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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

T-Mobile's policies over the past couple of years have really made me want to become a customer. Plans that are actually reasonably priced, explicitly calling out handset subsidies and making them optional, and now this. I just wish their network was a little better!

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I just switched in April after hating life with AT&T and deciding to put my money where my mouth was.

In cities - their coverage is VERY good. Countryside & cross country road trips are where they fall off the map, but I've been very happy paying $80 for unlimited call/text/data + No B.S.

T-Mobile is way behind in terms of users & they know it - which means they're making strong plays against the competition. Makes me want to bet on them for no other reason than to force the other carriers to step up their game.

Your report matches my impression of their coverage. I head out of the city just often enough to go with a carrier that has better coverage. I've thought about getting some cheap plan on a better carrier for those occasions, but it's not quite worth the trouble. They're so close!

Worth noting - as part of the fall out with the AT&T deal - they got a ton of bandwidth from AT&T and they're putting it to good use across their spectrum. Not quite on par with AT&T/Verizon - but getting there!

Ive had tmobile for the past 4 years, across 4 different smart phones.I can honestly say that i don't have any bad experiences with them. I find their network fast and reliable, and I don't live in a big city. I'm amazed they aren't more populatlr given how cheap and reliable ive found them to be.

Now reflect on this old news:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_purchase_of_T-Mobile_...

$80? Pre-paid that's $45.

Even less if you don't talk much:

http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans ($30/m for 5GB of 4G, unlimited text, 100 minutes)

I'm always worried that someone at T-Mobile will notice that plan, say "whoa, how did that get there?", and delete it. It's just so much cheaper than everything else on the market.

The plan can only be deliberate, egregious price discrimination. I found out about it because T-Mobile was heavily advertising it on their website. So I tried to sign up. You can't do that; you have to either order a SIM card from them (which is free), or get one from Walmart. I tried to get a SIM card from the local T-Mobile store. They don't sell those. I ordered a SIM card online and had to wait a week. When it arrived, I activated it on (surprise!) the T-Mobile website. I guess you can do that after all.

Note that in ordering the SIM card I did not indicate that I wanted any particular plan. The $30 plan just "happened" to be available for that card.

Was I willing to wait for one week in order to lower the bill for a large recurring cost by 40%? Yes. But T-Mobile seems to be gambling that most people aren't.

Actually SIMs aren't free, they're normally $10. You can sometimes find them for $1 if you look around hard enough [1].

I've been using this plan for about a month or so and coverage has indeed been a little spotty in my area but it's good enough for my needs. If you do want to try it out here's a tip port your number: do NOT do select the option to port during the online activation process. Sign up and activate your SIM FIRST and then call in to initiate a number port request. Once you've activated and signed up for the $30 plan with a port request, there's no way to get a temporary number while waiting for the port request to complete.

[1] http://slickdeals.net/f/6332098-tmobile-99cent-sim-card-sale...

I consider $10 with a $10 discount (applied before payment) "free". I ordered straight through T-Mobile's web site. Yes, I may have actually paid some amount under a dollar, and no, I didn't pay more than a dollar. I'm still willing to call it "free".

That's a rather amazing deal if you do most of your talking on VOIP, but I'm left wondering what this disclaimer means:

This plan is only available for devices purchased from Wal-Mart or devices activated on T-Mobile.com

It seems to imply device restrictions.

It means you need to activate your SIM card for this particular rate at Walmart or on their website -- T-Mobile stores and phone support can't do it.

Several of my friends have done just that, get a stand-alone SIM card and then activate it on T-Mobile's website.

Wow I've been overpaying by going into a store. I use T-Mobile pay as you go whenever I come to the States (twice a year for 2-week stints usually).

Do you know if I buy a SIM card and activate it for that deal will I be able to let it lapse and then re-up it when I come back in 6 months? Or will I have to buy a new SIM card every time?

I was on that plan and let it expire. My account page still displays the plan, while noting that it's unfunded and I can't use it, so it seems that you can let it lapse and re-up. I've been curious whether that will still be true come the new year.

I have been living in London since 2011, so I let me old T-Mobile plan lapse. When I came back my SIM was dead, so I bought a pay-as-you-go SIM in the store. They told me if I don't top it up every 3 months it is not guaranteed to work. However after I am typically gone for six month cycles, and the last 2 times it was still active.

I'm very keen on trying this new plan though as $3/day on top of pay as you go is not a good value on a 2 week trip. I'd be very happy to just pay $30 and get a reasonable amount of mins/texts along with great data.

There's no device restrictions, plenty of people use this with Nexus 4s and the like. The catch is you can't get it in a T-Mobile store.

If you bring your own device, you have to either buy a SIM from T-Mobile.com and then put it in the device, or you can buy a SIM card kit from Wal-Mart.

I have this on my Nexus 4. You can either order a sim online or (as I couldn't buy it with a card registered to a P.O. box) buy a 20$ phone at walmart and swap the sim into your device.

No device restrictions.

Most of the time the guy at the Walmart phone store will have a spare SIM card lying around and will give it to you for free. That happened for both my phone and my wife's phone.

pre-paid starts at 45 but thats with 500 mb at 4G speed and then unlimited 3G speed afterwards. $80 gets you like 12 gb of 4G.

Personally I'm happy at 500 but use cases vary.

I switched to T-Mobile last month after Apple released the 5s. This has also been my experience.

As much as I love T Mobile's policies, I hate their coverage. I get 0 bars inside non-wood buildings, but when I step outside, I get a few bars. I live in a somewhat hilly area, so I get spotty reception in certain parts of town. I really wish they would spend more money trying to improve their coverage instead of telling everyone how they are so different. Because even if they are different, if they have poor coverage, they won't get a lot of customers.

If you don't mind me asking, where are you located? I get good T-Mobile reception inside all types of buildings in and around the Kansas City metro. The only place I've ever lost coverage is in the basement floors of my doctor's office away from windows.

Their rural coverage is pretty awful though.

I am currently in Charlottesville, VA (it is kind of like a suburb). It has a lot of hills, which affects the reception. Every carrier other than T-Mobile has signal boosters placed throughout the city to counteract spotty coverage.

I've noticed that I only have issues when I go into a building that's not made mostly out of wood. At McDonalds or something, I get great reception, but when I step into a lecture hall or a federal building, the reception drops to 0 bars. Immediately outside of it, the reception is fine.

Aside from getting a phone with a really strong antenna, I'm not sure what to do about this.

T-Mobile sounds great on paper but it's like selling sports cars for 1000$ and you don't know you just bought a Lada until you take it for a spin.

I drove from the Canadian east coast to California with a T-Mobile unlimited plan. For 90% of the trip, I was actually roaming on other carriers' networks. I derived zero value from my payment to T-Mobile since I can't actually use my phone except for 911. Now I'm in San Francisco for half a year and speed is around 0.05Mbps in about 30% of the city. And they're not uninhabited spots of town either.

I can only speak for San Francisco, but that sounds like an issue with your phone, not t-mobile. Make sure your phone supports LTE and HSPA+ on the right spectrums. My experience with T-mobile in SF has been nothing short of superb, on an unlocked iPhone 5. Super-fast low-latency everywhere I go.

It's comforting to know there's hope :) Forgot to mention I tried it on half a dozen latest gen phones and even a couple of SIM cards from T-Mobile just to make sure. Even my phone plan was refreshed in the backend to make sure it wasn't some accounting/admin related issue. The radio frequencies probably isn't the problem but it might not be a general issue that appears to 100% of their user base. Just gotta figure out why the hate me :D

I have the same experience on a daily basis. I get no service to a maximum of 1 bar standing next to a window at home and the same sitting at my desk at work (which happens to be next to a nice, big window). Couple that with dead zones on the commute to work, and I spend almost 100% of my day with little to no service. And no, I do not live in the middle of nowhere; I live a tad bit north of Chicago. AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint all have fantastic service here. I'm trying to get out of my legacy contract with T-Mobile over this, but they want to charge me $300 to terminate.

T-Mobile can throw in as many features as they want, but if I can't reliably make a call from home or work, then it's useless to me.

I live in Schaumburg and work in the west loop in Chicago. I have no problems whatsoever with T-Mobile reception or data speed wise anywhere in the Chicago area, and I'm on a Galaxy Nexus.

I also have a Galaxy Nexus, and I had the same problems when I tried out the Nexus 4. Apparently The near-north suburbs are just not as well covered, even thought T-Mobile's coverage map shows pretty much perfect coverage.

I just got an Aio Wireless SIM card to try out for a month, and it's awesome. I even get service in the elevators and the parking garage. I finally feel like I'm living in modern times!

I switched with the iPhone 5S. Off-contract too.

I rarely leave the city, so the lack of coverage in rural areas doesn't bother me. In NYC I have to say I've noticed a small improvement in reception over AT&T - buildings where I've been dead in the water before now have some connectivity.

So far so good, this new announcement is just icing on the cake, especially as a Canadian expat. It used to be that when visiting home I'd inevitably wind up with one helluva phone bill, and that's just with extremely minimal texting and calling just to herd cats.

Awesome. How's the HSPA/LTE network in the city? Can you do a quick speedtest and post results?

Outside in Greeley Square a week or 2 ago: http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/646728668. I just did one at work inside a tall building (9:15AM ET) with 2 dots of LTE coverage and got 32 ms ping, 5 down/5 up.

thanks!

Brooklyn Heights, 6th floor of pre-war apartment w/ 3 dots LTE:

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/658428085

2 bars of reception, in a brick building - 8.5 own, 3.6 up, ~35ms ping.

thanks! was gonna go to vzw, but now strongly considering tmob.

I've used T-Mobile for about 10 years total. I've also used Sprint for two years. I live in the city so my reception is pretty much identical to every other mobile service as long as I'm in the city. When I leave the city, T-Mobile is not as good as my friends who have Verizon, but then again they are frequently paying close to twice what I pay. I figure that if I can get good service 99% of the time while living in a city and deal with lesser service that 1% of the time I'm not in the city, that is a compromise that I'm glad to pay much less for.

Plans that are actually reasonably priced, explicitly calling out handset subsidies and making them optional

This has actually been the norm in UK for quite some years. Look on t-mobile.co.uk for example, they have a SIM Only plans. As an example:

> The Full Monty (SIM Only), £26/month on 12 month contract = unlimited talk, text + data

> iPhone 5c 16GB, £42/month on 24 month contract = unlimited talk, text + data, £30 for phone

So the same plan, the iPhone effectively costs you £414. That't not actually a bad price, esp if you consider it as finance. But not everyone wants a new phone, e.g. maybe your iPhone 5 is still "good" and you want to wait for the iPhone 6 to come out in a year...

I was a T-Mobile customer for years, and liked my experience very much. The only reason I am not a customer right now is because I had been traveling to China quite a bit and needed a provider that I could access over there.

As soon as this contract is over or work is no longer paying, I am switching back.

I left T-Mobile when at&t was offering better plan. The only thing I wish all carriers will do is eliminate minute deduction for calling your friend who isn't in your network.

Do they already have that for daytime? I think for most carriers out there, if not, all, night time is minute free.

T-Mobile's plans are all unlimited talk and text now. The only difference is the amount of high-speed data (after which you still get EDGE data access).

I switched a few months ago and it's been great. I was afraid I was going to have to switch away, since we're going to be out of the country a lot next year. I'm super happy to be able to stick with them now.

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