Your iPhone and iPad Are Limited. T-Mobile is the Exception

In the peninsula where many Hacker News readers probably reside, their network is pretty great. In Austin, using T-Mobile is a lot like not having a data plan and having a phone with only moderately high probability. People who call you will sometimes get some message saying that your number doesn't exist.

The opt-out process for T-Mobile's DNS hijacking is not satisfactory:

> Note: In order for opt-out to work properly, you need to accept a "cookie" indicating that you have opted out of this service. If you use a program that removes cookies, you will have to repeat this opt-out process when the cookie is deleted. The cookie placed on your computer will contain the site name: "http://tmob.search-help.net.

I have had T-mobile for almost a decade and never had any problem with them. They are a GSM network so you can just swap out your sim card if you want a new phone, without having to jump through any hoops. They even went so far to correct problems that users were having with jailbroken iPhone on their network when they were still relatively new, which is pretty incredible.

I have never had any problem with coverage in major cities, if you get out of populated areas you will see that you are typically bouncing off partner towers, so you may lose data service, but will almost certainly have cell service. Basically as long as you live in a large city you will be fine. I never have had any problems (at least noticeable enough for me to remember) with dropped calls, or flaky service where I live.

I assume other peoples experiences may vary, but I think they are hands down the best cell provider.

I've been with them for 3-4 years in NYC/NJ. I've been nothing but happy, and in Jersey City, they've got better coverage than AT&T and Verizon (anecdotal, but repeatable, data).

Their phone support has always been fantastic for me.

Right before they switched to no-contract mode, I called in to cancel a USB data card I wasn't using much anymore. I have a phone (no contract, unlocked nexus 4) as well as that card, that had finished its contract some time ago. They gave me ~40% off of my entire bill if I agreed to a 2 yr contract.

Then again, when I go out into some parts of the country, I get almost no signal. There was an HN post some time ago with a map of comparative cell-coverage.

I switched from AT&T to T-Mobile because AT&T just pissed me off with mandatory data plans.

T-Mobile's network is nowhere near as good for me as AT&T's was. I hope that it improves. The biggest problem is looking at my phone and seeing "0 bars."

Also, the data plan doesn't work with one of my phones. Ironically, the same phone AT&T forced me to have a data plan for. Maybe it would have never worked.

TMobile in Portland OR, Seattle WA, SF/Bay Area I tested around 16-20MG/s, in other areas (Reno NV, Boise ID) of western US, "4G" runs between 4-8MG/s.

OpenSignal and SpeedTest are the apps that I used.

Never had a dropped call in Minneapolis. My girlfriend is getting lots of LTE on an unlocked iPhone even though Minneapolis isn't one of the officially announced markets yet. (Our apt is still EDGE, but that's what wifi is for, right?)

I've used T-Mobile for the last 4 years. Generally pretty happy with them - their customer service is unobtrusive and generally pretty good, website is solid, plans are reasonable. I think I did accept a 1-year contract when I upgraded to unlimited voice + data + texting, but the initial plan wasn't contract-based.

Coverage in the Bay Area is great. Out east it tends to be a bit spottier than most of the other networks - in rural areas or inside certain malls my relatives on AT&T or Verizon might get service but I won't. They're generally fine in major urban areas and around major highways, but somewhat sparser on the long tail.

I have had great experience being on T-mobile for about 5 years. Their customer service is exceptional and they also allow you to unlock your phone after 3 months.

However there are a couple of things that do irritate me:

[1] They sniff the header of every web-request looking for desktop browser string. If found they sent you a warning text threatening to cut off your service. It sucks especially when you move to a new home with no immediate internet service and want to tether for a few days.

[2] Non-existent domains redirect to a page with ads (Similar to OpenDNS). Sucks on a mobile since you have to wait for it to load to find out while adding to your data usage.

I'm on T-Mobile, but I'm not going to lie: Verizon has a superior network. All that 700mhz LTE is amazing. However, T-Mobile's network is fine for me (their DC HSPA network really does approach LTE speeds at times), and they more than make up for it with things that I also care about that you mentioned.

Eh, in the UK they have / had a package of "unlimited" 3g, £30 for 90 days.

Unlimited means they do weird stuff to prevent some content from working after one gigabyte per month - flash videos don't work, for example.

They throw up interstitial warning pages which break forms and the back button, which can be annoying.

They have fierce image compression proxies, but the Windows client (if you chose to use it, you don't have to) allows you to turn it off.

I carefully checked that it was unlimited, and I gave them fair warning that I consider myself a heavy internet user, and I made sure they knew before they took me on that I'd be hammering the bandwidth. And I do.

Indeed, T-Mobile seems to be turning things around a bit between the new pricing the the LTE Network rollout. I'm considering switching from their other half (MetroPCS) after I ran a DSLReports speed test on my buddy's iPhone 5 and saw 22Mbps. I was floored.

I just moved to the valley and I love that they offer $10/m unlimited international calls and texts. They also offer free tethering up to 2.5GB's and unlimited data (w/o tethering). They claim not to slow you down at a certain point with unlimited data.

I signed up with Voicestream, later bought by T-Mobile. I've been with them more than a decade. A couple of times they've called to inform me I need to switch plans because they're phasing out the one I was on. It's been a total win, no extra money, more stuff every time. I'm in Arizona, and coverage is fine here. Traveling in the US sometimes I get T-Mobile and sometimes I roam. A visit to Europe a few years ago I saw solid coverage, mostly T-Mobile. Yeah, it was $1/minute to call home. So I called every night for only 5 minutes to talk to my wife and daughter. Compared to hotel and restaurant expenses? Whatever.

I never think T-Mobile is especially good until I hear others bitching about their carriers.

T-Mobile is great in Chicago. The network goes to shit as soon as you try to go downstate, though.

It's adequate in their mapped service coverage areas - but if you go into any kind of sizable building, expect reception to go way down.

There are plenty of businesses nearby where I'll have a full signal outside, but once I'm indoors it drops off to Edge network.

There are also blank spots of little to no data coverage that have no reasonable explanation.

That said, I'm aware of this and think it's worth the trade-off. I'm not going to another network anytime soon.

Using an unlocked AT&T iPhone 4 in the Chicago area. Many places have not completed the "refarming" effort of switching the 1700 MHz towers to 1900 MHz, so most of the time I am on Edge (2.5G).

When I happen to be in an iPhone 4 compatible cell, the 3G is pretty solid, often 6mbit down, 2mbit up.

Waiting for the 5S to upgrade - hoping the LTE and HSPA+ is good.

I use them in NYC, and I'm never looking back. I pay $30 a month for unlimited data, unlimited texts and 100 minutes of calls. I bought my phone (Nexus 4) outright for $350. I even tried out hacking LTE to work with it, and I get T-Mobile LTE in Brooklyn (though not in Manhattan).

In summary; it's awesome. However, when I leave the city, coverage is definitely limited. I do so very infrequently, so it's fine for me.

Be careful with T-Mobile. I live in a fairly small town (about 12,000 people) that is practically a suburb of a bigger town (over 200,000). I have 18 MBps Internet from AT&T Uverse, and the local cable company just started offering a much faster connection. T-Mobile? I can't even get a signal at my home. No signal.

TMobile is great until it isn't. I had them for years with a $19.99/4ever plan grandfathered from Omnipoint many years ago.

Unfortunately for you, that means that you can't make a phone call 30 miles from your city center (or in remote locations like Brooklyn, NY or the state of Maine) , or in the back of your home, or 1000 ft from the interstate, etc.

I was in nyc manathan. Data Network was often unavailable. I had the 4g unlimited dataplan but only using 3g (iphone 4).

Agree, the lack of transparency is something I have a problem with, but the speeds are _way_ more than I need. I'd rather get slower speeds and higher bandwidth caps for the same money (if I could choose).

It doesn't seem at all reasonable to throttle a particular device and not other comparable devices. It seems more reasonable to have the tower/router adjust the bandwidth made available to each device in real-time to ensure there's enough bandwidth for all users in the face of capacity issues.

I think it's fine to advertise peak speeds if those are regularly attainable even if sometimes they are not. It's not OK to advertise such speeds if the device is sold in a configuration that can't take advantage of them without a hack or update from the carrier or manufacturer.

Do AT&T even advertise specific speeds? Their advertising is "4x faster than HSPA+."

It doesn't require you to erase your settings and contents [1]. You only have to do that if you want to revert or something goes wrong. It's actually very easy to install without a jailbreak.

[1] http://www.itweakios.com/apps/blog/show/26861181-updated-at-...

The superfluous FUD that you quoted was actually the article quoting the carrier, and their excuses for doing such a thing.

He was quoting the carriers, though I could see how the statement could get misconstrued:

    However, from previous statements released by AT&T and many tech orginizations, iPhones are very complex devices with a very complex OS. The OS eats much more data, even when in idle mode, than most phones on the market. So by carrier request, Apple limits devices to "even out" the network, even if it means Galaxy users out perform Apple devices by such large scales.

I don't think this has anything to do with net neutrality. For example, it's perfectly legal for Comcast to throttle your home cable connection.

http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/pcc.aspx/ Looks pretty good to me

I have them and live in Los Angeles. Coverage is pretty fantastic, except for in brick buildings. On a good day I get 25mbps down on their HSDPA+ network.

Depending on where you live in LA you'll run into these problems with all carriers due to the topography.

I also found it quite annoying with AT&T even though there was a tower six blocks from my apartment.

Indeed. And much like high-speed highway driving, if my iphone 4s were to use its full internet bandwidth, i would be a mortal danger to my fellow man. Oh wait.

I imagine cars are tested for max speeds much like ropes and carabiners are given weight ratings. The governor probably enforces these ratings because although your car could go faster, things might start breaking. Faster internet speeds aren't going to melt your CPU.

Will the telephone spontaneously combust if it downloads too fast?

I agree with you in principle, but to be honest, I think this analogy gives people the wrong idea. They're attacking it based on phones being non-lethal, which is probably unproductive to your point.

Those cars do not advertise a top speed higher than the governor allows. They would likely be subject to liability for false advertising if they did.

But not safely faster. Tires on most cars are not rated above those speeds.

To be fair, the carriers aren't the only ones being misleading or opaque. Apple quite happily chips in (with a good second-long shot of their logo, no less) for the already blatantly false ads declaring "iPhone on the fastest network [AT&T]".

T-Mobile includes the personal hotspot at no extra charge. I just switched from AT&T too and have been really happy so far. My phone only gets Edge speeds right now, only because they haven't "reframed" their cell towers yet. (not exactly sure what that entails, but I understood it to mean that after reframing my phone would be on 4G, have better reception, etc.)

Having two AT&T iPhone 5's on our plan, I can in no way corroborate your experience. Looking at the history for one of these phones, it has entire plan months that remain below the lowest data plan threshold. Seriously, there's a problem that needs resolving. Search the web, hit up AT&T support and/or an Apple store, etc.

As someone who checks his usage daily I can assure you that if you are on Wifi you should not see your data plan used at all.

In an Atlanta I get 15-25 Mbps regularly outdoors (very close to downtown). The speeds are higher where there isn't too much concrete and people. I have also seen 55Mbps in suburbs of Atlanta.

This is on At&t.