note2 and was sold on its ability to blow away the Verizon signal at my house and areas of daily travel that didn't include work. On top of that I am saving a bunch of dollars each month vs what I was paying on Verizon.
My wife ended up going Verizon pre pay because she wanted to stick with what she knew but save some money at the same time (she uses almost no data a year) and 3g is actually rock solid here, though weak, but the Note2 would never drop to it and I never figured out how to manually do so after the phone updated to 4.3.
How has T-Mobile surprised you in ways that are better than expected?

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mountainbikermark

mountainbikermark

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I went from my home, in Colonial Heights, to Virginia Beach today along 460,58, etc. Much to my surprise my worst signal reading was -85dBm in Ivor. Granted much of it was 2g data but having more than rock solid call signal the entire trip was a very pleasant surprise. Not long ago 460 a few miles east of Petersburg was very well known for being dead or at best hit and miss until around Suffolk and even Verizon is spotty in many areas along that route.

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wcjeep

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To increase your T-Mobile signal consider a cell booster. I have a few for our vehicles. They greatly extend coverage in the mountains.
 
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mountainbikermark

mountainbikermark

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I was at a spot fishing over the weekend that is a dead spot with Verizon and I had 5 bars with T-Mobile.

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bkeaver

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In the middle of a corn field in Indiana sw of Indianapolis

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