

T-Mobile Rocks - zenmaker
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/10/t-mobile-rocks.html
Great points from Fred Wilson. And accordingly to Pogue&#x27;s NYT article, they signed up more new subs in the last quarter than the big 3 combined. But, in light of their service map and much more limited travel, curious if it&#x27;s enough to make you switch? Trying to figure this out myself...
======
skrause
> _Because if all of us move to T-Mobile, the other carriers will have no
> choice to join them in being customer friendly._

No, if all people move to T-Mobile, they will just start behaving like the
other carriers. The only reasons they're customer friendly is because they
have a low market share and try to win customers, not because it's their
company culture. Just look at their German parent company, Deutsche Telekom is
the German AT&T.

~~~
stevenleeg
But at least there are no 2 year contracts to keep us locked into T-Mobile if
they ever turn into dirtbags!

~~~
Shivetya
I am so tired of two year contracts, but I have a list of 'approved' carriers
I can choose from and have my phone partially paid for. Until recently
T-Mobile was not on the list. Now all I need to do if wait out my current two
year with the other guys.

There is certainly nothing smart about paying seventy, eighty, or more, per
month for a smart phone. If anyone is smart its the guys charging for it and
getting it.

~~~
greenmountin
Two year contracts are a lie, a prop, an illusion. If you break it, you
basically pay back the prorated part of the phone discount you got. If you go
to a carrier without phone subsidies, they'll charge you less month-to-month
an amount equal to the monthly prorated phone discount.

This was my realization when pricing out basic phone service with T-Mobile,
ATT, etc. You have to really work hard to pay different. Just don't be afraid
to break the contract, it's not a real penalty.

~~~
goggles99
You clearly have never used an MVNO(Reseller)

I just went to Verizon and chose a free SmartPhone (Droid 4) with a 500MB data
plan. It was $80/mo 2 yr contract

I can buy that phone outright (brand new) for $300.

If I go to PagePlus (Verizon MVNO) and sign up for their $1200 Minute, $3000
Text/MMS 500MB $30/mo plan here is what I paid after two years.

Verizon - $80 * 24 = $1,920

PagePlus - $30 * 24 + $300 (phone) + $50 roaming (average usage cost for 2
yrs) = $1,020

And what did I get for my $900 difference? (That is $37.50/mo BTW) A big
"Verizon" label on my phone, and a two year contract.

You could get two plans and phones from PagePlus and still pay less.

I realize that there are other factors like level of customer service, and no
roaming charges that VZW and ATT die-hards will tell you about. Well, in my
experience, the service is no better and most people almost never use roaming
service while using a Verizon MVNO. I would say that i have only spent around
$20 in the last two years from roaming.

Other factiods: Have Verizon or ATT and want to change your plan options
(Minutes, Data amount ETC)? Sure - that will require a new two year contract.
Don't want a new phone. Well you will still be paying the same regardless.
Break the contract and you will still pay the same penalty. This seems to
refute your claim that you are just paying back a subsidy.

Want a new phone with your new contract? OK, choose a "free" one from a list
whose retail prices have a $150-$200 difference in price. Are you going to pay
less per month if you opt for the cheaper (3g) free one? If your statement was
true you should.

~~~
mynameisvlad
Generally, MVNO customers have lowest priority on a network. I know AT&T, for
example, gives network priority to Postpaid first, then Prepaid, then MVNOs.
So on a congested network, you'd be the first to be kicked off.

~~~
Hengjie
Generally speaking, I don't think the experience would be as bad as you say.
Yes they get the lowest priority but given how good AT&T's network is, you
generally won't be kicked off and would probably incur a reduction in speed.
The reality is, you aren't going to need (insert super fast speed here) on a
day to day basis. There are exceptions of course, such as tethering or
streaming content, but really, how often would you be doing that and need it?
This is why I don't buy the 4G argument, especially when there're carriers
that ask us to pay more simply to be on 4G.

~~~
commandar
I think that's going to depend heavily on where you are. I was in Chicago last
week for work and found out the hard way that VZW LTE is _severely_ over
capacity inside the Loop. I'm a postpaid customer and had to force my phone to
CDMA data on a few occasions just to get a usable connection.

Knowing that I'm going to be travelling a fair amount in the near future on
business, I'm not sure if it'd be worth gambling that the host network for my
MVNO wouldn't be similarly over capacity elsewhere resulting in me getting
lower priority.

------
phaus
I'm glad that T-Mobile has become a customer focused company in recent months,
but let's not forget that just a short while ago, they were just like all of
the other major carriers.

T-Mobile had a sudden change of heart not because they give a shit about their
customers, its because their network wasn't good enough for people to put up
with typical carrier bullshit. As a normal carrier, they were losing money and
customers so fast that they had to either change or go out of business.

I highly doubt they would have made the same philosophical changes if they had
been successful doing things the scummy way.

~~~
alive-or-not
Same as Apple - when they were almost dead they had to use and contribute to
open source projects and treat the customer fair. Nowadays they are making it
clear all iThings out there belong to Apple and working hard to wall Mac OSX
as well.

~~~
X-Istence
Apple still contributes to open source A LOT.

~~~
kunai
Barely. OpenDarwin is dead. WebKit was stolen from KHTML. CUPS has barely any
development anymore. Apart from LLVM, what have they _really_ contributed to
OSS? Okay, it's more than Microsoft, but net contribution is still nothing
compared to Google or Sun (when they were still alive).

~~~
matthewmacleod
KHTML was not stolen - it was used as the basis for Webkit in compliance with
its licence, which is _exactly how Open Source_ is supposed to work.

Have a look at
[http://www.apple.com/opensource/](http://www.apple.com/opensource/) \- which
outlines the Open Source components that Apple use and contribute to. You're
right - it might not be as much as some other companies (though I don't know
if it's practically less than Google or Sun) but they are consistently among
the largest participants in Open Source among large tech companies.

~~~
dylandrop
I think my biggest beef with them is that they tend to make up for their small
amount of OSS in a negative way by being such patent trolls. This is more true
of their presence in the hardware world.

------
kevingadd
I ended up switching to T-Mobile for their $30 prepaid plan - 5GB of data (not
at reduced 2G speeds either, actual data) a month, plus a reasonable amount of
voice minutes and the ability to text. Way cheaper than what I'd pay on AT&T
or other carriers, really simple to set up.

~~~
eropple
I was using that plan, but I was finding that I didn't really have enough
voice minutes (100 was less than I'd need). T-Mobile does throttle after 2GB
on that plan, though that wasn't a big deal for me. The big problem for me was
that T-Mobile's coverage area sucks; there were whole areas of Boston and
Cambridge where I got absolutely no signal.

I recently moved to the $45 unlimited-everything plan on Straight Talk, which
uses AT&T SIMs, and I'm pretty happy with it. (I don't know if they too
throttle over 2GB, but I rarely hit it anyway.)

~~~
naner
I was interested in StraightTalk but this article scared me a bit:

[http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414418,00.asp](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414418,00.asp)

~~~
eropple
Yeah, I've seen that. I don't really care, though - my real number is on
Google Voice, so if I get tossed I'll just put my TMO SIM back in my phone. In
the meantime, I get way better coverage.

------
bbarn
I love the service I get from T-mobile, as far as the human element goes. I've
been with them for a long time and they treat me very well when I need them
to.

Unfortunately, I can't tolerate the service the network itself provides
anymore. It used to be fairly functional inside city limits here (Chicago),
but now it works poorly downtown, often shows max signal on HSPA+ but doesn't
actually have a data connection, and if I leave city limits to go for a drive,
I'm looking at probably 20 minutes outside the city before I'm on a non-data
or roaming connection.

I just started a new job that provides smartphone service, so I'll probably
move my t-mobile account to a minimum amount per month and get a little nokia
flip phone for when I'm not doing work related things. - Another big plus for
t-mobile is they'll be happy to change my monthly plan without some badgering
renewal bit, I've done it twice and they always accommodate me.

------
simonw
When I visit the US from the UK I use T-Mobile pay-as-you-go SIM cards to get
data on my iPhone. It works great - you go in to a T-Mobile store, pay for the
SIM and $3/day of credit (I normally spend about $25), they set up the phone
and profile for you and you walk out within a few minutes with a working
iPhone.

I used to use AT&T GoPhone for this, until they sold me a "special deal for
SXSW" in Austin that would keep my number and data working for multiple trips
three years for $100. A few months later they cancelled the data portion of
the plan (naturally refusing to refund my $100 since voice still works) and
made it impossible to get pay-as-you-go data on an iPhone no matter how much
money you give them.

They might have fixed that now, but they've lost me to T-Mobile.

~~~
voltagex_
I used T-Mobile too - the trick I wish I'd known about is it'll allow free (?)
roaming on to AT&T in very select areas. Your non-US credit card may not work
on the website either, I just preloaded the amount I needed while at the
store.

------
jeena
I'm really confused when reading articles like this because it sounds like a
different company to the one I know which was formed out of "Deutsche Post"
during the 90ies and patronizing and shitting on its customers ever since, at
least in Germany.

The biggest thing with them this year was their 384kbps Speed Throttle[1],
where after your family consumed 75GB of data (download and upload) the speed
of your DSL (flatrate) will go down to 384kbps for the rest of the month.

Ok you could say "this is Deutsche Telekom, the parent company, but T-Mobile
is very different!" but sorry, that is not the case.

I wanted to buy a Alcatel One Touch Fire with Firefox OS when I was on
holidays in Poland this year so I went to a T-Mobile store and well, there was
advertising and everything and they even sold them there. But only together
with a contract, which I didn't want (because I can't use it in Sweden where I
live). They send me to another store so I went there, they told me the same
and send me to a third store where they told me that they only sell a couple
of them without a contract and only in the main cities.

I mean wtf? They have been doing advertisement all over the place that they
sell it for 404 zl without a contract, even in those shops, but they wouldn't
sell them to me, or they would but only with a two years contract which ended
up costing around 1200 zl. So I gave up.

At home again I checked their website[2] again, and yep, there they still (and
to this day) advertise it for 404 zl.

I later found out that if you have a polish ID you can order one for 404 zl
from their website which I did with help of my fathers ID.

So they were just fucking with me, again, and yeah, this was not the first
time. I had big time problems back then when I still lived in Germany and
chose a different DSL provider after being very disappointed with T-Online.
Basically they didn't send a technician for two months who would fix the tech
so the new provider could provide me with internet so I was without internet
for two months. That is kind of a big thing if you're working from home.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/technology/deutsche-
teleko...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/technology/deutsche-telekom-data-
use-and-net-neutrality.html) [2]
[http://www.t-mobile.pl/pl/indywidualni/telefony/telefon-
ze-s...](http://www.t-mobile.pl/pl/indywidualni/telefony/telefon-ze-starterem)

~~~
josh2600
So, shitty real answer:

It's not profitable for T-Mobile to sell you that device at $404 if they can
get someone else to pay $1200. Yes, that's shitty, but from an economic
perspective it doesn't make sense for them to sell that equipment to you. The
equipment, even unsubsidized, is a loss leader for the service.

In short, it would be a good customer experience if they should you the phone,
but it doesn't make economic sense.

Also, sort of unrelated, but I really don't understand all this T-Mobile love.
The carriers went from eating a $400+ subsidy on every phone to eating $50 or
less to acquire a new subscriber. The plans aren't THAT much cheaper, and
they're still a joke compared to the cost of delivery (but I digress!).

I think T-Mobile is pro-consumer the same way AT&T is pro-consumer. They just
happen to do a better job marketing it.

~~~
jeena
I wouldn't mind if they didn't advertise it for 404 zl (ca. $130) in the shop,
on TV, the radio and in newspapers.

------
e28eta
I just switched to T-Mobile with my iPhone 5S, largely on principle. My
monthly bill won't go down much and my service has gotten worse, but I'm _so_
happy to leave AT&T and support what T-Mobile is doing. The new international
roaming policy is icing on the cake.

~~~
MacsHeadroom
Your bill won't go down much?

5GB of 4g internet with 3g speeds after that, unlimited texting, and 100
minutes of non-wifi talk (unlimited on wifi) per month is only $30 flat on
T-Mobile if you buy the start-up kit at Walmart.

If you need more minutes than that you can either call over wifi, pay
$0.10/minute or talk all you want for free over Wifi/3g/4g using a VoIP app
like GrooveIP.

~~~
michaelgold
I don't think the iPhone 5s has wifi calling.

Is this accurate?
[http://support.t-mobile.com/thread/52768?start=0&tstart=0](http://support.t-mobile.com/thread/52768?start=0&tstart=0)

~~~
bshep
Although Facetime Voicecalls are not the same thing, its similar and works
with any iOS 7

~~~
ewang1
Not really... FaceTime only lets you do iOS to iOS. Wifi calling lets you call
any phone number.

------
Ellipsis753
"$2000 a month for a family plan" How is this possible? I've never heard of
such an expensive monthly cost. Perhaps they're paying for several iPhones on
contacts?

~~~
epoxyhockey
The monthly plan for an iPhone is in the ~$95/month range. I agree that I
can't even find this possible unless OP has 10+ kids.

------
fatjokes
T-Mobile has to do this because their network is the worst. For a lot of
people, that's more important than device availability, customer service, data
limits, international roaming and contract terms. I say this as a T-Mo
customer.

~~~
reedlaw
My experience is that T-Mobile's 4G is the best. It beats Time Warner's cable
modem. I'm able to stream HD Youtube without stalling on my phone but not at
home.

But the coverage is truly more limited.

------
JVIDEL
Yeah, I went to Tmob a few months after their big relaunch/remodeling/whatever
that made quite a splash in nearly every blog as the "end of bullshit"

The results? well the plans were just as expensive as those from AT&T, Verizon
and Sprint, except that Tmobile had by far the worst coverage of all, I didn't
get any signal inside my office.

The plan mobility was crap as well, with some plans you were stuck and
couldn't move, they wanted me to buy a new SIMcard to change plans and I had
to get the new one from one of their stores in particular else it wouldn't
work. Why do that if not to keep me locked in a crap plan?

They said it was the end of carrier trickery but they forced me get a
ridiculously expensive plan in order to be able to pay for an additional
international calling service, meaning that I had to pay for a bunch of crap I
did not need just to be able to qualify for that small extra feature.

Overall my experience was pretty bad and Tmob's new strategy can be summed as
much ado about nothing with a lot of fine print in the middle.

------
smcl
I'm usually not one to complain about what hits #1 spot on Hacker News, but
this boils down to "I like T-Mobile, their customer service is good and I have
a good plan with them" but not much else. Would it have been so highly upvoted
if it wasn't from the "A VC" blog? I suspect not.

------
iSnow
The funny thing is, T-Mobile is not exactly renowned for customer friendlyness
in their home market, Germany.

~~~
denysonique
Not sure about T-mobile being so great in the UK either

~~~
coherentpony
Tesco. I'm telling you, man, Tesco's customer service is so badass. Never had
a problem with them. They also piggy-back off of O2's network, so I never have
coverage problems unless I'm out in the sticks.

------
matwood
I'm also moving from AT&T back to t-mo. It will save me a little money, but
the main reason is to show t-mo that I support how they treat customers.

------
umsm
My experience with tmobile and Att is probably reversed: tmobile found ways to
add hidden or mysterious charges that others couldn't (I.e. $10 / month
android charge). Most of the customer service reps in recent years got worse
and worse.

I finally switched to Att about 2 years ago and I have to admit: every time I
called, everyone was friendly and helpful. Nothing was hidden: they laid out
their charges and I agreed to them. They may have even slightly higher ($10 a
month), but I have excellent nationwide coverage and very good internet speeds
when I need it.

This was just my experience, and it may be different for others.

~~~
mortenjorck
I would definitely not want to be a new AT&T customer today as they've phased
out nearly every part of my current grandfathered plan, but I've had nothing
but good experiences with support.

Even last year, when they somehow lost my old messaging plan in a phone
upgrade, the rep (who I didn't even have to wait long to speak with) quickly
switched me back.

The moment they require me to switch to a Mobile Share plan I'm out, but until
then I'm continually surprised to be such a happy customer.

------
mistermcgruff
I just switched off of tmobile to verizon b/c I thought it incredibly
unfriendly. They said I'd get 4g in Atlanta. But I didn't on 3 separate
devices. I couldn't get service at all at my intown house which seems insane
for a major city. When I tried to get out of my contract because they'd said
I'd get service and I didn't they pulled up a map of their service area and
said I was mistaken. I wrote letters I tweeted etc. They basically told me to
fuck off.

~~~
bbarn
Interesting. I've never been treated badly by any of their support staff, but
I definitely have the "doesn't work in my own home" problem with them, as many
other friends do. It perplexes me because AT&T works just fine inside my
apartment, and I believe they are on close to the same frequency. Weaker
signals perhaps?

~~~
selectodude
AT&T has HSPA+ on 850MHz and 1900MHz, T-Mobile uses 1700MHz and 1900MHz, so
the building penetration is significantly worse. However, due to the failed
AT&T acquisition, T-Mobile phones can now roam on AT&T's 850MHz 3G spectrum,
so most of the coverage issues indoors should disappear soon if they haven't
already.

~~~
bbarn
I didn't realize the frequencies were so dramatically different. If I remember
my basic electronics, that's double the wavelength for the AT&T signals and
that makes complete sense. Thanks.

------
michaelgold
I think Fred might be disappointed when he switches back to t-mobile. I was a
t-mobile customer for years and I agree they have awesome customer service.
The big problem for me was the terrible cell reception in many buildings in
NYC. That said, I hear there are many areas in the US where t-mobile provides
decent service. For people considering switching if t-mobile's international
data deal isn't that important to you, you may want to check out
[http://www.solavei.com](http://www.solavei.com) first. They are a t-mobile
reseller (MVNO) and you may be able to save some money compared to going
through t-mobile directly. Their prices are similar to straight talk
(mentioned in some of the other comments) and they also allow you to refer
customers to reduce your monthly bill.

Best cell phone service for the price IMO is
[http://www.pagepluscellular.com/](http://www.pagepluscellular.com/) (a
verizon reseller). $55 / month (including taxes and fees) for unlimited
calling, unlimited texts, and 2 gigs of data. I have been a customer of theirs
for a year and a half. Their customer service is pretty good, but more
importantly their signal strength (coming from verizon's towers) is the best
out of all the carriers in NYC.

The one big caveat with the MVNO resellers is that they don't offer LTE data
and some don't support LTE phones (ie iphone 5, 5c, 5s, etc).

TL;DR - if you're down to use an iPhone 4S or other 3G smartphone you can save
some serious money per month going through an MVNO reseller.

~~~
voltagex_
I was in NYC last week using T-Mo and noticed this too. Is it due to the GSM
frequencies they use?

I was told by a rep in Seattle that "new towers have just gone in for NYC",
though YMMV.

~~~
michaelgold
As far as I know, the signal strength for voice calls and the data speed are
different issues. Many T-mobile towers only support edge (1x) speeds on non-
LTE GSM phones. Some towers have been refarmed to support the 3G hspa+
frequencies. Here is an unofficial coverage map:
[http://www.airportal.de/](http://www.airportal.de/)

In my apartment in the Upper West Side, I was getting a 3G data on an unlocked
AT&T iphone 4S with a t-mobile sim, but only 2 bars of voice service. I'm
tempted to try t-mobile's $30 / month 5Gig data + 100 minutes plan to use with
my iphone 5s.

If their LTE service has decent coverage I may be able to get away with using
facetime audio + google voice + talkatone.

Has anyone done this in NYC?

------
jordanbaucke
This is such an obvious puff piece. Has T-Mobile been paying these people to
write these things for them? I'm still awaiting a response from T-Mobiles
legal department after I threatened to sue of their refusal to release me from
my contract without the $300 fee [http://www.scribd.com/doc/169303371/Demand-
Letter-T-Mobile](http://www.scribd.com/doc/169303371/Demand-Letter-T-Mobile)

------
rradu
T-Mobile simply doesn't have any data coverage outside of major metropolitan
areas. If you're someone that travels outside these areas, you will be unable
to use your devices for anything but calls and texts.

That's a big caveat that should be mentioned.

(If you never leave the Bay Area, for example, then T-Mobile is a logical
choice. It works well for me 98% of the time here.)

~~~
Hengjie
Couldn't T-Mobile use another carrier's cell towers and allow their customers
to fallback into those networks?

~~~
voltagex_
They do (although I was only able to test this in a very small part of Idaho)
allow roaming on to AT&T. Supposedly it's free with a data limit.

~~~
greg5green
Yes, there is free UMTS/HSPA/EDGE roaming on AT&T for post-paid plans (aka not
the $30 100 minute/5gb plan) and there is a data limit. For my plan, its 50
megabytes, which doesn't seem like much, but AT&T throttles you to 128kbit/s,
so you really have to work hard to get to that 50 megs.

------
abdophoto
I recently wrote a piece on how I'm using T-Mobile and TalkaTone on my iPhone
5 and only paying $30 a month for unlimited talk, text, and data. That's why I
love T-Mobile.

[http://thetechblock.com/get-unlimited-talk-text-
data-30-ipho...](http://thetechblock.com/get-unlimited-talk-text-
data-30-iphone)

------
srikrishnan
"companies sit around trying to figure out what customer charges they can get
away with" That is so true! I used to work for a US telco and I've read all
the stories about the "mystery charges".

Also, I must say that telcos, and even banks, in India are to an extent like
this. Had one bank put a 1.5$ on my credit card statement for an analysis that
they did on my spend the previous month - which indicated that 100% of my card
spend was towards airfare. I used the card only once, EVER, and I did not ask
for that analysis! I ended up spending 3$ (counting just travel cost) fighting
the 1.5$ charge, but I absolutely wasn't going to let them have it!

Imagine telcos making an extra 1$ on some random charge on some 10 million
customers. Even that is a lot of money!

------
throwaway9848
Ting, Ting, Ting. A thousand times Ting.

A customer, not an employee. I won't gush, see ting.com, it's an MVNO on the
Sprint network.

EDIT: It kind of bothers me that someone downvoted this. It's not like I used
an affiliate link or stand to benefit from this. Sorry for sharing :P

~~~
jrockway
I don't think you actually save any money on Ting. Their biggest data plan is
3000M for $55 (with no text messages and no phone service), compared with
T-mobile's unlimited everything for $70. The innovation they offer is that if
you don't use anything and know you never will, you only pay $6 a month. But
then again, I could get you the complete lack of calling, data, and text for
$0 a month. You don't even have to buy a phone.

~~~
throwaway9848
I save a significant amount of money, but you're right that if you're a heavy
mobile data user other plans might make more sense. I am not: less than 1K
voice minutes, 1K texts, and 250MB data between 2 lines (~$800 up-front for
pretty decent smartphones). I pay $35-50/month. And not having a contract is
nice.

I would be remiss not to give them a huge amount of credit for their support
staff. They really care about that. The only time I called in, a live person
answered the phone after 1 or 2 rings and then proceeded to solve a somewhat
technical problem without transferring me.

Anyway, I don't want to sound like a paid plug for them. But I like them a
lot.

------
throwawayyyz
I don't understand how they're paying $2000 a month to AT&T. We have 5 iPhones
and 1 AT&T iPad on a family plan with unlimited text and very high number of
minutes (can't remember exactly) and pay not more than $450.

~~~
nilkn
I was blown away by that number as well.

------
chrsstrm
_" I was a T-Mobile customer for more than a decade from the late 90s until a
year or two ago."_

Unless he was a T-Mobile customer in Europe, I don't see how this is possible.
T-Mobile in the US was formed circa 2001 with the purchase of Voicestream
Wireless. I remember because I've been a customer since 2002, and all their
equipment was tagged with Voicestream logos.

Unless of course he was a Voicestream customer first, who was then rolled into
T-Mobile. Who am I to say, I just pay attention to details.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Mobile#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Mobile#United_States)

------
tmzt
I'm wondering if there's a purpose-built, fast FirefoxOS device that works on
T-Mobile that could help Fred make the transition.

Is there's anybody that knows of something faster than the ZTE-based phones?

------
andyhmltn
It's weird how different the are across the pond. Here in the UK the old
TMobile (now EE) was absolutely terrible. I took out a new contract for the
iPhone 5 on Preorder. They never delivered it and started harrasing me to pay
my contract that was due to start when the phone arrived (which it didn't.)

It took me 25+ hours on hold and in the end I ended up tweeting them. Their
twitter support team was a billion times better than anyone on the phone and
the guy got it resolved for me.

------
SwaroopH
I love T-mobile whenever I am in the US. Coupled with Google Voice and Nexus 4
(LTE works!), I pay way less than an AT&T contract + phone. The only time I
was unhappy with their coverage was in my apartment in Mountain View this
fall. Apart from that, I've never had to call their customer service. Every
time I come back to US, I simply recharge my account online and get going in
minutes.

I am curious to try out the Walmart plan (refer comments) next time and cut my
costs by half.

~~~
wyclif
Curious about the details of the Walmart plan. Anybody?

~~~
aestra
It's been mentioned several times. Unlimited text, 5GB data, 100 minutes.
Prepaid.

[http://see.walmart.com/t-mobile/](http://see.walmart.com/t-mobile/)

------
danielweber
I moved from T-Mobile from AT&T because AT&T started demanding I buy a data
plan if I were to have a smart phone, _and automatically signed me up for one
and billing me for it_.

T-Mobile's network is _worse_. Really, it's worse. I'm considering going back
to AT&T despite all the crap because I'm sick of picking up my phone and
seeing "no coverage available" in places where I had five bars yesterday.

------
pearjuice
Completely off topic but I am truly amazed by how good that spoken article was
at the bottom of the post. I expected some Microsoft Sam voice, but it was
actually a good clever sound with near-perfect emotional context switches in
tone use.

Is that a plug and play solution or does the author have to do manual fine
tuning? In both cases it is amazing how far we are with text-to-speech
compared to only a few years ago.

------
kiba
My entire family is on t-mobile and I am glad we are. I wish they would tell
samsung to drop their samsung cruft, though.

------
null_ptr
I'll like them more when they offer their pre-paid customers the same benefits
they have on their post-paid plans. They got a lot of good will because of
their recently announced reduced international roaming charges, but "post paid
plan" was peppered on every article about that. Give me a break.

------
fersho311
My company uses ATT and Ive switched to using my company phone 100% of the
time. However, I still have my TMobile sim pard sitting around and I'm still
paying monthly payments even I don't use my TMobile plan at all. Had it been
any other carrier, I would have cancelled in a heartbeat.

------
vonskippy
T-Mobile (should be crushed by) Rocks.

Here on the Western slope they have the worst service of the big four. Here,
only people shopping strictly on price choose T-Mobile. They want your
business, they just don't want to spend any money on the infrastructure to
make it even marginally acceptable.

------
ImprovedSilence
I would really really like to join T-mobile, but I'm just really hesitant
based on coverage area....

------
caycep
That being said, Speedtest reported Hong Kong 3G speeds on my (recently
unlocked) iPhone 4 that are better than any of the reported 4G LTE speeds of
any carrier in the US (7-9 mbps download...it was great!)

------
rplnt
T-Mobile is the worst operator I've had. Expensive, shitty customer service,
dick policies, retarded user plans and contracts.

Who knows about what country I'm talking about though...

------
arikrak
I think the two thing that matter are reception and price. T-mobile clearly
wins on price, but in many areas its reception is not as good as AT&T or
Verizon.

------
tylerlh
I'd really like to know how Fred's shared plan bill is $2000/month for what
seems to be a family of four.

------
anxrn
T-Mobile is shaking up the industry like Apple should have (and could have)
done with the launch of the iPhone in 2007.

~~~
mikeash
Let's not discount what Apple pulled off. Before the iPhone, carriers ruled
handsets with an iron fist, dictating what features they would have and what
apps would be available.

Apple completely smashed that. Carriers now, for the most part, accept that
they don't get to decide what your phone does, only how you use your
connection with them. The carriers used to do things like disable Bluetooth
and charge you extra to turn it back on, or force all apps to go through their
own internal approval process and purchasing.

I'm not terribly happy with the status quo Apple has left us with. Rather than
place control with us where it belongs, they've just moved control to Apple.
Apple is a far better overlord to have than the carriers, but it's still not
great. However, we should still recognize that Apple pulled off a massive
change that nobody really thought could be done.

~~~
anxrn
Keep in mind when the first iPhone released, there was no App Store. And no
plan for one, supposedly [1]. Apple had as much control over your phone as the
other carriers did. And much more than it does now.

My comment was more about the leverage it had over the carriers and completely
squandered. IIRC, AT&T was paying Apple $10 or so per user per month. A
carrier paying a handset manufacturer a fee seems like a lot of leverage. At
this point, Apple had the potential to turn the industry away from fleecing
customers. Instead, in 2013, we're lauding an upstart-ish company for
contract-free smartphones. Great progress, but its taken far far too long.

[1] [http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/10/business/la-fi-tn-
if...](http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/10/business/la-fi-tn-if-steve-
jobs-apple-app-store-20130709)

------
jongold
T-Mobile are terrible in the UK; +1 for their pay-by-the-day SIM being an
amazing option when visiting the US.

------
letmypacketsgo
and they have IPv6 across their entire network. As someone who does research
in this space, and advocates for it as a matter of religion^W principle, this
alone makes me want to give them money.

~~~
p1mrx
To be fair, Verizon Wireless has been much more successful at getting IPv6
devices into customers' hands.

[http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/](http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/)

    
    
      - Verizon: 40.11%
      - T-Mobile: 1.57%
    

The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is T-Mobile's first device to ship with IPv6 on by
default:

[https://sites.google.com/site/tmoipv6/lg-
mytouch](https://sites.google.com/site/tmoipv6/lg-mytouch)

------
jhome
I live in the UK, and never found anything special about T-Mobile.

~~~
wyclif
This thread is about T-Mobile US.

~~~
jhome
I am aware of this, but I wanted to highlight that the brand reputation isn't
consistent throughout the globe. I wish this was also T-Mobile UK !

------
drpgq
As a Canadian, I'm curious about the international roaming.

~~~
3825
If you are going back and forth often and end up spending more time than half
the time south of the border, it might just work for you :)

Here is a quote from their fine print

> Not for extended international use; you must reside in the U.S. and primary
> usage must occur on our U.S. network. Device must register on our U.S.
> network before international use. Service may be terminated or restricted
> for excessive roaming or misuse.

------
stratosvoukel
2000 dollars per month? is this reality in the us? :/

~~~
21echoes
200, not 2000. for a family plan (reads like 4 or 5 people, so that's around
$50 a month per person)

~~~
jeena
The article states $2000

------
alexc05
I understand that Fred Wilson is an important voice in the startup /
ycombinator world... But is this really the quality of content that really
deserves to be on the front page here?

~~~
notatoad
it's sunday afternoon. this is pretty normal sunday afternoon HN content. If
you want something more insightful, come back tomorrow morning.

------
the1
what's wrong with virgin mobile?

~~~
mhurron
Nothing. I switched from Virgin to T-Mobile when it looked like I may be
traveling internationally so I wanted a phone that would work in Europe. My
coverage is a little better with T-Mobile and the ability to roam to other
carriers in the event I am out of T-Mobile's coverage areas is nice. They had
a better choice of phones too.

The only bad thing I would say with Virgin Mobile is about the roaming, but if
you are sure you say in Sprints coverage area (in the US) then you probably
won't have a problem. Other than that, I'll still recommend people look at
Virgin when they are looking for new plans.

~~~
tfigment
I have Virgin and agree with the points here. Basically roaming on the $35/mo
plan is non-existent but I have never had an issue with my phone not working
in the areas I live and visit (unless there was a tower down). Sprint's 4G
coverage is very poor so if you expect that then good luck but my phone is not
so I don't mind yet and can easily switch to another carrier like T-Mobile
when I do.

~~~
maxerickson
Virgin Mobile USA is owned by Sprint and only works on Sprint towers, roaming
is explicitly non existent.

------
consonants
All carriers are shit, T-Mobile is no exception.

~~~
trimbo
I prefer to say they suck less.

