10 ms·
T-Mobile Rocks
Great points from Fred Wilson. And accordingly to Pogue's NYT article, they signed up more new subs in the last quarter than the big 3 combined. But, in light of their service map and much more limited travel, curious if it's enough to make you switch? Trying to figure this out myself...
- rradu 13y agoT-Mobile simply doesn't have any data coverage outside of major metropolitan areas. If you're someone that travels outside these areas, you will be unable to use your devices for anything but calls and texts. That's a big caveat that should be mentioned. (If you never leave the Bay Area, for example, then T-Mobile is a logical choice. It works well for me 98% of the time here.)
- Hengjie 13y agoCouldn't T-Mobile use another carrier's cell towers and allow their customers to fallback into those networks?
- voltagex_ 13y agoThey do (although I was only able to test this in a very small part of Idaho) allow roaming on to AT&T. Supposedly it's free with a data limit.
- greg5green 13y agoYes, there is free UMTS/HSPA/EDGE roaming on AT&T for post-paid plans (aka not the $30 100 minute/5gb plan) and there is a data limit. For my plan, its 50 megabytes, which doesn't seem like much, but AT&T throttles you to 128kbit/s, so you really have to work hard to get to that 50 megs.
- kiba 13y agoMy entire family is on t-mobile and I am glad we are. I wish they would tell samsung to drop their samsung cruft, though.
- matwood 13y agoI'm also moving from AT&T back to t-mo. It will save me a little money, but the main reason is to show t-mo that I support how they treat customers.
- e28eta 13y agoI just switched to T-Mobile with my iPhone 5S, largely on principle. My monthly bill won't go down much and my service has gotten worse, but I'm so happy to leave AT&T and support what T-Mobile is doing. The new international roaming policy is icing on the cake.
- MacsHeadroom 13y agoYour bill won't go down much? 5GB of 4g internet with 3g speeds after that, unlimited texting, and 100 minutes of non-wifi talk (unlimited on wifi) per month is only $30 flat on T-Mobile if you buy the start-up kit at Walmart. If you need more minutes than that you can either call over wifi, pay $0.10/minute or talk all you want for free over Wifi/3g/4g using a VoIP app like GrooveIP.
- michaelgold 13y agoI don't think the iPhone 5s has wifi calling. Is this accurate? http://support.t-mobile.com/thread/52768?start=0&tstart=0 http://support.t-mobile.com/thread/52768?start=0&tstart=0
- anxrn 13y agoReally? I did the same, my bill went down 50% (this is on top of a sweet discount I had on AT&T). But I see your point, I'd switch even if the savings weren't as good, they treat you like real customers, not sheep.
- ImprovedSilence 13y agoI would really really like to join T-mobile, but I'm just really hesitant based on coverage area....
- mistermcgruff 13y agoI just switched off of tmobile to verizon b/c I thought it incredibly unfriendly. They said I'd get 4g in Atlanta. But I didn't on 3 separate devices. I couldn't get service at all at my intown house which seems insane for a major city. When I tried to get out of my contract because they'd said I'd get service and I didn't they pulled up a map of their service area and said I was mistaken. I wrote letters I tweeted etc. They basically told me to fuck off.
- bbarn 13y agoInteresting. I've never been treated badly by any of their support staff, but I definitely have the "doesn't work in my own home" problem with them, as many other friends do. It perplexes me because AT&T works just fine inside my apartment, and I believe they are on close to the same frequency. Weaker signals perhaps?
- selectodude 13y agoAT&T has HSPA+ on 850MHz and 1900MHz, T-Mobile uses 1700MHz and 1900MHz, so the building penetration is significantly worse. However, due to the failed AT&T acquisition, T-Mobile phones can now roam on AT&T's 850MHz 3G spectrum, so most of the coverage issues indoors should disappear soon if they haven't already.
- bbarn 13y agoI didn't realize the frequencies were so dramatically different. If I remember my basic electronics, that's double the wavelength for the AT&T signals and that makes complete sense. Thanks.
- kevingadd 13y agoI ended up switching to T-Mobile for their $30 prepaid plan - 5GB of data (not at reduced 2G speeds either, actual data) a month, plus a reasonable amount of voice minutes and the ability to text. Way cheaper than what I'd pay on AT&T or other carriers, really simple to set up.
- eropple 13y agoI was using that plan, but I was finding that I didn't really have enough voice minutes (100 was less than I'd need). T-Mobile does throttle after 2GB on that plan, though that wasn't a big deal for me. The big problem for me was that T-Mobile's coverage area sucks; there were whole areas of Boston and Cambridge where I got absolutely no signal. I recently moved to the $45 unlimited-everything plan on Straight Talk, which uses AT&T SIMs, and I'm pretty happy with it. (I don't know if they too throttle over 2GB, but I rarely hit it anyway.)
- kevingadd 13y agoThe few months where I need more than 100 minutes, I can just add balance to the account and keep making calls. I usually just use Skype.
- gergles 13y agoT-Mobile throttles after 5GB on that plan, not 2. Straight Talk straight up terminates your data connection after 2 GB. They claim that they throttle, but they effectively terminate it - the throttled connection is so slow and has so many packets dropped that I couldn't use a single app on my 'throttled' phone without it timing out and giving up.
- eropple 13y agoI've read that elsewhere, but that doesn't match my experience in the New England area on TMO. I had my connection completely croak after my phone read 2GB of data usage. Maybe the behavior is different in different geographic areas? (The last time I went over 2GB was a year ago on TMO when my home internet wasn't yet installed, so for me it's basically academic.)
- bbarn 13y agoI love the service I get from T-mobile, as far as the human element goes. I've been with them for a long time and they treat me very well when I need them to. Unfortunately, I can't tolerate the service the network itself provides anymore. It used to be fairly functional inside city limits here (Chicago), but now it works poorly downtown, often shows max signal on HSPA+ but doesn't actually have a data connection, and if I leave city limits to go for a drive, I'm looking at probably 20 minutes outside the city before I'm on a non-data or roaming connection. I just started a new job that provides smartphone service, so I'll probably move my t-mobile account to a minimum amount per month and get a little nokia flip phone for when I'm not doing work related things. - Another big plus for t-mobile is they'll be happy to change my monthly plan without some badgering renewal bit, I've done it twice and they always accommodate me.
- srikrishnan 13y ago"companies sit around trying to figure out what customer charges they can get away with" That is so true! I used to work for a US telco and I've read all the stories about the "mystery charges". Also, I must say that telcos, and even banks, in India are to an extent like this. Had one bank put a 1.5$ on my credit card statement for an analysis that they did on my spend the previous month - which indicated that 100% of my card spend was towards airfare. I used the card only once, EVER, and I did not ask for that analysis! I ended up spending 3$ (counting just travel cost) fighting the 1.5$ charge, but I absolutely wasn't going to let them have it! Imagine telcos making an extra 1$ on some random charge on some 10 million customers. Even that is a lot of money!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jhardcastle 13y agoThe deal failed, and AT&T was forced to pay T-Mobile a $3 billion break-up fee, which TMo has used to build out their network. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/02/t-mobile-takes-3-billion-att-breakup-fee-builds-4g-lte-network/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/02/t-mobile-takes-3-bill...
- protomyth 13y agoThey then sold their towers for $2.4 billion http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-28/crown-castle-to-buy-t-mobile-usa-towers-for-2-4-billion.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-28/crown-castle-to-buy... Looks, like something you do with office space financially.
- BarkMore 13y agoThe deal failed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_purchase_of_T-Mobile_USA_by_AT%26T http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_purchase_of_T-Mobile_...
- arikrak 13y agoI think the two thing that matter are reception and price. T-mobile clearly wins on price, but in many areas its reception is not as good as AT&T or Verizon.
- skrause 13y ago> Because if all of us move to T-Mobile, the other carriers will have no choice to join them in being customer friendly. No, if all people move to T-Mobile, they will just start behaving like the other carriers. The only reasons they're customer friendly is because they have a low market share and try to win customers, not because it's their company culture. Just look at their German parent company, Deutsche Telekom is the German AT&T.
- stevenleeg 13y agoBut at least there are no 2 year contracts to keep us locked into T-Mobile if they ever turn into dirtbags!
- jamiepenney 13y agoUntil they get big enough to put them in. I've run through this cycle before with ISPs here in New Zealand - they're great while they're small, then once they hit a double digit percentage of the market, they shit all over you - raise fees, cut service centres (or outsource them), and add fixed term contracts and other bollocks.
- noloqy 13y agoThough T-Mobile seems to have adopted an interesting strategy in the US - as a European customer I find their proposition not to be notably better than that of other carriers. Here, it takes European commissioners to lower international roaming charges. T-Mobile doesn't rock across the globe.
- timthorn 13y agoAs an EU customer, try roaming to the USA and seeing if the Commissioner has done anything about those charges...
- kuschku 13y agoThe commisioners only lowered the charges for users in the EU roaming in other EU-countries. For example, if you bought your contract in Germany, you'll have to pay only 0.10 € / minute while you're in Denmark. (Which is quite funny, 'cause I have to pay 0.11€ / minute for calling to other german carriers.)
- the1 13y agowhat's wrong with virgin mobile?
- mhurron 13y agoNothing. I switched from Virgin to T-Mobile when it looked like I may be traveling internationally so I wanted a phone that would work in Europe. My coverage is a little better with T-Mobile and the ability to roam to other carriers in the event I am out of T-Mobile's coverage areas is nice. They had a better choice of phones too. The only bad thing I would say with Virgin Mobile is about the roaming, but if you are sure you say in Sprints coverage area (in the US) then you probably won't have a problem. Other than that, I'll still recommend people look at Virgin when they are looking for new plans.
- tfigment 13y agoI have Virgin and agree with the points here. Basically roaming on the $35/mo plan is non-existent but I have never had an issue with my phone not working in the areas I live and visit (unless there was a tower down). Sprint's 4G coverage is very poor so if you expect that then good luck but my phone is not so I don't mind yet and can easily switch to another carrier like T-Mobile when I do.
- maxerickson 13y agoVirgin Mobile USA is owned by Sprint and only works on Sprint towers, roaming is explicitly non existent.
- kalleboo 13y agoCDMA
- iSnow 13y agoThe funny thing is, T-Mobile is not exactly renowned for customer friendlyness in their home market, Germany.
- denysonique 13y agoNot sure about T-mobile being so great in the UK either
- coherentpony 13y agoTesco. I'm telling you, man, Tesco's customer service is so badass. Never had a problem with them. They also piggy-back off of O2's network, so I never have coverage problems unless I'm out in the sticks.
- phaus 13y agoI'm glad that T-Mobile has become a customer focused company in recent months, but let's not forget that just a short while ago, they were just like all of the other major carriers. T-Mobile had a sudden change of heart not because they give a shit about their customers, its because their network wasn't good enough for people to put up with typical carrier bullshit. As a normal carrier, they were losing money and customers so fast that they had to either change or go out of business. I highly doubt they would have made the same philosophical changes if they had been successful doing things the scummy way.
- chimeracoder 13y ago> I'm glad that T-Mobile has become a customer focused company in recent months, but let's not forget that just a short while ago, they were just like all of the other major carriers. Not just that, but in other countries (not the US) where they have the dominant market position, they seem just as despised as Verizon and AT&T are in the US. Not that I'm complaining; I enjoy the consumer-side benefits of competition as much as the next guy - it's just good to remember exactly where things stand.
- cracker_jacks 13y agoT-Mobile had a sudden change of heart because they had a sudden change in CEO in 2012. He's the one that's been pushing the 'uncarrier' movement within the company.
- mortenjorck 13y agoJohn Legere is... interesting. Check out the original 'uncarrier' press event from this summer: http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/26/4148836/stop-bullshit-says-tmobile-ceo-john-legere http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/26/4148836/stop-bullshit-says... "Carriers are really nice to you... once every 23 months. This is the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard in my entire life. Do you have any idea how much you're paying?" This is not a quote from an angry blog commenter. This the CEO of the United States' fourth largest mobile service provider speaking at a press conference. Refreshingly bizarre.
- drpgq 13y agoAs a Canadian, I'm curious about the international roaming.
- 3825 13y agoIf you are going back and forth often and end up spending more time than half the time south of the border, it might just work for you :) Here is a quote from their fine print > Not for extended international use; you must reside in the U.S. and primary usage must occur on our U.S. network. Device must register on our U.S. network before international use. Service may be terminated or restricted for excessive roaming or misuse.
- throwawayyyz 13y agoI don't understand how they're paying $2000 a month to AT&T. We have 5 iPhones and 1 AT&T iPad on a family plan with unlimited text and very high number of minutes (can't remember exactly) and pay not more than $450.
- nilkn 13y agoI was blown away by that number as well.
- SwaroopH 13y agoI love T-mobile whenever I am in the US. Coupled with Google Voice and Nexus 4 (LTE works!), I pay way less than an AT&T contract + phone. The only time I was unhappy with their coverage was in my apartment in Mountain View this fall. Apart from that, I've never had to call their customer service. Every time I come back to US, I simply recharge my account online and get going in minutes. I am curious to try out the Walmart plan (refer comments) next time and cut my costs by half.
- stratosvoukel 13y ago2000 dollars per month? is this reality in the us? :/
- anxrn 13y agoT-Mobile is shaking up the industry like Apple should have (and could have) done with the launch of the iPhone in 2007.
- raverbashing 13y agoYes Too bad they turned down the iPhone when it was offered to them.
- mikeash 13y agoLet's not discount what Apple pulled off. Before the iPhone, carriers ruled handsets with an iron fist, dictating what features they would have and what apps would be available. Apple completely smashed that. Carriers now, for the most part, accept that they don't get to decide what your phone does, only how you use your connection with them. The carriers used to do things like disable Bluetooth and charge you extra to turn it back on, or force all apps to go through their own internal approval process and purchasing. I'm not terribly happy with the status quo Apple has left us with. Rather than place control with us where it belongs, they've just moved control to Apple. Apple is a far better overlord to have than the carriers, but it's still not great. However, we should still recognize that Apple pulled off a massive change that nobody really thought could be done.
- thirdsun 13y agoTo be fair this seems to be a US-exclusive experience. Things like these were unheard of in Europe. I feel that some european carriers just rather recently learned a thing or two from the US-carrier playbook, like charging for tethering, approving/delaying software updates, etc. Still, I'm glad that the invention carrier-approved and net-locked phones never/rarely made it across the ocean.
- anxrn 13y agoKeep in mind when the first iPhone released, there was no App Store. And no plan for one, supposedly [1]. Apple had as much control over your phone as the other carriers did. And much more than it does now. My comment was more about the leverage it had over the carriers and completely squandered. IIRC, AT&T was paying Apple $10 or so per user per month. A carrier paying a handset manufacturer a fee seems like a lot of leverage. At this point, Apple had the potential to turn the industry away from fleecing customers. Instead, in 2013, we're lauding an upstart-ish company for contract-free smartphones. Great progress, but its taken far far too long. [1] http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/10/business/la-fi-tn-if-steve-jobs-apple-app-store-20130709 http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/10/business/la-fi-tn-if...
- consonants 13y agoAll carriers are shit, T-Mobile is no exception.
- trimbo 13y agoI prefer to say they suck less.
- tmzt 13y agoI'm wondering if there's a purpose-built, fast FirefoxOS device that works on T-Mobile that could help Fred make the transition. Is there's anybody that knows of something faster than the ZTE-based phones?
- jeena 13y agoI'm really confused when reading articles like this because it sounds like a different company to the one I know which was formed out of "Deutsche Post" during the 90ies and patronizing and shitting on its customers ever since, at least in Germany. The biggest thing with them this year was their 384kbps Speed Throttle[1], where after your family consumed 75GB of data (download and upload) the speed of your DSL (flatrate) will go down to 384kbps for the rest of the month. Ok you could say "this is Deutsche Telekom, the parent company, but T-Mobile is very different!" but sorry, that is not the case. I wanted to buy a Alcatel One Touch Fire with Firefox OS when I was on holidays in Poland this year so I went to a T-Mobile store and well, there was advertising and everything and they even sold them there. But only together with a contract, which I didn't want (because I can't use it in Sweden where I live). They send me to another store so I went there, they told me the same and send me to a third store where they told me that they only sell a couple of them without a contract and only in the main cities. I mean wtf? They have been doing advertisement all over the place that they sell it for 404 zl without a contract, even in those shops, but they wouldn't sell them to me, or they would but only with a two years contract which ended up costing around 1200 zl. So I gave up. At home again I checked their website[2] again, and yep, there they still (and to this day) advertise it for 404 zl. I later found out that if you have a polish ID you can order one for 404 zl from their website which I did with help of my fathers ID. So they were just fucking with me, again, and yeah, this was not the first time. I had big time problems back then when I still lived in Germany and chose a different DSL provider after being very disappointed with T-Online. Basically they didn't send a technician for two months who would fix the tech so the new provider could provide me with internet so I was without internet for two months. That is kind of a big thing if you're working from home. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/technology/deutsche-telekom-data-use-and-net-neutrality.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/technology/deutsche-teleko... [2] http://www.t-mobile.pl/pl/indywidualni/telefony/telefon-ze-starterem http://www.t-mobile.pl/pl/indywidualni/telefony/telefon-ze-s...
- hack_edu 13y agoT-Mobile US is almost entirely independent from the larger company in it's services and day to day operations. And the bar is pretty low in most regards when you're up against Verizon and AT&T's business practices...
- smcl 13y agoI'm usually not one to complain about what hits #1 spot on Hacker News, but this boils down to "I like T-Mobile, their customer service is good and I have a good plan with them" but not much else. Would it have been so highly upvoted if it wasn't from the "A VC" blog? I suspect not.
- abdophoto 13y agoI recently wrote a piece on how I'm using T-Mobile and TalkaTone on my iPhone 5 and only paying $30 a month for unlimited talk, text, and data. That's why I love T-Mobile. http://thetechblock.com/get-unlimited-talk-text-data-30-iphone http://thetechblock.com/get-unlimited-talk-text-data-30-ipho...
- throwaway9848 13y agoTing, Ting, Ting. A thousand times Ting. A customer, not an employee. I won't gush, see ting.com, it's an MVNO on the Sprint network. EDIT: It kind of bothers me that someone downvoted this. It's not like I used an affiliate link or stand to benefit from this. Sorry for sharing :P
- jrockway 13y agoI don't think you actually save any money on Ting. Their biggest data plan is 3000M for $55 (with no text messages and no phone service), compared with T-mobile's unlimited everything for $70. The innovation they offer is that if you don't use anything and know you never will, you only pay $6 a month. But then again, I could get you the complete lack of calling, data, and text for $0 a month. You don't even have to buy a phone.
- throwaway9848 13y agoI save a significant amount of money, but you're right that if you're a heavy mobile data user other plans might make more sense. I am not: less than 1K voice minutes, 1K texts, and 250MB data between 2 lines (~$800 up-front for pretty decent smartphones). I pay $35-50/month. And not having a contract is nice. I would be remiss not to give them a huge amount of credit for their support staff. They really care about that. The only time I called in, a live person answered the phone after 1 or 2 rings and then proceeded to solve a somewhat technical problem without transferring me. Anyway, I don't want to sound like a paid plug for them. But I like them a lot.
- georgeott 13y agoAnother very happy Ting.com customer here. We paid $150 a month for our 2 smartphones on Sprint. Now we pay $50 a month for both on Ting. Sure, we use wi-fi as much as possible. Our data use is 1gb per month. Could not be happier saving $100 a month!
- ISL 13y agoDisclaimer: I liked Ting enough to buy Tucows stock. My experience with Ting as a customer has been excellent. Rates are great, flexible, and sensible. Customer service has been good. Flexibility with onboarding used and refurbished phones has been easy. For about what I paid for voice and SMS on Verizon a year ago, we have two smartphones and a hotspot running both a person and some hardware across the country. My tightwad father's adopted the service (his first cell phone), and has since added another line. T-mobile is starting to do the right things, but Ting already is.
- rplnt 13y agoT-Mobile is the worst operator I've had. Expensive, shitty customer service, dick policies, retarded user plans and contracts. Who knows about what country I'm talking about though...
- Ellipsis753 13y ago"$2000 a month for a family plan" How is this possible? I've never heard of such an expensive monthly cost. Perhaps they're paying for several iPhones on contacts?
- epoxyhockey 13y agoThe monthly plan for an iPhone is in the ~$95/month range. I agree that I can't even find this possible unless OP has 10+ kids.
- adharmad 13y agoPossible typo. Maybe the author meant $2000/year
- fersho311 13y agoMy company uses ATT and Ive switched to using my company phone 100% of the time. However, I still have my TMobile sim pard sitting around and I'm still paying monthly payments even I don't use my TMobile plan at all. Had it been any other carrier, I would have cancelled in a heartbeat.
- null_ptr 13y agoI'll like them more when they offer their pre-paid customers the same benefits they have on their post-paid plans. They got a lot of good will because of their recently announced reduced international roaming charges, but "post paid plan" was peppered on every article about that. Give me a break.
- jhome 13y agoI live in the UK, and never found anything special about T-Mobile.
- vonskippy 13y agoT-Mobile (should be crushed by) Rocks. Here on the Western slope they have the worst service of the big four. Here, only people shopping strictly on price choose T-Mobile. They want your business, they just don't want to spend any money on the infrastructure to make it even marginally acceptable.
- pearjuice 13y agoCompletely off topic but I am truly amazed by how good that spoken article was at the bottom of the post. I expected some Microsoft Sam voice, but it was actually a good clever sound with near-perfect emotional context switches in tone use. Is that a plug and play solution or does the author have to do manual fine tuning? In both cases it is amazing how far we are with text-to-speech compared to only a few years ago.
- michaelgold 13y agoI think Fred might be disappointed when he switches back to t-mobile. I was a t-mobile customer for years and I agree they have awesome customer service. The big problem for me was the terrible cell reception in many buildings in NYC. That said, I hear there are many areas in the US where t-mobile provides decent service. For people considering switching if t-mobile's international data deal isn't that important to you, you may want to check out http://www.solavei.com http://www.solavei.com first. They are a t-mobile reseller (MVNO) and you may be able to save some money compared to going through t-mobile directly. Their prices are similar to straight talk (mentioned in some of the other comments) and they also allow you to refer customers to reduce your monthly bill. Best cell phone service for the price IMO is http://www.pagepluscellular.com/ http://www.pagepluscellular.com/ (a verizon reseller). $55 / month (including taxes and fees) for unlimited calling, unlimited texts, and 2 gigs of data. I have been a customer of theirs for a year and a half. Their customer service is pretty good, but more importantly their signal strength (coming from verizon's towers) is the best out of all the carriers in NYC. The one big caveat with the MVNO resellers is that they don't offer LTE data and some don't support LTE phones (ie iphone 5, 5c, 5s, etc). TL;DR - if you're down to use an iPhone 4S or other 3G smartphone you can save some serious money per month going through an MVNO reseller.
- voltagex_ 13y agoI was in NYC last week using T-Mo and noticed this too. Is it due to the GSM frequencies they use? I was told by a rep in Seattle that "new towers have just gone in for NYC", though YMMV.
- michaelgold 13y agoAs far as I know, the signal strength for voice calls and the data speed are different issues. Many T-mobile towers only support edge (1x) speeds on non-LTE GSM phones. Some towers have been refarmed to support the 3G hspa+ frequencies. Here is an unofficial coverage map: http://www.airportal.de/ http://www.airportal.de/ In my apartment in the Upper West Side, I was getting a 3G data on an unlocked AT&T iphone 4S with a t-mobile sim, but only 2 bars of voice service. I'm tempted to try t-mobile's $30 / month 5Gig data + 100 minutes plan to use with my iphone 5s. If their LTE service has decent coverage I may be able to get away with using facetime audio + google voice + talkatone. Has anyone done this in NYC?
- umsm 13y agoMy experience with tmobile and Att is probably reversed: tmobile found ways to add hidden or mysterious charges that others couldn't (I.e. $10 / month android charge). Most of the customer service reps in recent years got worse and worse. I finally switched to Att about 2 years ago and I have to admit: every time I called, everyone was friendly and helpful. Nothing was hidden: they laid out their charges and I agreed to them. They may have even slightly higher ($10 a month), but I have excellent nationwide coverage and very good internet speeds when I need it. This was just my experience, and it may be different for others.
- mortenjorck 13y agoI would definitely not want to be a new AT&T customer today as they've phased out nearly every part of my current grandfathered plan, but I've had nothing but good experiences with support. Even last year, when they somehow lost my old messaging plan in a phone upgrade, the rep (who I didn't even have to wait long to speak with) quickly switched me back. The moment they require me to switch to a Mobile Share plan I'm out, but until then I'm continually surprised to be such a happy customer.
- simonw 13y agoWhen I visit the US from the UK I use T-Mobile pay-as-you-go SIM cards to get data on my iPhone. It works great - you go in to a T-Mobile store, pay for the SIM and $3/day of credit (I normally spend about $25), they set up the phone and profile for you and you walk out within a few minutes with a working iPhone. I used to use AT&T GoPhone for this, until they sold me a "special deal for SXSW" in Austin that would keep my number and data working for multiple trips three years for $100. A few months later they cancelled the data portion of the plan (naturally refusing to refund my $100 since voice still works) and made it impossible to get pay-as-you-go data on an iPhone no matter how much money you give them. They might have fixed that now, but they've lost me to T-Mobile.
- voltagex_ 13y agoI used T-Mobile too - the trick I wish I'd known about is it'll allow free (?) roaming on to AT&T in very select areas. Your non-US credit card may not work on the website either, I just preloaded the amount I needed while at the store.
- jongold 13y agoT-Mobile are terrible in the UK; +1 for their pay-by-the-day SIM being an amazing option when visiting the US.
- alexc05 13y agoI understand that Fred Wilson is an important voice in the startup / ycombinator world... But is this really the quality of content that really deserves to be on the front page here?
- notatoad 13y agoit's sunday afternoon. this is pretty normal sunday afternoon HN content. If you want something more insightful, come back tomorrow morning.
- tylerlh 13y agoI'd really like to know how Fred's shared plan bill is $2000/month for what seems to be a family of four.
- chrsstrm 13y ago"I was a T-Mobile customer for more than a decade from the late 90s until a year or two ago." Unless he was a T-Mobile customer in Europe, I don't see how this is possible. T-Mobile in the US was formed circa 2001 with the purchase of Voicestream Wireless. I remember because I've been a customer since 2002, and all their equipment was tagged with Voicestream logos. Unless of course he was a Voicestream customer first, who was then rolled into T-Mobile. Who am I to say, I just pay attention to details. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Mobile#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Mobile#United_States
- jordanbaucke 13y agoThis is such an obvious puff piece. Has T-Mobile been paying these people to write these things for them? I'm still awaiting a response from T-Mobiles legal department after I threatened to sue of their refusal to release me from my contract without the $300 fee http://www.scribd.com/doc/169303371/Demand-Letter-T-Mobile http://www.scribd.com/doc/169303371/Demand-Letter-T-Mobile
- fatjokes 13y agoT-Mobile has to do this because their network is the worst. For a lot of people, that's more important than device availability, customer service, data limits, international roaming and contract terms. I say this as a T-Mo customer.
- reedlaw 13y agoMy experience is that T-Mobile's 4G is the best. It beats Time Warner's cable modem. I'm able to stream HD Youtube without stalling on my phone but not at home. But the coverage is truly more limited.
- JVIDEL 13y agoYeah, I went to Tmob a few months after their big relaunch/remodeling/whatever that made quite a splash in nearly every blog as the "end of bullshit" The results? well the plans were just as expensive as those from AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, except that Tmobile had by far the worst coverage of all, I didn't get any signal inside my office. The plan mobility was crap as well, with some plans you were stuck and couldn't move, they wanted me to buy a new SIMcard to change plans and I had to get the new one from one of their stores in particular else it wouldn't work. Why do that if not to keep me locked in a crap plan? They said it was the end of carrier trickery but they forced me get a ridiculously expensive plan in order to be able to pay for an additional international calling service, meaning that I had to pay for a bunch of crap I did not need just to be able to qualify for that small extra feature. Overall my experience was pretty bad and Tmob's new strategy can be summed as much ado about nothing with a lot of fine print in the middle.
- caycep 13y agoThat being said, Speedtest reported Hong Kong 3G speeds on my (recently unlocked) iPhone 4 that are better than any of the reported 4G LTE speeds of any carrier in the US (7-9 mbps download...it was great!)
- andyhmltn 13y agoIt's weird how different the are across the pond. Here in the UK the old TMobile (now EE) was absolutely terrible. I took out a new contract for the iPhone 5 on Preorder. They never delivered it and started harrasing me to pay my contract that was due to start when the phone arrived (which it didn't.) It took me 25+ hours on hold and in the end I ended up tweeting them. Their twitter support team was a billion times better than anyone on the phone and the guy got it resolved for me.
- danielweber 13y agoI moved from T-Mobile from AT&T because AT&T started demanding I buy a data plan if I were to have a smart phone, and automatically signed me up for one and billing me for it. T-Mobile's network is worse. Really, it's worse. I'm considering going back to AT&T despite all the crap because I'm sick of picking up my phone and seeing "no coverage available" in places where I had five bars yesterday.
- letmypacketsgo 13y agoand they have IPv6 across their entire network. As someone who does research in this space, and advocates for it as a matter of religion^W principle, this alone makes me want to give them money.
- p1mrx 13y agoTo be fair, Verizon Wireless has been much more successful at getting IPv6 devices into customers' hands. http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/ http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/ - Verizon: 40.11% - T-Mobile: 1.57% The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is T-Mobile's first device to ship with IPv6 on by default: https://sites.google.com/site/tmoipv6/lg-mytouch https://sites.google.com/site/tmoipv6/lg-mytouch