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The US is huge. It's hard to cover with mobile phone and data service. People fear their phones not working on road trips, or when they go visit a different pa

The US is huge. It's hard to cover with mobile phone and data service. People fear their phones not working on road trips, or when they go visit a different part of town. Verizon and AT&T built trust that they will be good enough, and better than the others. T-Mobile did some great marketing with their 4G launch and follow up campaigns that built a lot of trust. T-Mobile's customer service is also extremely good. The perception of Sprint is that it just might not be good enough. In fact, it is good enough. A colleague of mine has been using it for the three years I've known him without real issue. Sprint's recent $25/mo unlimited deal got me to switch from my $70/mo T-Mo deal. I've lost mobile hotspot, but the savings are worth it for now and there's no commitment. I'm only out the $38ish activation fee (both ways) if I want to switch away from them.

Aloha 7y ago
Sprint has a really solid network in most metro areas. Both T-Mo and Sprint have huge issues with rural coverage, both have to leverage roaming partners to get real national coverages.
- kn0where 7y ago
  T mobile has 600 MHz now (band 71) which has really helped in rural areas as long as you have a new phone.
- txcwpalpha 7y ago
  I have T-Mobile and travel for work frequently. A couple years ago I traveled to one of the largest metro areas in Iowa, only to get off the plane and have my TMo phone tell me that there was no service whatsoever. After a bit of research, I found out that TMo did not have any official coverage in the entire state of Iowa, and only had roaming coverage available through a partnership with Iowa Wireless (I think it's different now and there is actual coverage available in IA). It ended up being fine (roaming was more than enough for my usage), but it did initially remind me of the feeling when I step off the plane in a foreign country and have to wait to find a WiFi hotspot to be connected again. It certainly wasn't what I expected when traveling to an area that's only ~200 miles away from one of the US's largest cities (Chicago). edit to add: Ironically, TMobile has free roaming + data coverage in almost every single country around the world, which makes it seem a bit silly that I can take my TMo phone to rural Indonesia and get data service (which I have done, with that same phone and TMo plan) but struggle to get it in a place like metropolitan Iowa...

Aloha 7y ago

Sprint has a really solid network in most metro areas. Both T-Mo and Sprint have huge issues with rural coverage, both have to leverage roaming partners to get real national coverages.

kn0where 7y ago
T mobile has 600 MHz now (band 71) which has really helped in rural areas as long as you have a new phone.
txcwpalpha 7y ago
I have T-Mobile and travel for work frequently. A couple years ago I traveled to one of the largest metro areas in Iowa, only to get off the plane and have my TMo phone tell me that there was no service whatsoever. After a bit of research, I found out that TMo did not have any official coverage in the entire state of Iowa, and only had roaming coverage available through a partnership with Iowa Wireless (I think it's different now and there is actual coverage available in IA). It ended up being fine (roaming was more than enough for my usage), but it did initially remind me of the feeling when I step off the plane in a foreign country and have to wait to find a WiFi hotspot to be connected again. It certainly wasn't what I expected when traveling to an area that's only ~200 miles away from one of the US's largest cities (Chicago). edit to add: Ironically, TMobile has free roaming + data coverage in almost every single country around the world, which makes it seem a bit silly that I can take my TMo phone to rural Indonesia and get data service (which I have done, with that same phone and TMo plan) but struggle to get it in a place like metropolitan Iowa...