I think most customers would prefer better cell coverage.
Then again, with the cell phones I grew up on it was a miracle that they worked at all. So I don't get terribly upset when I don't have coverage on some forest road in the Cascade mountains. To me, Tmo is like owning an electric car. "But what about those drives to L. A. that one would think from talking to me I do every other week, but is really only twice a year?" Rent a car, keep the gas car you already own, whatever, there are mitigations. Absolutely, positively have to have coverage on every square inch of the planet? Rent a sat phone, buy an InReach or SPOT. Or go with Verizon and put up with higher prices and poor customer service every single day for functionality you'll use twice a year. It's just what one is willing to trade. I'll trade coverage for a company that doesn't piss me off every time I have to deal with them, as coverage is a minor consideration for me, and I'd rather do without a phone than deal with Verizon. For others, coverage is important enough to put up with other pain points.
OTOH, it does kind of suck that smack in the middle of Seattle's SODO area I don't have coverage in the building in which I work. OTOOH, Tmo has WiFi calling so it's not that big of a deal.
(EDIT: actually read TFA. "Other carriers want to screw you, Legere says with his typical brashness, while T-Mobile is offering dinner and a movie." Coverage be damned, I'd almost give them money just to get a choice quote from Legere once in a while.)
"T-Mobile customers saw an LTE signal 81 percent of the the time in the fourth quarter of last year, just a bit less than what AT&T delivered. Yes, both still lag behind Verizon (87 percent), but it’s a level of saturation that lets them claim nationwide reliability."
http://www.wired.com/2016/02/t-mobiles-finally-good-enough-t...
They're within striking distance these days.
Can't argue that in the main that's true, unfortunately due to construction where I am downtown my T-Mobile service has dropped off considerably and it's useless where I spend my weekends. They've also shifted customer policy recently and don't try as hard to retain customers - in my case refusing to refund a couple of months of excess billing that was their fault. Previous mistakes were corrected with apologies that bordered on the obsequious.
Needless to say I won't be a TMO customer much longer. But I'll take a free share of stock on the way out.