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T-Mobile opinions?

roller

roller

Supporting Member
Mar 30, 2014
4,131
15,422
#1
What's T-Mobile like these days for any of you using it?

While the price is right, I continue to hear mixed reviews on the product from friends and colleagues coast to coast. Those in major cities generally appear to like it... folks in rural areas hate it.

I'm currently with Verizon... and while I love the product, merely looking for a more affordable mousetrap.

And while it wouldn't affect me, what's up with T-Mobile's coverage map showing nothing in Nebraska???
 
#5
I have used Verizon for many years but we gave T Mobile a try last year. We live in a rural area about an hour from San Antonio. The coverage was horrible. I had to go outside for phone calls and the data rate was not as advertised and generally sketchy at best. In their defense, we had the same problems when I had a work phone on ATT. Loved the price, hated the service. YMMV
 
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#6
I've been with T-Mobile for ever and a day it seems. I live outside of the North Myrtle Beach area and this is my experience.

Dead spots. Lots of them. Dead spots that show up where they weren't before, which is funny because you would think that as time goes on, more towers/antennas would go up to improve coverage. I don't claim to know much about how cell tech works, but that's a head scratcher. I won't be two minutes outside of town talking in my car and it'll drop calls in the same areas every day. I have pretty decent coverage at my house, and here in NMB it's pretty well covered. But cross the line into North Carolina and it's dead zone city. And the "rural" parts of this region aren't the wide open farmlands they were years ago. Lots and lots of new construction, both residential and commercial. Plenty of times I've been out with my fiancee or family that's on Verizon or a different carrier and if I need to make a call, I have to use their phone because there's a good chance I've got zero signal and their signal meter is dimed. It stinks.

So you could say my main complaint with T-Mobile is their coverage. At least in my neck of the woods, anyway. But the plan I'm on (which is probably outdated and I'm being grandfathered) I'm sharing with my brother, and it's total unlimited talk, text and data for $50 per line. Not too bad.

TL;DR : Coverage could be a lot better in a lot of spots around me, but the plan I'm on is pretty sweet for what I pay per month.
 
#7
Honest and thorough review -- thanks! And yeah, this is what I've heard from many other folks. While the price might be cheap, you get what you pay for it seems.

A family member has been on the Walmart StraightTalk plan for several years. A few years ago, the family was going through a crisis and needing to work through something quickly... and it would drive us nuts when she'd get her texts many minutes after the rest of us. But lately, it's gotten better... and that service is CHEAP. Makes me halfway consider them.

Bassman316 said:
I've been with T-Mobile for ever and a day it seems. I live outside of the North Myrtle Beach area and this is my experience.

Dead spots. Lots of them. Dead spots that show up where they weren't before, which is funny because you would think that as time goes on, more towers/antennas would go up to improve coverage. I don't claim to know much about how cell tech works, but that's a head scratcher. I won't be two minutes outside of town talking in my car and it'll drop calls in the same areas every day. I have pretty decent coverage at my house, and here in NMB it's pretty well covered. But cross the line into North Carolina and it's dead zone city. And the "rural" parts of this region aren't the wide open farmlands they were years ago. Lots and lots of new construction, both residential and commercial. Plenty of times I've been out with my fiancee or family that's on Verizon or a different carrier and if I need to make a call, I have to use their phone because there's a good chance I've got zero signal and their signal meter is dimed. It stinks.

So you could say my main complaint with T-Mobile is their coverage. At least in my neck of the woods, anyway. But the plan I'm on (which is probably outdated and I'm being grandfathered) I'm sharing with my brother, and it's total unlimited talk, text and data for $50 per line. Not too bad.

TL;DR : Coverage could be a lot better in a lot of spots around me, but the plan I'm on is pretty sweet for what I pay per month.
Click to expand...
 
#12
When I retired in 2019 I went from Verizon to Consumer Cellular, and my wife and I get combined service for about $65 a month. I worked in tech and use my phone a lot, but I don't watch movies or long video on my phone, although I use it for web access a lot. I'm in Fort Collins CO and the service across Colorado has been comparable to Verizon.
 
#15
When I lived in the DC area, VZW was the best so that's what I've had for years. Now I'm in Vegas and it's not great. Tmo actually appears to have better coverage out here so I am thinking of switching.
 
#16
I experimented with using "Google Fi" which sounds spiffy ("best of 3 networks") but is less good in this area anyway based on which 3 networks (T-Mobile, US Cellular and Sprint) they use. None of them have good coverage in Vermont/NH and Google-Fi just happily lies about coverage (but then, all carriers lie about coverage, and it's been documented in Vermont. They appeared to be more egregious than most in their lies based on my personal experiences of non-coverage while in happy green map pixels, where my Verizon-based phone had worked fine, and where my Google phone works fine now that it's on the Verizon network... but there are still dead spots, just far fewer on Verizon's network than T-Mobile+Sprint+US Cellular.) In other areas you might want a MVNO that uses AT&T's network, if that's generally better where you generally are.

I use one of the MVNOs that buys bandwidth from Verizon, which means I get the network that usually works best in this area, without paying Verizon's freight (any more. I did for a while, and they were never willing to make a better offer [always more free minutes you won't use, never less money paid - which might reveal the time period] until after I was fed up and had left them, at which point I didn't want to hear it.) Which MVNO is right for you if you choose this path depends on how you use your phone and how they price the things that you use, which varies by MVNO, so mine might not be the best choice for you.

If not obvious, I'm rural. I currently pay $12/month, [100MB data - yes, MB - I use it for phone purposes or on WiFi] but might bump up to $30 to get more data especially since I'll need to disconnect Comcast cable for at least a month to get any decent offer out of them after my "2-year deal" runs out, and if I can make it work well enough on Cell data I might just let them rot. Not that cell data is all that good at my house...
 
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