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> 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 th
by benjamincburns 13y ago
> 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.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoConversely, 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.
- dice 13y agoMy 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.
- supergauntlet 13y agoYeah, 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.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoI'm driving from Chicago to Tampa, FL this weekend. I'll have to use the OpenSignal app to see how the T-Mobile coverage is.
- caprad 13y ago> 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.
- marquis 13y agoI 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.
- photojosh 13y agoWhich 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.
- jpau 13y agoIt'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.
- fphhotchips 13y agoBecause 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).
- rdtsc 13y agoHow does the 10MB work. I have T-Mobile and didn't hear about the 10MB roaming limit. Is it in the fine print?
- chrsstrm 13y agohttp://t-mo.co/DataRoam http://t-mo.co/DataRoam 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.