I'm thinking of making the switch from ATT to T-Mobile for reasons A_3PO mentions in OP. Any advice? Can't justify my $100/mo on a low usage plan. But, I do drive a lot in CO and TX, so having data coverage for Google Maps in rural areas is very helpful. Would I expect to lose a lot of that without Verizon or ATT?
Why don't you consider Google's Project Fi as another option? The lowest phone bill can go sub-$30/month if you're not paying for the device. It uses the Sprint & T-Mobile networks and is extremely convenient to handle with good tech support if needed. You'd have to check the signal maps or read local reviews, but I think it's the way to go now. No network is as good as ATT's coverage, but this is still a good option. There's a deal going on now where new subscribers can get the Nexus 5X device for less than $300 which is a really great deal.
I was out at Sherwood Forest Faire, no more than 1/4mi off 290, 44 miles outside Austin this weekend and everyone that had T-mobile had 0 service the entire weekend. Verizon - 4 bars 4G ATT - 2 Bars 4G No one used Sprint. Ive used ATT/Verizon/Sprint in the area since the mid 90's. Verizon is the best, albeit most expensive. ATT was second best, although dropped calls were a serious issue. Sprint had great service, when you had service. I would love to drop my 2 phone and a tablet plan from Verizon and stop paying $160 a month, but cant.
I've driven from California to Texas a few times in the past 2 years. T-Mobile definitely lost coverage for long stretches along the way. However, I used a Nexus 7 tablet as a GPS and Google Maps worked most of the way. At the time, you couldn't download offline maps in the app, but now you can. I stay with T-Mobile for many reasons (price, unlimited text and voice, free international data and text roaming, no contract, TMobile BingeOn) but the coverage seems worse than Verizon. I don't know about AT&T.
LOL, you pay double, get less, because you can't get coverage in Sherwood Forest Faire? You seem like a typical fan boy to me. Believe me, the days of can you hear me now are long gone, and most people don't care a lick about that. What they do care about is paying double and getting a lot less. Verizon is WAY OFF Priced, has ****ty customer service, and are greddy bastards. Be my guest paying through the nose for your service.
You'd get the same with att. I know for a fact that you drive down 290 at&t drops coverage going toward brenham.
Aren't you the one shilling for T-Mobile and John Legere in multiple threads? How much have they paid you?
Tmobile coverage has improved significantly recently with the growth of band 12 LTE coverage. I use to lose signal on 71 between Austin and Houston. But now with a band 12 capable phone, I get LTE the entire way. So make sure you get a band 12 capable phone with VoLTE then you would have a good chance of having signal during your drive. With that said, from what I understand, Verizon still has the best rural area coverage. Check this link for list of phones that support band 12 http://www.spectrumgateway.com/compatible-phones Google maps also recently allowed people to download maps and navigate offline. So you can just download all the maps you need for your area.
I have a band 12 capable phone. Still lose coverage or get practically useless Edge coverage a lot on 71.
Hm... weird. What phone do you have? In those 3 months that tmobile gave everyone unlimited data, i streamed youtube/netflix the whole time when I am traveling between Austin and Houston without any issues.
I dont think its the OS or the phone but I will say that in Texas a lot of the 700 mhz licenses were only recently acquired so network improvements happen quickly. Personally if you want to save money and are a low data user, I'd say go with Cricket over TMobile/MetroPCS if you're concerned about coverage. TMobile only makes sense with family plans. Cricket is more than fine for a light data user and you get all of the benefits of AT&T's network.
Im with American telephone and telegraph. If I wanted to save money, I'd go Cricket over T-Mobile. Although Cricket uses AT&T (AT&T owns them) they don't get the HD Voice nor VOLTE benefits.
gophone (att's own prepaid service) and verizon's prepay are priced well enough at $60 for 5gb. both have zero throttling. personally i keep going back to gophone. will likely try vzw prepay for shizz and gigs in a month or two.
MVNOs sound good on the surface, but in reality, AT&T's first-party customers get network priority over all Cricket customers. So you end up stuck in line behind a bunch of people on one of the most saturated networks when you're trying to download data during peak hours. The actual network provider behind it all treats you like you're some kind of second rate pay-as-you-go customer on a burner cell, because you basically are. Just speaking from personal experience here, but I'd say to stay away from all MVNOs. Boost, Cricket, Straight Talk, even Project Fi are not worth the savings, IMO.
no hd voice on gophone unfortunately, but knew this going in as att doesn't allow it for nexus devices anyhow. that and international calling differences are the only two complaints that i have with both att/vzw prepaid non-mvnos. not really bad trade-offs when getting the other benefits of being with one of the big two.
AT&T is so stupid when it comes to VoLTE and wifi calling. While both of those are nice features, they're also fantastic network management tools. TMobile allows MVNOs to leverage wifi calling because wifi calls mean less strain on the network. The same goes for VoLTE. VoLTE calls are significantly more network efficient than standard circuit switched calls over 3G. TMobile allows MVNOs to offer both of those features as a result.
T-Mobile is good enough around Houston. My wife and I came over during the $100 for 2 unlimited lines promo last year (I think it's back right now if anyone is interested). I wanted to switch back over to AT&T until I upgraded to an iPhone 6s Plus and was able to take advantage of band 12, which is actually a great improvement, but it isn't the complete godsend a lot of people hype it up to be. I still have some connectivity issues on occasion, but I wouldn't say it's regular enough to be overly concerned. We travel a lot and it was nice having unlimited (2G or 3G) data in Greece, Mexico, and Thailand over the past year. We also didn't have any service issues in Southern California and Chicago. Having this freedom is one of the main reasons we've stuck with them, despite AT&T bringing back unlimited data for DirecTV customers. For our use, T-Mobile's added features is worth more than AT&T and Verizon's marginally better coverage.
