T-Mobile owns other carriers again, in Q2 '14.

[Bateluer]

http://www.droid-life.com/2014/07/31/t-mobile-volte-better-coverage/

The wireless carrier added another 1.5 million new customers in the last quarter, making this their 5th consecutive quarter with at least 1 million or more net adds. In the past 15 months, T-Mobile has brought in a total of 7.6 million new customers, which is well, a lot. In fact, according to T-Mo’s numbers, they topped all of the other three major carriers combined in terms of postpaid phone adds. Not bad, right?

In other news announced today, Legere noted that T-Mobile has launched VoLTE nationwide. Just two months ago, they launched their first VoLTE market, which was Seattle, and were hoping to complete the full rollout by the end of the year. Clearly, they topped that prediction or expectation or timeline, whatever you want to call it. To date, T-Mobile customers have made more than 52 million “crystal-clear” calls over VoLTE, thanks to devices like the LG G Flex, Galaxy S5, and Galaxy Note 3.

Finally, T-Mobile has been “aggressively” rolling out their Wideband LTE, upgrading their 2G network to LTE, and getting their new low-band 700MHz A-Block spectrum ready. Legere points out in his post that they have only held this spectrum for three months yet are already equipping sites to handle it and testing devices. This low spectrum should greatly improve in-building LTE connections and coverage outside of metro areas, two things we all constantly complain about when it comes to T-Mobile’s coverage.

Not bad for a carrier that at this time in 2012 looked to be on the ropes, bleeding subscribers, and running without a leader. Damned impressive. Give them another year, and they'll overtake Sprint as the #3 US carrier. Incidentally, Sprint was the only carrier to lose subscribers in that quarter.

 

[Phokus]

I want to jump on t-mobile so bad, but their connectivity has been sub-par, i wish there were some way to know when their 700 mhz deployment is done in my area.

 

[isekii]

I want to jump on t-mobile so bad, but their connectivity has been sub-par, i wish there were some way to know when their 700 mhz deployment is done in my area.

Hopefully they start deploying the low spectrum soon~ esp in nyc area.

 

[lupi]

I think one aspect helping them is that to some degree phone hand set have been somewhat stagnent in improvements over the last 2-3 generations. This let's people outright buy those older but not that outdated units and hop onto the cheapest plans which Tmo is starting to roll out now that they've been firmly out of the subsidized market for awhile.

 

[paperwastage]

I think one aspect helping them is that to some degree phone hand set have been somewhat stagnent in improvements over the last 2-3 generations. This let's people outright buy those older but not that outdated units and hop onto the cheapest plans which Tmo is starting to roll out now that they've been firmly out of the subsidized market for awhile.

that, and t-mobile can pick up newer-gen/cheaper LTE equipment for their cell sites (since Verizon/at&t upgraded first)

Hopefully they start deploying the low spectrum soon~ esp in nyc area.

might have to keep waiting. there are two TV stations on channel 51 near NYC

http://imgur.com/tz5Ve8V

t-mobile has been trying to get them to move earlier (so that t-mobile can start using 700mhz earlier)

 

[trmiv]

I did a 7 day test drive in my area, and wow was it bad. I could only get Edge at my house, and I could not get ANY signal at my parents house. Most of my drive to work was poor as well. Just not worth the savings to me until they improve greatly.

 

[Dulanic]

IF you have coverage they are fantastic. I absolutely love their plans and I save a ton over the others. I left Sprint because their price rose to be closer to the other big carriers but their speeds were attrocious. Their 3G is TERRIBLE and their Wimax/LTE was the speed of Tmo/AT&T 3G. 3G is just bad for all the CDMA carriers.

With the money I save when I do travel where I don't get coverage on vacations sometimes I can pick up a prepaid sim and toss it in and hop on AT&T's network and still save a ton of money. It isn't voice that's an issue /w T-Mo in most areas, just data gets to be horrible outside of most large city suburbs.

Their Hotspot devices are awsome too... My mother has T-Mo and barely going online so I signed her up for a 3GB hotspot device... costs $10 a month total, not bad.

On top of that, T-Mo is playing it smart /w their advertising. I always laugh when I hear AT&T advertising their Next plan /w 4 phones for $160 /w 10GB. That doesn't include phones even. T-Mo slaps them and throws out 10GB for 4 phones for $100... that's $60 lower for the same thing!

It's about time the market got shaken up by someone, because the other carriers are ripping everyone off big time. T-Mo's CEO saw a huge opportunity to make huge changes that made them stand out in a big way and people are moving over in mass. Now if they could expand their coverage /w the extra income, they could do even better.

 

[evident]

Before I switched to TMo i asked myself do I really need 100% omg everywhere coverage with my phone? how much coverage do i really need? 80%? it works at home, on the major roads i drive with the exception of a few spots, and at work. I think in the Philly area it's great. i'm basically saving 50% off what i paid for with AT&T. Speeds are damn fast and coverage is surprisingly decent. Just got back from Oahu and found that it surprisingly worked pretty much all of the south shore, all the way out to barbers point, and all the way to the north shore and even out to kaena point.

 

[Red Storm]

Yeah T-Mobile has been great. Sure it was nice having unlimited data on Verizon with all over coverage, but both were overkill for me, and there was no point paying extra for all of that. Our 5 lines on T-Mobile are just over twice the cost of the single line I was paying for on Verizon.

 

[kaerflog]

Yeah I live in a big city so I have no problem with tmo coverage.
I have 2 accounts with 4 lines each.
I pay somewhere around $210-220 total each month.
Just when ATT came up with something I thought I would switch and pay just a bit more for better coverage, Tmo comes out with something better.
Like with ATT simple family 10g plan. It would be $220-discount+tax(for 8 people) which is around what I'm paying now.
Then TMO comes up with 4 lines 10GB for $100.
And just a few days later TMO has the family plan for up to 10 people which will run me $160 -discount+tax.
TMO is letting me leave. Not that I want to.

 

[gmaster456]

If T-mobile had coverage where I live I'd jump on it. But I'm relatively happy with my ATT MNVO. Aside from the fact that I can't send MMS (looking at you straight talk)

 

[AznAnarchy99]

I hope they continue to put more money into their network. I feel like it has gotten progressively worse as they've added new subscribers.

 

[npaladin-2000]

I'm waiting for the Sprint and Verizon fans to come out of the woodwork.

I'm glad to see T-Mobile making the right moves, they're showing that they're a competitor, which we need for the marketplace. It might screw up Softbank's chances of merging Sprint with them though.

 

[dingster1]

Yeah testing them on prepaid now, not going well

 

[Bateluer]

I'm waiting for the Sprint and Verizon fans to come out of the woodwork.

I'm glad to see T-Mobile making the right moves, they're showing that they're a competitor, which we need for the marketplace. It might screw up Softbank's chances of merging Sprint with them though.

Cripes, I hope so. Sprint has nothing but the smell of death around them.

 

[Roland00Address]

What we really need (for consumers) is portable phone numbers. A master phone number which routes to individual numbers. One of the rerouted numbers will be the t-mobile number we use 95% of the time, but when you go out of town you can spend X dollars or whatever to activate another phone number and tell your master phone number to route to that individual phone. Thus when you are out of town you can use at&t or verizon and you pay only the X dollars extra.

Hey wait this sounds kinda like the idea of Google Voice. Thank you google for not killing it, but why did you kinda abandoned it (key word kinda).

------

Or once we get Voice over LTE on all the carriers, congress passes a law where voice calls have to work on all the other networks (this may be possible with just FCC regulation I do not know) since voice uses so little bandwidth. If a Sprint customer has to use an AT&T cell tower to place a call then AT&T gets a voice credit from Sprint, if a Verizon customer has to use an T-Mobile tower then T-Mobile gets a voice credit from Verizon. Eventually these credits are traded back and forth, and if T-Mobile has a negative amount of credits and Verizon has a positive amount of credits then T-Mobile has to pay Verizon whatever X credits are worth due to all the roaming T-Mobile customers performed.

Now what is the price of an X credit? Well the price of an X credit is not set directly by the government, but it works via a cap and trade program. The government spends X billion dollars a year to ensure cell phone towers are placed in places that currently do not make economic sense (aka the rural areas). These places will make economic sense long term, but we are talking years later. Each phone company gets so many credits out of that X billion dollars to spend on building cell phone towers in those rural areas and they get more credits the more they build places that currently do not have cell phone service, or have cell phone service that is so crappy and slow. Thus if AT&T spends a lot of money to build cell phone towers in rural areas that do not get service they get more credits.

In the end the price of the credit will be paid by the companies that have so many roaming customers. Yes the government will be subsidizing the phone companies to some extent, but they will in reality not be subsidising the phone companies but instead subsidising places that get poor service either with no cell phone towers or such slow data speeds that this needs to be changed.

(The second idea is off the top of my head, so of course it will need some massaging and is just currently a rough draft)

 

[Roland00Address]

According to the WSJ the french phone company Iliad is stating they want to buy T-Mobile. This makes the possible Sprint / Softbank and T-Mobile merger far more interesting.

 

[QueBert]

I have T Mobile and the second my contract's up I'm gone. About a mile from my house I get LTE+, at home I get H, which is the slowest shit since 2g. No exaggerating, while it might not be as slow as the original 3g, it's damn close.

 

[Red Storm]

Wanted to add that while T-Mobile has been great overall, my experience getting the G3 was terrible. The young sales guy kept trying to push accessories and JUMP and I kept saying no. Eventually I get the phone and leave, only to find out later that night that he assigned it to the wrong line! Left my wife stranded someplace she doesn't know with no service. On top of that, after my constant persistence not to have JUMP included, he apparently went ahead and applied it to my line anyway! Really annoyed, never going to that specific store again. Heading to my usual store tonight to get this mess sorted out.

 

[Roland00Address]

Wanted to add that while T-Mobile has been great overall, my experience getting the G3 was terrible. The young sales guy kept trying to push accessories and JUMP and I kept saying no. Eventually I get the phone and leave, only to find out later that night that he assigned it to the wrong line! Left my wife stranded someplace she doesn't know with no service. On top of that, after my constant persistence not to have JUMP included, he apparently went ahead and applied it to my line anyway! Really annoyed, never going to that specific store again. Heading to my usual store tonight to get this mess sorted out.

Please contact customer service and explain the situation. Everyone makes mistakes, but if he added jump when you expressly said no consequences should happen. Even if he did not add jump to your line but you had a bad situation, you should contact customer service and tell them that you understand accidents happen but you had a bad experience and you think there should be more training or something positive X to make sure this does not happen.

Hey you may get something out of it, and you make sure that sales person won't pull this BS on some other person. It is very likely that this is not the first time such BS has happened.

(This comes from a former salesperson who was honest, and did not pull this bull shit. I was not in the phone industry.)

 

[Herr Kutz]

While the plan sounds pretty good (assuming their coverage is good in your area) be sure to read the fine print:

Limited time offer expires 9/30/14. Four-line minimum family plan; maximum of five lines. After 1/2/16, 2.5GB of high speed data will automatically revert back to 1GB of high speed data per line.

 

[openwheel]

While the plan sounds pretty good (assuming their coverage is good in your area) be sure to read the fine print:

No contract. It does not just "sound pretty good". Its a no brained for anyone with TMo coverage which is just about anyone. This is good for both new and existing customers. My wife is under father in laws plan and she just got bumped to 2.5gb for free.

This is by far the best deal anywhere to be found. TMo is giving out a great deal for a year and a half, and allowing you to jump ship anytime you want. By 2016 higher data cap will be standard.

 

[Red Storm]

Please contact customer service and explain the situation. Everyone makes mistakes, but if he added jump when you expressly said no consequences should happen. Even if he did not add jump to your line but you had a bad situation, you should contact customer service and tell them that you understand accidents happen but you had a bad experience and you think there should be more training or something positive X to make sure this does not happen.

Hey you may get something out of it, and you make sure that sales person won't pull this BS on some other person. It is very likely that this is not the first time such BS has happened.

(This comes from a former salesperson who was honest, and did not pull this bull shit. I was not in the phone industry.)

Yeah I will. What's funny (sad?) is that the girl that was helping me at my usual store not only knew which store I was talking about when I explained what happened, she even knew the specific person responsible. Apparently that guy (and the store) has a reputation.

 

[TrulyUncouth]

I would love nothing more than to switch to Tmo, the only problem is I have to drive 15-20 minutes outside of the nearest major town for work pretty regularly and stay out there for hours- there is essentially zero service from them. If they get the 700mhz up and can expand coverage I would be very happy to move over- at this point though it is worth the ~$30-40 bump in price each month to have service all the time on ATT.

 

[jidery]

T-Mobile is upgrading the entire 2g network. I'm already seeing more coverage than when I joined almost 2 years ago.