t-mobile prepaid towers, throttling?

[makken]

I stopped by a t-mobile store at the mall today to ask about the HTC One and if there was anything I could do to improve reception on my Nexus 4.

They told me that the source of my reception issues is because I'm on a pre-paid plan, I can only connect to about half of the t-mobile towers. The only way I could improve reception is if I switched to a contract plan.

They also said the pre-paid plans are throttled, and operate on a different frequency than the contract plans (1700mhz vs 1900mhz).

Is there any truth to this? Or were they just BSing me to get me on a contract plan?

 

[Dulanic]

1900mhz is on all plans. You just need a phone that supports that frequency.

 

[ImDonly1]

-Goes to T-mobile store where their job is to sell contract phones.
-They tell him you need to buy contract plan to get full speeds.

Sounds legit...
They are full of it. The only true thing is that prepaid does not have roaming on ATT towers. You should get full speeds on prepaid just as you would on postpaid.

1900Mhz, 1700/2100 is on all plans.

 

[SunnyD]

T-Mobile's prepaid footprint is T-Mobile towers ONLY. T-Mobile's postpaid footprint includes roaming on AT&T's network.

This holds true for pretty much every MVNO out there riding AT&T, T-Mo, Sprint or VZW.

 

[vshah]

its more likely that you just live in an area with less than excellent tmobile coverage. what's your zip code?

 

[makken]

its more likely that you just live in an area with less than excellent tmobile coverage. what's your zip code?

94109

T-Mobile's prepaid footprint is T-Mobile towers ONLY. T-Mobile's postpaid footprint includes roaming on AT&T's network.

This holds true for pretty much every MVNO out there riding AT&T, T-Mo, Sprint or VZW.

So I guess its technically true?

-Goes to T-mobile store where their job is to sell contract phones.
-They tell him you need to buy contract plan to get full speeds.

Sounds legit...
They are full of it. The only true thing is that prepaid does not have roaming on ATT towers. You should get full speeds on prepaid just as you would on postpaid.

1900Mhz, 1700/2100 is on all plans.

I thought T-mobile was heavily promoting its prepaid plans; guess I shouldn't have had such high expectations for their stores

 

[Ravynmagi]

Was this a corporate store or a non corporate store? Some of these "T-Mobile" stores run by B2BWireless (and I imagine others) are staffed by idiots. I was having some slow speeds with my Galaxy Nexus GSM and the guy said that phone wouldn't work on T-Mobile's network. I tried to explain to him it has 1700Mhz support and he didn't know what that meant, but since T-Mobile didn't sell the phone it was impossible for it to get more than 2G speeds on T-Mobile's network. So that was the reason for my slow performance (nevermind I was actually getting much faster than 2G speeds).

I try to be sure to only visit the corporate stores from now on. They seem a bit more knowledgeable.

 

[ImDonly1]

Here is the coverage from prepaid
http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-coverage

and postpaid
http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/pcc.aspx/

They seem the same in your area.

 

[Muyoso]

Are you on Tmobile prepaid or some other MVNO using the Tmobile network?

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

I stopped by a t-mobile store at the mall today to ask about the HTC One and if there was anything I could do to improve reception on my Nexus 4.

They told me that the source of my reception issues is because I'm on a pre-paid plan, I can only connect to about half of the t-mobile towers. The only way I could improve reception is if I switched to a contract plan.

They also said the pre-paid plans are throttled, and operate on a different frequency than the contract plans (1700mhz vs 1900mhz).

Is there any truth to this? Or were they just BSing me to get me on a contract plan?

LOL, lies. They use the exact same towers and frequencies. I compared with a friend of mine who has a Galaxy S III on T-Mobile (with contract) with my Straight Talk Nexus 4, also on T-Mobile, and at the exact same spot we got the exact same speed: 7.5Mbps.