Has The “Un-Carrier” Changed Me?

[SILVER COUPE]

The problem isn't that TMo doesn't have great service in some areas, it's that if you travel much at all the lousy service kind of defeats the purpose of a mobile phone. I'd argue most people, on wifi at work and home, don't need more than 1gig of data.

But "unlimited" 2G is almost an oxymoron. 3G can be painstakingly slow, I can't imagine dealing with 2G speeds.

i heard if you stay on the main roads such as I-95 your covered, don't know if that's true or not.

 

[ozo012]

The problem isn't that TMo doesn't have great service in some areas, it's that if you travel much at all the lousy service kind of defeats the purpose of a mobile phone. I'd argue most people, on wifi at work and home, don't need more than 1gig of data.

But "unlimited" 2G is almost an oxymoron. 3G can be painstakingly slow, I can't imagine dealing with 2G speeds.

3G on Verizon is painstakingly slow, it is not the case on T-Mobile since they are using HSPA+ as compared to CDMA.

 

[jamjr74]

I was a Verizon customer for 8 years and I jumped to T-Mobile. What a mistake! The un-carrier thing is a scam. U pay full price for your phone over 2 years and if u want to leave or get a new device u have to pay off phone first. How is this different from a contract? Customer service is also terrible and they have a habit of overcharging so check ur bills! Anyway this is my opinion and I am happily back with Verizon. Verizon coverage is by far the best there is and u get what u pay for!

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk 2

 

[jntdroid]

It's different because if you stay with them, your monthly cost can be dramatically less if you pay the phone off, and you're free of the "contract" at that point as well. Plus, their "up front" costs are a little cheaper than other carriers. For example, the S4 is $630 on Tmobile full, $650 on Verizon or others. The iPhone 5 was $580, then they bumped it to $630 - while, again, $650 on other carriers.

Though I do agree with you on customer service... a majority of the time it was fine, but when we had problems, customer service was subpar at best.

There were also other quirks. Twice, my wife received a voicemail, but wasn't notified about it until almost 24 hours after the fact (iPhone 5) - that's a major problem, and both times I called about it, customer service blew me off and dismissed it as "normal" and "something that just happens occasionally". And numerous times we would be texting each other, and nothing would go through - then an hour or two later (one time longer), they all went through at once.

In our area, HSPA+42 is as fast as Verizon's LTE a lot of the time, and HD Voice is just plain awesome. But as soon as we left our area, the service was horrible. We simply drove from DFW to east Texas. While I expected to lose data occasionally, or drop to "E" often, I didn't expect to have no service at all...voice or data - and that happened a lot, despite what the coverage map showed.

The savings were significant - we saved roughly $50-60/month on a plan that allowed us to utilize what we use on Verizon. The network was fine for us a majority of the time because we don't travel much. But the "intangibles" (like customer service, and the things I mentioned above), plus the service being even worse than I expected outside of area, pushed me back to Verizon.

Edit: Oh and for what it's worth, at least in our area, once you hit your data limit, the 2g speeds (which are a step below Edge) were unusable. Again, maybe that's just our area, but we're talking 10-20k/s speeds on the high end.

 

[PereDroid]

If my job didn't pay for my phone, I would switch. VZW 4G coverage is horrendous at my house, and I live in Cleveland proper. Not a suburb. We were one of the first markets to get 4G and it is so very spotty.

 

[Zael]

Just wanted to add my 10 cents. I was on a very similar plan (maybe the same) as the OP until last Christmas. I also live in the Greater Boston Area, and figured that T-Mobile's service would be perfectly fine for me 95% of the time. Unfortunately, I can't use wifi at work, so I did want more then 500MB of data. I got on Solavei, which resells T-Mobile service. $45 a month for unlimited talk, unlimited text, and 4 GB of 4G data, with unlimited 2G afterwards. I have been very pleased with it so far, and when I was visiting my parents in Jacksonville, AL over the holidays, I actually found that I had better reception with Solavei than I had with my old Galaxy Nexus on Verizon.

I brought my own Nexus 4 to Solavei, but at 300, that phone was the same off contract as some other phones are priced when on contract. I know you can purchase phones through Solavei, but I don't believe they have any sort of monthly payment plan for them. For those curious about T-Mobile's network but not wanting to have only 500MB of data, I highly recommend you at least give Solavei a look.

 

[grenefroggie]

T-Mobile's "Un-Carrier" deal isn't really all that bad, in my opinion. The point is in the long run your phone bill will end up costing you less.

But there are also other great options available. You can buy your own phone (I am partial to GSM phones, until LTE became available I didn't see the point in going with VZW and Sprint), a penta band phone like the Galaxy Nexus would be ideal. You lose LTE capability, but your options have just been increased because now you have more carriers to choose from.

There are quite few MVNO's that are available. If you are a data consumer with your phone, then this might not be a good choice for you. The goal is to cut costs, so there is usually fine print attached to their "unlimited" offerings.

Point being, is that these options have been available for some time now. T-Mobile is the first major carrier to offer this type of wireless service and advertise it heavily.

 

[kodiak799]

This thread makes me laugh a little....Chicago Tribune has an article that most cell users are overpaying for their service, specifically data they DON'T use...to the tune of $1.4B a year in Illinois alone!

CUB: Ill. smartphone users overpaying by $1.4B a year - chicagotribune.com

 

[grenefroggie]

This thread makes me laugh a little....Chicago Tribune has an article that most cell users are overpaying for their service, specifically data they DON'T use...to the tune of $1.4B a year in Illinois alone!

CUB: Ill. smartphone users overpaying by $1.4B a year - chicagotribune.com

EXACTLY!!! I don't pay for my phone bill, the service is provided by the company I work for.

I don't use more than 2GB/mo. I have a 5GB plan that I don't come close using. My highest bandwidth consuming app is Spotify. If I was paying for my service I would not likely be an AT&T customer.

 

[HARRINGT0N]

Just wanted to add my 10 cents. I was on a very similar plan (maybe the same) as the OP until last Christmas. I also live in the Greater Boston Area, and figured that T-Mobile's service would be perfectly fine for me 95% of the time. Unfortunately, I can't use wifi at work, so I did want more then 500MB of data. I got on Solavei, which resells T-Mobile service. $45 a month for unlimited talk, unlimited text, and 4 GB of 4G data, with unlimited 2G afterwards. I have been very pleased with it so far, and when I was visiting my parents in Jacksonville, AL over the holidays, I actually found that I had better reception with Solavei than I had with my old Galaxy Nexus on Verizon.

I brought my own Nexus 4 to Solavei, but at 300, that phone was the same off contract as some other phones are priced when on contract. I know you can purchase phones through Solavei, but I don't believe they have any sort of monthly payment plan for them. For those curious about T-Mobile's network but not wanting to have only 500MB of data, I highly recommend you at least give Solavei a look.

I've been on Solavei for 10 months now (Southeastern Mass resident) after being with T-Mobile for 10 years and can say that the service is exactly the same. No hiccups, or anything out of the ordinary. After taxes and fees my bill is $54 and change. For 4gigs of 4g data you really can't go wrong with the service. My other 3 lines are finally out of contract with TMo and I'll be moving them over too. Combine that service with a Nexus device and you have a real winner for cheap cash. solavei.com/harringt0n

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