4 ms·

Well, their customers probably have pretty low expectations from T-mobile.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Customer service is meh but the mobile service is great (even works on the Playa at burning man). I’m paying $150/month for 10 lines, and have been with them for 23 years. Of course, due to their data breaches, my email address with them is an alias and my physical address is my mail processor. Money goes in (I prepay a year at a time with a credit card), mobile service comes out. Prepaid service would mean they collect and retain less data, but you get lower priority on towers. If you need service occasionally where TMO doesn’t provide, I recommend a Visible (Verizon MVNO subsidiary) eSIM.
- Arrath 3y ago
  My experience with t-mobile service is that it has the worst coverage (western states) out of all the big players. I'll routinely have no signal on my t mobile work phone while my verizon personal phone is just fine.
  - brewdad 3y ago
    Same. Oregon has the worst T-Mobile coverage in the country. Something like half the state has no coverage. That's fine for the uninhabited areas but I will drop coverage between my house and the grocery store and I live in a Portland suburb. My wife's employer gave her a Sprint/T-Mobile phone and it doesn't work when she's in the office.
    - darksaints 3y ago
      With some insider knowledge, I can definitely say that their “coverage” maps, at least in the western US, are complete and utter bullshit. They don’t actually measure coverage for those maps, they just use signal propagation models like longley-rice, with wildly optimistic parameters and extremely low resolution terrain data and almost no built environment data. Now there are people shitting their pants due to a drive-test requirement (literally driving around and measuring signal strength) of a rural data speed commitment that came from the sprint merger. They’ve been telling people for years that there is coverage where there is literally nothing.
      - criddell 3y ago
        Comcast was caught lying about their coverage: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/comcast-gave-false-map-data-to-fcc-and-didnt-admit-it-until-ars-got-involved/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/comcast-gave-fal... I wonder if there are similar FCC requirements for cellular companies?
        xp84 3y ago
        Probably, but I suspect like all captured regulators, they'd impose a penalty of a sternly-worded letter and a wag of the finger, and a "firm request" that they stop lying no later than 2033.

Customer service is meh but the mobile service is great (even works on the Playa at burning man). I’m paying $150/month for 10 lines, and have been with them for 23 years. Of course, due to their data breaches, my email address with them is an alias and my physical address is my mail processor. Money goes in (I prepay a year at a time with a credit card), mobile service comes out. Prepaid service would mean they collect and retain less data, but you get lower priority on towers. If you need service occasionally where TMO doesn’t provide, I recommend a Visible (Verizon MVNO subsidiary) eSIM.

Arrath 3y ago
My experience with t-mobile service is that it has the worst coverage (western states) out of all the big players. I'll routinely have no signal on my t mobile work phone while my verizon personal phone is just fine.
- brewdad 3y ago
  Same. Oregon has the worst T-Mobile coverage in the country. Something like half the state has no coverage. That's fine for the uninhabited areas but I will drop coverage between my house and the grocery store and I live in a Portland suburb. My wife's employer gave her a Sprint/T-Mobile phone and it doesn't work when she's in the office.
  - darksaints 3y ago
    With some insider knowledge, I can definitely say that their “coverage” maps, at least in the western US, are complete and utter bullshit. They don’t actually measure coverage for those maps, they just use signal propagation models like longley-rice, with wildly optimistic parameters and extremely low resolution terrain data and almost no built environment data. Now there are people shitting their pants due to a drive-test requirement (literally driving around and measuring signal strength) of a rural data speed commitment that came from the sprint merger. They’ve been telling people for years that there is coverage where there is literally nothing.
    - criddell 3y ago
      Comcast was caught lying about their coverage: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/comcast-gave-false-map-data-to-fcc-and-didnt-admit-it-until-ars-got-involved/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/comcast-gave-fal... I wonder if there are similar FCC requirements for cellular companies?
      - xp84 3y ago
        Probably, but I suspect like all captured regulators, they'd impose a penalty of a sternly-worded letter and a wag of the finger, and a "firm request" that they stop lying no later than 2033.