I bought the iPhone 5 outright, unlocked and switch to T-Mobile after doing so. In the city (Chicago) the service can't be better. Really like that tethering is just included. LTE tethering has come in handy at a few coffee shops that don't have WiFi.
I also recently went to Europe and took advantage of the free worldwide data; was fantastic. Phone calls while roaming in Europe were reasonable, too. Something like 10 cents a minute back to the States.
> In the city (Chicago) the service can't be better.
Emphasis mine.
My wife and I got the $30 100 minute/"unlimited" data plan as a stop-gap before leaving the country to move abroad. Before leaving we drove from SC, to MA, to CT, to NY, on over to WI. Unless we were near a major city, our devices were roaming on to AT&T, where we only had 10MB of data to use. The voice coverage was fine while roaming, but since we were using one of the phones as a GPS to navigate, it got annoying at times.
Now this is a cut-rate plan that's full of limitations, and we knew that, but still the service we received was much worse than we expected. I'd strongly advise anyone considering T-mobile to check the roaming agreement.
Conversely, I spent two weeks driving an RV from Chicago to Burning Man (where I had coverage on the playa), and then back to Chicago through Yellowstone. Yes, I had a roaming data cap, but it was higher than yours since I'm on the unlimited $50 voice/text/data plan (I believe I get 100MB/month of roaming data).
I can't really complain when my wife was sending MMS pics back home of Burning Man from inside our RV. That's coverage.
My brother did 1.2 GB of tethering in a couple hours on my T-Mobile phone while I was driving down I-75 from Detroit to the middle of Ohio. No coverage problems, no overage fees (I'm on the unlimited data plan), and we had a movie to watch by the time we got to the hotel.
Yeah, but keep going down I75 and coverage gets spotty, you start roaming on AT&T, and then is mediocre T-Mobile until you hit southern Tennessee/Northern Georgia. Luckily though I was getting good 3G around Georgia though.
> our devices were roaming on to AT&T, where we only had 10MB of data to use.
Is this really that much of a problem? Coming from an Aussie who is used to having no mobile access at all (not even emergency) driving between major cities.
It's funny. We're a nation of few people, spread across a very large piece of land. You would think that coverage would be a critical issue for telecoms, but it's not.
As a fellow Aussie, lack of coverage is why I moved (back) to Telstra; outside of the major cities, only Telstra has reasonable coverage. Whenever I visit my parents in Gympie (~2 hours north of Brisbane, ~20,000 people), my previous carrier (Vodafone) couldn't connect me in the town's main street. Optus could only do so at a certain corner. With Telstra, I receive ~2mbps in the middle of my parents' farm. The difference in coverage between Telstra and its competitors is extreme.
Yet, Optus and Vodafone are two major carriers with millions of customers. Optus and Vodafone are not much cheaper than Telstra. But this small price difference (I'd actually be paying more for my equivalent plan with Vodafone..) is apparently (according to those millions of Optus and Vodafone customers) worth sacrificing a huge amount of coverage for.
tl;dr - Aussies don't seem to care that much about coverage, just price.
Because most people never leave the cities (or do so very rarely). They do, however, have to pay the extra per month. Telstra's extra coverage just isn't worth $120 a year (to some/most).
I also assume when traveling I have no data, and download a map to my phone before leaving for GPS. When driving around LA however, for example, I'll use Google Maps which is a total data hog and works great on T-Mobile most anywhere. Google Nexus + T-Mobile: one of the best combos out there when in a US city.
No, for us it wasn't that much of a problem at all - but we'd made similar trips using Verizon as our carrier, so we were expecting a similar area of coverage. Since this wasn't really advertised to us up front, it gave us the perception that the service was sub-par in comparison to other offerings.
That said, if I needed a month of stop-gap coverage on the cheap, I'd definitely use the service again.
Edit: Oh, and we've just moved to Christchurch. I think it's a similar story here w/ coverage between cities, but obviously the distances involved are much, much smaller.
Which roads were you driving? We drove all the way through outback QLD->NT->SA, and it was pretty reasonable coverage on the highways. That's with Telstra though, the other telcos suck.
It depends on your current data plan. I was capped at 50MB and they sent me an SMS when I hit 40 alerting me to possible overuse. I just turned off data roaming in the Android settings and everything was fine.
You might also check out Consumer Cellular (https://www.consumercellular.com/Info/Plans). Even though it is targeted at an older demographic, it is a stellar service all around.
My wife and I have 1000 minutes, 15k texts, 2GB data for about ~$70. You can also get the minimal plans and they will give you a heads up when you are about to go over and you can upgrade to the higher plan up without penalty (and switch back down after the month is over). Customer service is also far superior, in my experience. No contracts. No hidden fees. It's AT&T network behind the scenes. They also started supporting the newest iPhones "officially". Prior you had to buy a SIM cutter to get it to nano size.
For an anti-(contract|warranty|debt) guy like me, it has been a breathe of fresh air.
Add the $450 extra you pay for the unlocked iphone and it's closer to $90 a month. I pay $55-60 a month for AT&T (including a $12 discount thru my employer).
Don't get me wrong AT&T sucks and T-Mobile is doing a lot of consumer friendly things but the gap betewen them simply isn't as large as is being presented.
Yes, but after 2 years and you've paid off the phone, that extra $30 or so comes off your bill (quite nice).With ATT, even after your contract expires, you're still paying that extra money for the subsidized phone.
After how many years of pocketing the extra money? I feel like T-Mobile is truly disrupting the industry, and I'm voting with my wallet to support them. I can't wait until the other carriers actually start competing with T-Mobile, instead of just playing catch up. I hope that's when the industry actually becomes consumer-friendly, instead of hostile.
So that's half the problem - the other half is the locked handsets. With TMobile, you pay for unlocked you get a fully unlocked handset. If you are on the TMO installment plan, your phone is locked until you pay up, at which point they unlock it - no 2 years required.
Last I heard (6 months ago), AT&T makes you wait till your contract is up before unlocking, and on the other side Verizon won't let you bring your unlocked phone to their service - forcing you to buy one from them.
I'm paying $50/month for unlimited voice/text and 2.5GB of 4G data before I drop to 2G speeds. Is that what AT&T offers for the same price? Also, I run on a Nexus 5 (half the price of an unlocked iPhone 5s).
It's not what AT&T offers for the same price. Before I switched to Tmo two months ago, my wife and I had AT&T. Probably the same 23% corporate discount. 500Mb plan for her, grandfathered unlimited data for me, no text plan (Google Voice or iMessage), 700 minutes/month split between the two of us. Total bill (taxes, etc.): $121/month with discount.
Tmo: unlimited everything (well, 5GB of 4G data) with no discount, $140/month. I'll probably knock that to 2.5GB (we don't use that much) and bring it on par with what we paid on AT&T. Additionally, though not directly related to the comparison, we don't have to say "Mother, may I?" for tethering, so we can knock off another $30/month for iPad data.
The Nexus 5 is more comparable to the iPhone 5C which AT&T offers for $199 on contract (let's compare 32GB models since Google only charges $50 vs Apple's $100 for the upgrade). At $399 the extra $200 works out to $8 more a month. This is about what I pay monthly to AT&T including fees.
Like I said T-Mobile does a lot of great consumer things. For some people it will be worth it to go with T-Mobile. For others the difference isn't quite so large and in many places the T-Mobile network simply isn't good enough[1].
The consensus opinion of professional reviews is that the 5s is superior. The Nexus beats the 5s on display but lags the 5s in battery life, camera and build quality. CPU/GPU are comparable. We could continue to list minor features in each phones favor all day but those are the major specs most people care about. If you look at reviews across the board the 5s is a better reviewed phone and the Nexus 5 receives marks around the 5c. Vs the 5c it wins on display and CPU/GPU but loses on battery life, camera and build. It may be better than the 5c but I think it's a closer comparison.
And I think my exact point was that is an Apples to oranges comparison. The whole point of the subsidy is you pay more per month and less up front. The whole point of a shitty network is that it doesn't cost as much to maintain.
I'm not talking about subsidies or networks. Just if we're talking about a comparable plan. Comparing an unlimited text/voice plan on TMo to a 500 min plan on AT&T doesn't make for an accurate comparison. You may not like TMo for your purposes, but for most people it works just fine.
Where I live T-Mobile is just as good as AT&T. OTOH I know people in large cities that can't get TM at their house. I'm not a T-Mobile hater, but I think it's important to realize that T-Mobile is not the promised land. There are important reasons why T-Mobile is in 4th place and has been hemorrhaging subscribers. And while it's going to be the best carrier for some people, many others are going to have a bad time.
I drank Red's 4G flavor-aid early and gave up my unlimited plan. The map said I was in 4G range but my pricey modem disagreed. I switched to Tmo two years ago and love it...better than expected coverage in metro areas, 1/2 price and unlimited everything.
The flag to enable the built in mobile hotspot feature of your phone's os is enabled by default when you choose the share everything plan on Verizon or the mobile share plan on AT&T.
There is also the option of individual data plans (per line) that include this flag as well, but they of course cost more. Example: You get $30 for 2GB on Verizon, but to enable the mobile hotspot you need the $50 for 4GB plan. In AT&T's case you would need the $50 5GB plan to enable mobile hotspot.
In the case of Verizon, you're perfectly able to download a third party tethering application (as per the FCC ruling) and use it on their old tiered individual data plans. If you have Verizon's grandfathered unlimited plan, you are able to add on the $30 unlimited tethering option as this plan did not fall under the FCC fiasco. However, I have not heard of Verizon going after anyone using a third party tethering application on an unlimited plan. It's worth noting that Verizon is still the only carrier that ever offered and still offers (to subscribers that already have an unlimited data plan) truly unlimited and unthrottled tethering as an option as their LTE network is not throttled.
In the case of users still on AT&T's grandfathered unlimited data plan, they are throttled to 0.5Mb/0.5Mb after 3GB for 3G devices, and 5GB for LTE devices. They also will automatically move you to a tiered plan if you attempt to use any third party tethering applications and do not offer any legitimate way to tether on this plan.
I'm hoping that one of T-Mobile's next moves will include adding unlimited tethering that is unthrottled to their unlimited data plan.
> The flag to enable the built in mobile hotspot feature of your phone's os is enabled by default when you choose [..] the mobile share plan on AT&T.
Not if that device is a Nexus 7 tablet.
ATT specifically made Google turn off hotspot access from the tablet, while it works with the same SIM in a phone. Or with a TMO SIM in the same device.
Wtf? I frequently tether my T-mo 3G phone when needed, and I got some sms saying I needed to sign up for a tethering plan when I used it for apparently long enough for them to detect it. What plans have tethering included?
You would need the Simple Choice plan with unlimited data to receive 2.5GB of mobile hotspot [1]. If you click unlimited and look at the panel on the right you'll see it. "Unlimited high-speed data on our network. Up to 2.5GB of Smartphone Mobile HotSpot (SMH) service."
Did tethering on the unlimited plan work on your iPhone? Only a couple of months ago I switched from $60/2.5Gig to $70/unlimited and suddenly tethering didn't work anymore
I have been a loyal AT&T customer for over 5 years. Currently I have a Nokia Lumia 920 for a contract that is 1 year old. I am going on a one month vacation out of the country. So I requested AT&T to unlock my phone so I could use it overseas. Customer service said go fill out an online form. A day after filling the form, received email saying I am not eligible for an unlock. Went to the store. Same thing.
Now, I am wondering, is AT&T afraid that I am not going to finish my contract if they unlock the phone? If they think I was lying about the trip abroad, I could show them my tickets. But this kind of behavior just seems outright sadistic.
I just bought an unlocked Nexus 5 to use overseas and I am definitely switching to T-Mobile after I return. Fuck you AT&T.
Do not get me started. Dude, I was an AT&T wireless customer back when they were AT&T, still a customer when they were Cingular, and then when they switched back to being AT&T again. Probably ten years, maybe more? But every time I bought a new iPhone I had to call them and tell them I wasn't paying their $36 upgrade fee. They would then waive it after acting like it was a huge favor. The last time the rep said she'd do it "just this once". I told her that I would have to then reconsider my options for mobile service when my contract was up.
I didn't wait until my contract was up. 14 months later I paid the ETF on two phones and switched to Tmo. I think we'll come out about even versus just waiting until the contract ended. I grew weary of AT&T's nickel-and-dime bullshit, and the lack of signal at my house. Though I will credit AT&T with quickly unlocking the phones after the ETF was paid.
You have to hand it Legere. He's bold. Provocative. And speaks his mind. In the best interests of the company of course, but with a direct emphasis on making customers happy.
What's important to note is that T-Mobile is quickly becoming a company that delivers a great product and is customer-centric. And when the incumbents start playing catch up (AT&T in particular) you know they're making the right moves.
I've been with Verizon for a few years and I can't say their service is what it's marketed to be. Data is fast but the inability to simultaneously do data and voice is just idiotic. The monthly fees are also totally insane. I pay $140 / month for a single data line (iPhone). In contrast to Verizon, with T-Mobile you get unlimited voice and data for a little over $70, no contract and stellar customer service. I called T-Mobile to switch last month and with a little negotiating, they sent me a _free_ iPhone 5S. No contract. No bullshit.
T-Mobile's latest announcement of up to $650 in credits for switching over will increase their subscriber base by millions of new users, no question. It's bold, aggressive and customer-centric.
I can't personally speak on AT&T's network but we all know it's one of the worst companies in the world to deal with. Their service is spotty for many, many users. Their customer service is non-existent. Their data practices are borderline unethical (with hidden data caps, throttling, etc). AT&T is just an awful company. I'm stuck with their uVerse Internet service and it's just a disaster. Unfortunately, many of us have no other choice but their lousy broadband product. Let's not even talk about Time Warner.
T-Mobile's coverage, from what I have experienced, is stellar. Up and down the California coast. Mexico. Europe. NYC. Seattle. I'm always at 4+ bars. Data is fast (~18Mbps downstream). International roaming is perhaps one of the most impressive features of TMO. I remember paying $20 / MB with Verizon and that's just absolutely criminal. And they can get away with it because many customers aren't even aware of this until they get the bill.
Legere is right - the mobile landscape is just horrendous and it's mainly because of AT&T and Verizon. I hope T-Mobile continues this push towards making customers happy and simply offering better products. Their bottom line will be the ultimate proof of how this is working out for them - and from what I'm seeing, their new subscriber numbers are growing exponentially. You could say they're disrupting the industry. And that's rare from these monoliths.
>What's important to note is that T-Mobile is quickly becoming a company that delivers a great product and is customer-centric.
For those of us who have been with T-Mobile for years now, the company has always been this way, just more-so now. Glad the secret's finally getting out, and kudos to Legere for making it happen.
I've been with them since 2006 and I've generally been happy. The only problem is their coverage in rural areas is spotty, and I like being in rural areas as much as possible.
T-mo's coverage in California at least is noticeably worse than Verizon's. In SF its absolutely slower, and elsewhere it is non-existent where Verizon has LTE.
I'm overall quite happy though. I switched from paying Verizon $100/mo to $30/month with T-Mobile ($250 etf paid for itself in 4 months). Its also worth mentioning that since I moved over my CDMA iPhone 5, I am using HSPDA+ (on 1900mhz where it exists) not LTE
I use T-Mobile and am quite happy with it; I pay $30 a month for basically everything I need and no contract.
It is worth noting, however, that T-Mobile has some serious problems. There are large swaths of this country where T-Mobile simply doesn't have service. For instance, last time I drove from Denver to Chicago I lost reception 1 hour into the trip and got it back a few hours before I arrived. There was perhaps one town where I had service during the drive. I thought that this couldn't possibly be right, but I stopped by a T-Mobile store and confirmed that this is the case. I thought that mobile providers worked to ensure that your phone would work at least when you are on an interstate, but not with T-Mobile.
Also, unlimited Internet doesn't really mean unlimited Internet in practice. They throttle so heavily after I hit my 5 GB cap that they might as well have cut off the data plan. Programs stopped working as the requests would time out and the app would assume I had no connectivity.
I use/abuse my T-Mobile plan at times and at others barely use it at all. It all averages out to a pretty light to moderate usage, I figure. One of the reasons I really like T-Mobile is that they have never really bothered me about it.
The worst instance of abuse was once, for a couple months, I used tethering as my only home Internet access as my land lady was dragging her feet on getting Internet access installed. During one of those months I decided to watch the first few seasons of The Mentalist and that uses data plenty quick. An hour of video is still several hundred MB even with these fancy new encodings.
Their current deal is $50 for an "unlimited" plan that switches to EDGE after 500MB and $60 for a similar plan with a 2 GB limit (or 3 GB, can't remember which).
Yes, the unlimited data plan is the horseshit, despite what that playboy is telling me.
After getting throttled on day 3 of the month with my new phone, I'm down to approx 70 kbits/s. I can't even watch youtube without a 50% duty cycle.
and T-Mobile is far from sucky. I've had them for ~10 years and had numerous problems with various aspects of their company.
When I bought my last phone through them, their website failed to let me transfer my old phone number to it. Instead, it started a new account for me. Three calls to customer service and it's not resolved.
The first call the operator couldn't figure out what was going on. The second, the network quality to Asia was so bad, there was no communication possible. The third, I was hung up on while I was transferred.
Last time I filled up my monthly card, their web page said the fill up failed, so I tried again and it failed again. Next thing I knew, the charges had gone through twice.
The year before that I signed up for a data plan, but it wasn't compatible with my phone and they wouldn't cancel that plan - until I used a lawyer.
There have been many bumps in the road prior to that, too. I only use them because they have the right balance of coverage for the price. That is to say, second best coverage in my area and second highest monthly price.
There still are a lot of bumps. Their billing systems remain a mess, especially trying to use it on an iPad (if I don't disable wi-fi, it asks me for the iPad's phone number). I really wanted to use T-Mobile to support their free 200mb offer, but it's a mess to sign-up for extra data.
My final reason for leaving -- even though they suffered many high profile password hacks in the past, they still store them as clear-text and email it to you when doing a password reset.
That stinks. I had my old number changed over and active service in < 1 hour. Their service is actually really good here in atlanta other than in parking garages, and strangely, in my own domicile. I get phone reception, but no data. I have high speed internet and wifi at home though, obviously, so it doesn't matter.
My personal experience with their throttled data is that it is perfectly sufficient for emails, WhatsApp, and even low bandwidth radio and audio podcast streaming. It even works for moderate internet browsing in a pinch, although if you need more additional high speed data is still quite cheap ($10 for 2gb and $20 for unlimited).
None of the ones labelled "unlimited" look like "5GB cap", they look like unlimited on the phone + limited amount of tethered usage. It would seem to make very little sense to offer 5GB + 2.5GB for the same price as a combined total 4.5GB.
This is an off-contract pre-paid plan. I believe that you must buy these as SIM kits from Walmart. When I got it, you had to buy it from a physical store, but it looks like you can do it online now though it may take some time for your SIM card to arrive.
Word to the wise, you get basically no T-Mobile customer service once you switch to pre-paid. I have been on contract with them before and they are very helpful, but on pre-paid it seems like you are on your own.
It's not absolutely slower in SF than Verizon. It's absolutely faster. I switched from 3-5 mbps Verizon service to 30 mbps T-Mobile service. Sounds like an iPhone problem to me.
I'm not sure if you can make a reasonable comparison of speed if your device doesn't support LTE...
Also, California is a pretty big state. In LA, we use a lot of different data devices in the office from Verizon (mostly the Pantech ULM290s), AT&T, and T-Mobile (we dropped Sprint a couple years ago - they were terrible). T-Mobile performs great down here. I haven't had problems w/ my T-Mobile LTE devices (I carry an unlocked 5S, Nexus 4, and iPad Mini) when I'm up north either.
This. I've been on holiday in la and sf and using tmobile 4g on my iPhone. It's a joke and I'm from New Zealand and on a carrier that is only 3G. The coverage drops all the time and speeds were awful, also super expensive ($60 for 2.5 gigs and some arbitrary amount of minutes/texts).
Nope. In the scandinavian countries you get decent service even in remote areas. And remote in Finland or Sweden means about as remote as you can get .
I heared that in Sweden, if you drive far enough to the north, there will just be a network called "Sweden" and you can connect to that, no matter what your provider is.
Yeah, with America's biggest cities having people sometimes whole metres apart, it's no wonder you can't have good internet. Here in Europe, cities are so jam-packed full of people, whenever I need to pee, I have to use an extender hose just to reach the urinal! And then to flush, you call the person next to your urinal and hold a videocall over your unlimited data connection.
The plan to pay for ETFs to switch from other carriers does not seem to make much financial sense. For a monthly plan of $50, it would take T-Mobile many years to break even on this initial cost and it is not clear if they will be guaranteed to retain the subscriber for that time. Unless they again charge the equivalent of an ETF on their contract, something seems off here.
Unsolicited advice as a former T-Mobile customer: offer a real microcell and lose those shitty boosters, integrate Wifi calling with stock Android phones as it is currently unavailable for the Nexus phones, and move your call centers back from the Philippines.
I normally am not one of these America-centric culture warriors, and I have no problem understanding even very thick accents. But the specific form of ingratiating behavior that their call center employees are trained in is egregious. They are trained to, apparently, wrap every sentence front-and-back with terms of politeness and overt demonstrations of respect. A conversation can follow like this:
Rep: Please may I place you on hold sir as I
look up your account so that I can better be
able to serve you and fulfill your request?
Me: Sure
Rep: Thank you so much and please hold I will
return shortly to further assist you.
...
Rep: Yes, hello thank you sir for waiting your
patience is very much appreciated and I was
able to access your account so that I can
provide you now with an adequate resolution to
your request.
I really hate to pick on the reps this way because this is very good work for them and they try hard to accomodate a foreign culture. They are just trained in the worst combination of verbosity and obsequiousness.
I'm on some Walmart T-Mobile plan. I heard about the plan after getting my Nexus 4 so went to a local T-Mobile store and asked them if they could give it to me as a new customer and they did.
$30 monthly, 100 minutes, unlimited texts, unlimited data with the first 5 GB at 4G speeds.
I mean the 100 minutes bit is a bit nasty as all minutes are rounded up so even a 1 second incoming call I pick up counts against a whole minute. I rarely go over the limit though and usually just throw an extra $10 in the account to deal with it if I go over.
My fiance has the same plan and uses her tethering for her Apple TV Projector setup in the art class she teaches since her school wifi is pretty bad. You get a small amount of free tethering with the plan but it's only $15 for unlimited tethering in addition.
Well, the talk is nice, but with AT&T's $15 off per phone if you own it, T-Mobile isn't really cheaper anymore, especially with family plans. And with AT&T you can get coverage between cities, not just in them. I'm thankful to T-Mobile for forcing AT&T to keep up, but since they have, I'm going with the better network.
EDIT: My cost comparison for two people who own their phones:
4 Gigs shared on AT&T: $120
2.5 gigs each on T-Mobile: $100
So I guess T-Mobile is still cheaper. But, for me, T-Mobile data does not work at all outside of my home city. Data coverage everywhere is worth 20 bucks to me.
Horses for courses, but AT&T's other anti-consmer polices and missed deadlines are what got me to move.
When I went over data allotment on AT&T, I got charged extra for that month (especially infuriating late in the cycle). Here on Tmobile, I just get bumped down to 2G (acceptable - esp. if it happens 27 days into the cycle).
When TMobile launched the iPhone5 with HDVoice, AT&T and VZ loudly proclaimed that HDVoice was coming "late 2013". Still no news. How long does it take for them to support an additional codec that improves voice and lowers their bandwidth? I'm only waiting for them b/c I have a relative that is still on AT&T, and I'd love the calls to be HDVoice.
TMobile's coverage outside of metros sucks. And I doubt it will get better soon (likely they'll double-down on becoming better than ATT/VZ in-city than worry about low-density areas). If you really need coverage in exurban and rural areas, then yeah, go with one of the two biggies - but you'll definitely pay more.
This is a great strategy for gobbling up marketshare. Definitely an 80/20 move by T Mobile. Couple that with a customer centric product that isn't offered anywhere else and most people will realize they travel in between cities by plane.
Once t mobile establishes a foothold, it will have enough agency and capital to gain access to wider coverage. The biggies will be bleeding revenue and will have to license out their network to T Mobile to compensate.
Sure, their network is not a blanket. But that is temporary. T mobiles approach is likely possible due to differences in their operations which provides a competitive advantage that the biggies can't easily replicate.
Mobile networks will evolve faster than backbone. I'm excited to see what lies ahead.
> most people will realize they travel in between cities by plane.
With T-Mobile I can't even get get 5 miles out of the metro area without losing coverage. We're not talking about road trips across North Dakota, we're talking about a 40-mile drive to the next city over. Hope you weren't super into that Pandora song!
I would rather get charged extra and get a warning. $5/GB seems like a good price to me. Sometimes the extra speed is worth the money and having to call every time you are close to a data cap is insane. Instead, just change me for what I use, but charge a fair rate.
It's not capped at 100 minutes though, it just includes that many. They could keep talking more than 7 hours past that before the overage costs as much as the family plan with half the data.
Yep, if you talk another 100 minutes, you pay $40 that month instead of $30. I combine it with having gvoice ring my landline when I'm at home, and the landline is $3/mo unlimited voip via an Ooma box.
Paying $~90/mo for the cheapest iPhone plan that included tethering was an awful deal, but I don't think that AT&T had introduced the $15 off thing at the time. The family plan cut on top of that seems to makt AT&T's prices actually competitive.
Airvoice, an AT&T MVNO, will sell you two plans with 3GB each for $120 or 2 plans with 1GB each for $80.
I've paid 25usd a month (plus tax) for metered after 5GB, sometime later 2.5 after I changed a phone used for years. At no point have I found "family plans" reasonable unless you are used to multi-year contracts that are normally significantly higher than pre-paid.
My most recent change over to http://ting.com/ (Sprint) has a series of data/voice/text brackets you are priced at depending on overall usage. My bill ignoring first month subsidy credit of 25usd resulted in: 26usd before tax. The Bring Your Own Device theme of prepaid carriers lately is lovely, so I have the up-to-date Cyanogen mod on a modern phone I wanted.
I really don't know what venues people are buying these expensive plans at, most seem to revolve around AT&T and shopping malls though.
That $50 is not what you actually pay. You'll find another 12 or so fees and taxes on land lines and cell phones which can add up to another $10-$15.
One which really rankles me is the telcos charge a fee to comply with the law. Tmo currently charge almost two dollars a line per month for that ("Regulatory Programs Fee"). I kid you not - the fee literally is for them to comply with legal requirements. This is all a side effect of the regulatory capture of the FCC.
Here are the taxes for California http://www.mywireless.org/state-issues/california/ - and note that doesn't cover federal taxes. You can see a sample tmobile bill on their support site - http://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-1101 - and notice the section at the bottom taking up almost a quarter of the space is the taxes. They didn't include their fees in that example either.
If you do a prepaid plan instead, the taxes and fees are included in the price. When you sign up for the $30/mo 5GB plan and get your bill, it's for $30, not $30 plus a bunch of other things.
In Lithuania, Europe, I spend about $9 for this (even more, with 1GB of data). Very happy about the competition between carriers in our country - it is constantly making everything better and cheeper.
They don't. You pay for roaming. However, in summer 2014 there will be no more roaming charges for the EU (forced by the EU commission on the carriers - the carriers were playing dirty all along, e.g. TMobile and Vodafone have companies in many EU countries, but customers still pay roaming charges in "different" networks provided by different subcompanies). This still won't mean free mobile for the whole EU, as most networks only offer free calls/texts/data in their local networks, while you have to pay a little if you're in another operator's network (in the same country).
This guy reminds me of the Poochie character from the The Simpsons. Poochie was a dog on the Itchy and Scratchy show that they created to try and make the show more edgy and cool. Poochie wore sunglasses, a backwards hat, and carried around a surfboard saying hip things.
Seriously though, Poochie had no substance---that was the joke. This guy has brought on some real change at T-Mobile, and consequently the US wireless industry. Unlocked phones? Free roaming? I never dared hope!
I am not sure if this plan is still available, but I am on $30/month no contract plan. This has unlim. data, text and 100 voice minutes. It works perfectly with unlocked Nexus 4 which I got in Jan 2012. I'm never going back to contracts anymore.
My wife lost her T-Mobile G Slate tablet and she was going to replace it with a WiFi only one, so she called T-Mobile to cancel the data plan. Even though it was not covered by insurance, they sent her a replacement (upgraded to Samsung Galaxy Tab) and they converted the plan to a 200MB 4G/month plan for no monthly charge. That is great customer service.
This plan is still available I believe as I got this plan at the beginning of December.
All you need to do is get a new sim card from T-mobile.com which is usually close to free. And then activate the sim card online. Going through the steps you get to select your prepaid plan, and the $30 a month plan is one of the options.
As a long time TMo subscriber, what is he willing to do for me and my loyalty? Sure, offering ETF payoffs for new customers is great, but shouldn't you treat your loyal customers even better?
I guess you're a long-time T-mobile customer because you like being with them, and find them better than the alternatives. So what you're getting is, hopefully, already the best they can offer in terms of service, contract terms, etc.
Telcos are a game of scale. In order for T-mobile to be able to give you even better terms, or an even better infrastructure with even better services, they need to grab a larger slice of the market. So really, what they're doing does help you in the end, just indirectly and more slowly. As their market share grows, it justifies even greater investments in infrastructure and services, and so you benefit.
Is not having the lowest prices and highest customer service ratings in the industry enough? If not, you can always try your luck with Verizon (expensive), Sprint (horrible network), or AT&T (expensive, pathetic customer service, predatory behavior).
"All"? I thought it was just AT&T. Verizon is the only network in the US that's compelling, but they don't have unlimited plans, so T-Mobile is the only reasonable carrier for people that don't want to count every bit they transfer.
Can someone help me understand the economics of these incentive plans (where these companies subsidize your early termination fees, etc, to attract customers?)
Is this along the lines of what all these other companies (Amazon, Netflix, etc) are doing where they bring you in at low rates, sell to you at unsustainable prices, and then plan to increase prices over time (or do what they have to do to start turning a profit?)
Or is there a chance that, even after these incentives, prices will remain competitive?
I am not an industry expert, but it seems like a lifetime value play: even if a customer only stays with T-Mobile for one contract term @ 2 years, and assume the cost per month is $50, the total value gained would be the 24 * $50 = $1,200. No matter how much it costs for early termination of another contract, there's no way it matches $1,200 (or maybe for a VERY VERY select set of customers.)
Then, assuming people warm up to T-Mobile and say "hey - this is a good company!" , then you lock them in longer.
The cost of paying for an early termination fee could be considered equivalent to a Marketing and/or Distribution fixed cost.
Also consider the margin costs of cell service are almost non-existent. The overhead is covering huge expenses like towers and wireless spectrum, or leasing them from another major player.
After that, you just want as many people on your network as possible so long as they don't largely degrade the service for each other. And if you dominate a market you don't even care about that part because your customers have no choice.
They also require you to give them your old phone, so presumably T-Mobile will be getting some money out of re-selling your old phone. For most smartphones that's at least a couple hundred dollars.
I was on Verizon for a decade and I just switched to T-Mobile a few months ago. You cannot imagine how surprised I was at just how easy they made it for me to switch.
I purposely switched because I wanted a GSM phone because I've been toying with Arduino cell phone kits, but when it came down to the decision between AT&T and T-Mobile, it quickly became clear that T-Mobile offered a better product.
What I hadn't expected was that I wasn't going to miss Verizon one iota.
Not to troll, but how is this newsworthy? Everyone knows telecoms blow and offer horseshit-- from CEO to customer. Maybe if good ol' Señior Stevenson said this it'd mean something, but coming from the T-Mob CEO it ain't nothin'
He even goes to create some horeshit when he says "T-Mobile's network is fastest." I call bullshit, and ask "where is it faster, asshat?"
T-Mobile has always had pretty good customer service, but their network isn't nearly as large as other providers...
For those who don't know, providers have different licenses in each area, more licenses = more spectrum = better reception. T-Mobile, in general, as the least amount of spectrum available (by a huge margin). They also operate at a much higher frequency than their competition so their building penetration is worse (especially over 3G/4G).
This same thing goes with network speed; some areas have more spectrum and thus can offer better speeds. Some can't. So any measurement of "we're faster" is very, very geographically specific.
Note: I worked in the wireless industry for 5 years (with a few of those at T-Mobile).
Where's the cable company exec who's willing to admit their industry blows? I think it's refreshing to hear him acknowledge how crappy telecoms are. I think it's even better that they're shaking things up.
It's interesting to me because people always say this is a huge issue with T-Mobile. I've been with them for a decade now, and have had very little coverage problems. I've been across a lot of the country and the two places I can actively remember where I got zero coverage was in northern Minnesota and Death Valley.
Their data does get a little flaky the when out of fairly populated areas, but I have seen this improving very quickly and can make many long drives with full data coverage.
>the two places I can actively remember where I got zero coverage was in northern Minnesota
I took the Empire Builder recently, which basically skitters along the Northern border from Chicago to Seattle/Portland, and T-Mo coverage was nil for the bulk of the trip. Can't say I really minded, though.
Could be different phones and the bands they support, in part. My brother and I are both on T-Mobile, but he gets better data coverage in the U.S. (we both get perfectly fine voice coverage). I have the "Global" version Moto G, which doesn't support either of: 1) any of the 4g/LTE bands, or 2) the 1700 MHz AWS band on which a lot of T-Mobile's 3g coverage is located. (The U.S.-version Moto G does support 1700, but then isn't usable for 3g in Europe, because it lacks 900/2100.) Whereas he has a Nexus 5, which supports LTE, giving him 4g coverage in some areas where my phone falls back to either EDGE, or no data at all.
I have their pre-paid plan, which apparently doesn't get me the "Service Partner" coverage, so there's a large band on the flyovers that I have zero reception in.
You're correct though, around my city and most cities I've been too domestically, I've found the coverage to be pretty good. Either way, the cost and ease have kept me on their program even with the occasional coverage gaps. But somebody routinely out for non-metro trips might not like it.
It's been my experience that there's not much difference between AT&T and T-Mobile overall. Which one is better just depends on where you spend most of your time. People with Verizon seem to get a signal virtually everywhere.
On the I-5 pacific corridor during our drive last summer from CA->WA and back, I got bupkis coverage for TMobile data in most of northern california and oregon (and call coverage was spotty). However, our Verizon 4G iPad also had weak/no coverage in may of the same places.
However, I would never go back to ATT/VZ absent a major change in their behavior. Happy TMO customer.
Have a look at http://opensignal.com/ - the map is built by data submitted from their app on phones. Unfortunately they do not show areas where the phone reports no signal.
In my area (Santa Cruz, CA) tmo are weak. Heck I barely get coverage in my house, and walking along West Cliff drive has sections with no coverage. Verizon is strong.
However I very rarely actually use the phone as a phone so I mostly don't care.
I think you're both right. I have been a T-Mobile customer for 10+ years. I have probably better coverage while in a city, like Boston, than anyone I know.
I also have some pretty bad coverage when I go up to Vermont.
So, if you stay in the cities. Excellent Coverage.
Roam into the rural world: Spotty coverage.
Fact, though, even AT&T's coverage in some of these same locations is pretty poor. Verizon seems to work best.
Re: Vermont -> I had no T-Mo coverage at all in southern Vermont, specifically Brattleboro, which is in the extreme southern part of the state and not far from civilization. Out here in eastern Washington I've had pretty good coverage (though I AM on the I90 corridor - civilization again, relatively speaking) and am a happy camper on their $30/mo, 100min, 5G Walmart plan.
I've been using Republic Wireless for over a year. They've also tried really hard to provide disruptive options by integrating Wi-Fi calling/texting/data into the phones.
I pay for the phone off contract ($299 for Moto X), then $5 to $40 / month for various service options (all unlimited, from WiFi calling only up to 4G LTE).
The Sprint network isn't the fastest, but it's hard to beat $25 / month for unlimited talk/text/3G data. I even went a whole month on the $5 WiFi only plan (You can change your plan twice a month).
I love not being locked into a contract and only paying < $50 / month for 2 unlimited phones.
If I planned my life around it, I could live without voice and texting, and rely on instant messaging and Email instead, however I must have LTE. I can't rely on WI-FI everywhere. So, I would be paying some cellular service for LTE, and then I might as well get voice/text.
That said, I just noticed T-Mobile $30/month 100 minute voice, and unlimited data (4G up until 5GB) plan. That's pretty amazing and I will probably jump ship from Verizon.
I tried to move my family from AT&T to T-Mobile. I have to say first that AT&T has IMHO excellent customer service. They have worked with me many times to reduce the bill. Anyway, I liked the look of the $100 family plan, but the problem with switching to T-Mobile is that they only support LTE so families like mine with out-of-contract iPhone 4s have to upgrade the phones too, which is a major expense.
Hmm? When we switched to Tmo my wife used an unlocked 4S I had lying around while we waited for AT&T to unlock our iPhone 5s. I heard no complaints from her. As part of my job I run plenty of phones on Tmo's network, and non-LTE phones work fine for both data and voice. Your current phones will work fine. Is it possible you misunderstood something?
I'm changing my service today: two lines at half the cost of Verizon. I have to support companies when they reach out like this. This is also why I quit Facebook. They don't listen to their users and I was tired of being a product. I encourage others to speak with their wallet and their choice of social media providers.
And he's right.
In the past I have bought a Nexus S outright and used their no-contract plan. Recently I upgraded to the Nexus 5, went to a T-Mobile store, they just switched me and suggested a better plan for the same price.
Coverage and bandwidth is great (where I am), and the no-contract plans are certainly great.
I hope T-Mobile will remain independent and DT won't ruin the little innovation we are seeing in the carriers market by selling it to some other company (especially some content related).
While the deal sounds good, I have heard multiple bad things about T-Mobile's support of the military. I have multiple friends who T-Mobile tried to prevent from being allowed to abrogate their contracts due to poor coverage surrounding military bases, as allowed by law.
There's nothing to specifically signup for. Any post-paid Simple Choice plan now has unlimited global data in most countries. Service is capped at 128k up/down speeds. Everything I've read has been positive.
I've been resisting getting a smartphone for years because I didn't want to either pay $300+ for a phone or $80+ per month with one of the big carriers.
Then a couple of weeks ago, someone on an HN thread told me about the Nokia Lumia 520. I checked it out, decided to buy one, and I'm damn glad I did! Windows Phone is frankly amazing - it does everything I need it to do, it's beautiful, and it just works. I ordered a sim card from Straight Talk for their Bring Your Own Phone program for $7, and voila, I have unlimited everything on ATT's network for $45 a month.
The other service I advocate for people is Ting, since its only $6 per phone, though you have to buy the device. But the Nexus 5 is such good value for hardware it isn't even that expensive, and they have that same early termination relief deal.
I have around a dozen people on one Ting plan, and since the monthly bills adjust for usage I usually only owe around $120 total, and literally $60 of that is from the few people that use 1k+ minutes / texts a month. By comparison I know a family of 4 on Verizon with iphones and such that pay $400 a month for not even unlimited service.
+1 for ting.com. We have 6 phones on it, including the nexus 5 which rocks. bill is $74 this month. I love the web interface that enables me to turn off voice/sms/data on a per phone basis if they hit thresholds or if my kids don't get their homework done :-)
From what I see he has been the CEO for a little over 2 years.
In business, 2 years is not a long time at all.
My personal opinion is it's unprofessional and not appropriate language. (I can see by the downvotes that others don't agree).
If you are an entertainer that's one thing and you can be outrageous so you stand out (but you probably wouldn't even in all entertainment venues). [1] But you also don't want to come across as a lose canon either. In business people need to feel they can trust you and one of the things they look for is a certain amount of conformity to accepted standards.
Maybe this example will make sense. You meet the woman of your dreams. You want to marry her. You would die if you lost her. It's that important. You meet her father and grandfather. How will you behave? Will you watch what you say a bit? Or will you act the same way as with your fraternity brothers or friends when you are just hanging out?
[1] And yes I can definitely see the PR value of what he is doing.
The reason you are being downvoted, hopefully, is because you sound like a fool. You use the word unprofessional like it's a bad thing. You talk about how you wouldn't hire someone if they spoke like this CEO. All of those things raise red flags with me. How do you expect to be taken seriously when you care about things that don't matter?
I use language like that in certain settings as well. But not in business. And not in a college interview.
Now if I was going to hire you for a big freelance project and you used language like that over the phone while I was asking you some questions it would definitely change my confidence in hiring you.
That's a bit circular. You care because you've decided that it's important and believe others should believe the same. But, it doesn't materially have anything to do with anything.
A candidate is not inherently less capable of doing the job simply because of their language unless, of course, their job is to please people who care about language.
Personally, I appreciate a person who says what he thinks, and I think we see painfully little of this in the business world.
>Now if I was going to hire you for a big freelance project and you used language like that over the phone while I was asking you some questions it would definitely change my confidence in hiring you.
I live in San Francisco and there is no coverage when walking around the city with T-mobile. Verizon has coverage everywhere.
I'm not even talking about elevators. Just sidewalks of major central pedestrian roads like Bay St and Hyde St.
I also have no coverage in my apartment with them or at work.
Coupled with the cancelation of Cel-Fi, it is impossible to use their service in many densely populated areas.
I live in San Francisco and have T-mobile service, and don't see what you're seeing. I'll hop on up to Bay and Hyde tomorrow to double-check, but in the past I've gotten adequate coverage everywhere aboveground I've been in the city.
The voice calls were cutting out on a Nexus 4 on those streets when walking on the right side of the sidewalk North from Broadway to Bay and walking East on Bay from there.
I also never used ATT so I don't know how their service is.
Basically, the only time I've ever gotten good quality calls from T-mobile was when I was calling the emergency number from an area I normally have no service in.
I'm considering T-Mo as they seem the less douchy of the bunch. Right now I have Sprint and the service pretty much sucks everywhere in the city. I don't use the phone much and the data blows. I can get LTE in a few places, but it's no where near AT&T that my wife has. I usually have to drop down to 3G as LTE seems to stall a lot (on a 5s). A lot of the time there's the 1x business goin on my connection, which I feel is like iPhone 1 days (or worse).
I switched to Sprint because I felt like I wasn't going to be nickle and dimed (and despised as a 'data hog') like I was on AT&T. I'll never got back to AT&T. For the most part my plan on Sprint is great - unlimited data, phone, and text and 5GB hotspot for little bit less than what I was paying for AT&T.
But the network in SF just sucks. Ya know, it's 2014 and I'd just like decent LTE. I'm shelling out a lot of money for sub-par service. So, I'm gonna ask around about T-Mo and if it has good service, I'll switch over. Now they seem least douchy of the bunch.
I rather have no data at all than constant disconnects and cut offs for the 2-3 phone calls I place a day. I really wanted to like T-mobile, but their service in SF sucks for me.
The other issue I have with them is that if you cancel your month-to-month subscription, they don't let you keep talking for the month you already paid for if you move your phone number to another company. That is they won't issue you a new phone number if you transfer the one you had with them.
I also hate Verizon because of the 2 year contract and useless preinstalled apps, but that seems to be the only option.
I also recently went to Europe and took advantage of the free worldwide data; was fantastic. Phone calls while roaming in Europe were reasonable, too. Something like 10 cents a minute back to the States.
All for ~$70/month. Beats the pants off AT&T.