T-Mobile CEO: “This industry blows,” biggest carriers offer “horseshit”
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I also recently went to Europe and took advantage of the free worldwide data; was fantastic. Phone calls while roaming in Europe were reasonable, too. Something like 10 cents a minute back to the States.
All for ~$70/month. Beats the pants off AT&T.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/07/tethering-apps-must-b...
Just switched to T-Mobile last month: much better experience than what I had with Verizon so far.
There is also the option of individual data plans (per line) that include this flag as well, but they of course cost more. Example: You get $30 for 2GB on Verizon, but to enable the mobile hotspot you need the $50 for 4GB plan. In AT&T's case you would need the $50 5GB plan to enable mobile hotspot.
In the case of Verizon, you're perfectly able to download a third party tethering application (as per the FCC ruling) and use it on their old tiered individual data plans. If you have Verizon's grandfathered unlimited plan, you are able to add on the $30 unlimited tethering option as this plan did not fall under the FCC fiasco. However, I have not heard of Verizon going after anyone using a third party tethering application on an unlimited plan. It's worth noting that Verizon is still the only carrier that ever offered and still offers (to subscribers that already have an unlimited data plan) truly unlimited and unthrottled tethering as an option as their LTE network is not throttled.
In the case of users still on AT&T's grandfathered unlimited data plan, they are throttled to 0.5Mb/0.5Mb after 3GB for 3G devices, and 5GB for LTE devices. They also will automatically move you to a tiered plan if you attempt to use any third party tethering applications and do not offer any legitimate way to tether on this plan.
I'm hoping that one of T-Mobile's next moves will include adding unlimited tethering that is unthrottled to their unlimited data plan.
Not if that device is a Nexus 7 tablet.
ATT specifically made Google turn off hotspot access from the tablet, while it works with the same SIM in a phone. Or with a TMO SIM in the same device.
See: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2450239 http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/nexus/LwcDQENW...
Which is ironic, as tethering is the only context in which I would come anywhere close to using up my monthly bandwidth allocation.
T-mobile has been the one carrier that hasn't made me want to gouge my eyes out.
Emphasis mine.
My wife and I got the $30 100 minute/"unlimited" data plan as a stop-gap before leaving the country to move abroad. Before leaving we drove from SC, to MA, to CT, to NY, on over to WI. Unless we were near a major city, our devices were roaming on to AT&T, where we only had 10MB of data to use. The voice coverage was fine while roaming, but since we were using one of the phones as a GPS to navigate, it got annoying at times.
Now this is a cut-rate plan that's full of limitations, and we knew that, but still the service we received was much worse than we expected. I'd strongly advise anyone considering T-mobile to check the roaming agreement.
I can't really complain when my wife was sending MMS pics back home of Burning Man from inside our RV. That's coverage.
Is this really that much of a problem? Coming from an Aussie who is used to having no mobile access at all (not even emergency) driving between major cities.
As a fellow Aussie, lack of coverage is why I moved (back) to Telstra; outside of the major cities, only Telstra has reasonable coverage. Whenever I visit my parents in Gympie (~2 hours north of Brisbane, ~20,000 people), my previous carrier (Vodafone) couldn't connect me in the town's main street. Optus could only do so at a certain corner. With Telstra, I receive ~2mbps in the middle of my parents' farm. The difference in coverage between Telstra and its competitors is extreme.
Yet, Optus and Vodafone are two major carriers with millions of customers. Optus and Vodafone are not much cheaper than Telstra. But this small price difference (I'd actually be paying more for my equivalent plan with Vodafone..) is apparently (according to those millions of Optus and Vodafone customers) worth sacrificing a huge amount of coverage for.
tl;dr - Aussies don't seem to care that much about coverage, just price.
That said, if I needed a month of stop-gap coverage on the cheap, I'd definitely use the service again.
Edit: Oh, and we've just moved to Christchurch. I think it's a similar story here w/ coverage between cities, but obviously the distances involved are much, much smaller.
It depends on your current data plan. I was capped at 50MB and they sent me an SMS when I hit 40 alerting me to possible overuse. I just turned off data roaming in the Android settings and everything was fine.
Don't get me wrong AT&T sucks and T-Mobile is doing a lot of consumer friendly things but the gap betewen them simply isn't as large as is being presented.
The Nexus 5 is more comparable to the iPhone 5C which AT&T offers for $199 on contract (let's compare 32GB models since Google only charges $50 vs Apple's $100 for the upgrade). At $399 the extra $200 works out to $8 more a month. This is about what I pay monthly to AT&T including fees.
Like I said T-Mobile does a lot of great consumer things. For some people it will be worth it to go with T-Mobile. For others the difference isn't quite so large and in many places the T-Mobile network simply isn't good enough[1].
[1] http://opensignal.com/network-coverage-maps/t-mobile-coverag...
1. http://www.phonearena.com/phones/compare/Google-Nexus-5,Appl...
Tmo: unlimited everything (well, 5GB of 4G data) with no discount, $140/month. I'll probably knock that to 2.5GB (we don't use that much) and bring it on par with what we paid on AT&T. Additionally, though not directly related to the comparison, we don't have to say "Mother, may I?" for tethering, so we can knock off another $30/month for iPad data.
(I have the cheapest 500mb data simple choice plan.)
My wife and I have 1000 minutes, 15k texts, 2GB data for about ~$70. You can also get the minimal plans and they will give you a heads up when you are about to go over and you can upgrade to the higher plan up without penalty (and switch back down after the month is over). Customer service is also far superior, in my experience. No contracts. No hidden fees. It's AT&T network behind the scenes. They also started supporting the newest iPhones "officially". Prior you had to buy a SIM cutter to get it to nano size.
For an anti-(contract|warranty|debt) guy like me, it has been a breathe of fresh air.
Now, I am wondering, is AT&T afraid that I am not going to finish my contract if they unlock the phone? If they think I was lying about the trip abroad, I could show them my tickets. But this kind of behavior just seems outright sadistic.
I just bought an unlocked Nexus 5 to use overseas and I am definitely switching to T-Mobile after I return. Fuck you AT&T.
I didn't wait until my contract was up. 14 months later I paid the ETF on two phones and switched to Tmo. I think we'll come out about even versus just waiting until the contract ended. I grew weary of AT&T's nickel-and-dime bullshit, and the lack of signal at my house. Though I will credit AT&T with quickly unlocking the phones after the ETF was paid.
What's important to note is that T-Mobile is quickly becoming a company that delivers a great product and is customer-centric. And when the incumbents start playing catch up (AT&T in particular) you know they're making the right moves.
I've been with Verizon for a few years and I can't say their service is what it's marketed to be. Data is fast but the inability to simultaneously do data and voice is just idiotic. The monthly fees are also totally insane. I pay $140 / month for a single data line (iPhone). In contrast to Verizon, with T-Mobile you get unlimited voice and data for a little over $70, no contract and stellar customer service. I called T-Mobile to switch last month and with a little negotiating, they sent me a _free_ iPhone 5S. No contract. No bullshit.
T-Mobile's latest announcement of up to $650 in credits for switching over will increase their subscriber base by millions of new users, no question. It's bold, aggressive and customer-centric.
I can't personally speak on AT&T's network but we all know it's one of the worst companies in the world to deal with. Their service is spotty for many, many users. Their customer service is non-existent. Their data practices are borderline unethical (with hidden data caps, throttling, etc). AT&T is just an awful company. I'm stuck with their uVerse Internet service and it's just a disaster. Unfortunately, many of us have no other choice but their lousy broadband product. Let's not even talk about Time Warner.
T-Mobile's coverage, from what I have experienced, is stellar. Up and down the California coast. Mexico. Europe. NYC. Seattle. I'm always at 4+ bars. Data is fast (~18Mbps downstream). International roaming is perhaps one of the most impressive features of TMO. I remember paying $20 / MB with Verizon and that's just absolutely criminal. And they can get away with it because many customers aren't even aware of this until they get the bill.
Legere is right - the mobile landscape is just horrendous and it's mainly because of AT&T and Verizon. I hope T-Mobile continues this push towards making customers happy and simply offering better products. Their bottom line will be the ultimate proof of how this is working out for them - and from what I'm seeing, their new subscriber numbers are growing exponentially. You could say they're disrupting the industry. And that's rare from these monoliths.
I'm overall quite happy though. I switched from paying Verizon $100/mo to $30/month with T-Mobile ($250 etf paid for itself in 4 months). Its also worth mentioning that since I moved over my CDMA iPhone 5, I am using HSPDA+ (on 1900mhz where it exists) not LTE
It is worth noting, however, that T-Mobile has some serious problems. There are large swaths of this country where T-Mobile simply doesn't have service. For instance, last time I drove from Denver to Chicago I lost reception 1 hour into the trip and got it back a few hours before I arrived. There was perhaps one town where I had service during the drive. I thought that this couldn't possibly be right, but I stopped by a T-Mobile store and confirmed that this is the case. I thought that mobile providers worked to ensure that your phone would work at least when you are on an interstate, but not with T-Mobile.
Also, unlimited Internet doesn't really mean unlimited Internet in practice. They throttle so heavily after I hit my 5 GB cap that they might as well have cut off the data plan. Programs stopped working as the requests would time out and the app would assume I had no connectivity.
After getting throttled on day 3 of the month with my new phone, I'm down to approx 70 kbits/s. I can't even watch youtube without a 50% duty cycle.
and T-Mobile is far from sucky. I've had them for ~10 years and had numerous problems with various aspects of their company.
When I bought my last phone through them, their website failed to let me transfer my old phone number to it. Instead, it started a new account for me. Three calls to customer service and it's not resolved.
The first call the operator couldn't figure out what was going on. The second, the network quality to Asia was so bad, there was no communication possible. The third, I was hung up on while I was transferred.
Last time I filled up my monthly card, their web page said the fill up failed, so I tried again and it failed again. Next thing I knew, the charges had gone through twice.
The year before that I signed up for a data plan, but it wasn't compatible with my phone and they wouldn't cancel that plan - until I used a lawyer.
There have been many bumps in the road prior to that, too. I only use them because they have the right balance of coverage for the price. That is to say, second best coverage in my area and second highest monthly price.
My final reason for leaving -- even though they suffered many high profile password hacks in the past, they still store them as clear-text and email it to you when doing a password reset.
Genuine question- what do you do to hit that limit? I have the same $30 plan and my phone data usage shows me nearly hitting 2GB a month on average.
But if you add in a laptop, things get real ugly, real fast...
Their current deal is $50 for an "unlimited" plan that switches to EDGE after 500MB and $60 for a similar plan with a 2 GB limit (or 3 GB, can't remember which).
The worst instance of abuse was once, for a couple months, I used tethering as my only home Internet access as my land lady was dragging her feet on getting Internet access installed. During one of those months I decided to watch the first few seasons of The Mentalist and that uses data plenty quick. An hour of video is still several hundred MB even with these fancy new encodings.
On an account just activated in December, I have these options available to me: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0i7witxcmu9qlh1/Screen%20Shot%2020...
None of the ones labelled "unlimited" look like "5GB cap", they look like unlimited on the phone + limited amount of tethered usage. It would seem to make very little sense to offer 5GB + 2.5GB for the same price as a combined total 4.5GB.
Word to the wise, you get basically no T-Mobile customer service once you switch to pre-paid. I have been on contract with them before and they are very helpful, but on pre-paid it seems like you are on your own.
Also, California is a pretty big state. In LA, we use a lot of different data devices in the office from Verizon (mostly the Pantech ULM290s), AT&T, and T-Mobile (we dropped Sprint a couple years ago - they were terrible). T-Mobile performs great down here. I haven't had problems w/ my T-Mobile LTE devices (I carry an unlocked 5S, Nexus 4, and iPad Mini) when I'm up north either.
For those of us who have been with T-Mobile for years now, the company has always been this way, just more-so now. Glad the secret's finally getting out, and kudos to Legere for making it happen.
I heared that in Sweden, if you drive far enough to the north, there will just be a network called "Sweden" and you can connect to that, no matter what your provider is.
I normally am not one of these America-centric culture warriors, and I have no problem understanding even very thick accents. But the specific form of ingratiating behavior that their call center employees are trained in is egregious. They are trained to, apparently, wrap every sentence front-and-back with terms of politeness and overt demonstrations of respect. A conversation can follow like this:
Rep: Please may I place you on hold sir as I
look up your account so that I can better be
able to serve you and fulfill your request?
Me: Sure
Rep: Thank you so much and please hold I will
return shortly to further assist you.
...
Rep: Yes, hello thank you sir for waiting your
patience is very much appreciated and I was
able to access your account so that I can
provide you now with an adequate resolution to
your request.
$30 monthly, 100 minutes, unlimited texts, unlimited data with the first 5 GB at 4G speeds.
I mean the 100 minutes bit is a bit nasty as all minutes are rounded up so even a 1 second incoming call I pick up counts against a whole minute. I rarely go over the limit though and usually just throw an extra $10 in the account to deal with it if I go over.
My fiance has the same plan and uses her tethering for her Apple TV Projector setup in the art class she teaches since her school wifi is pretty bad. You get a small amount of free tethering with the plan but it's only $15 for unlimited tethering in addition.
It should be in the plan list when you activate a SIM at http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-activate. It was never advertised available in-store, only online.
EDIT: My cost comparison for two people who own their phones:
4 Gigs shared on AT&T: $120
2.5 gigs each on T-Mobile: $100
So I guess T-Mobile is still cheaper. But, for me, T-Mobile data does not work at all outside of my home city. Data coverage everywhere is worth 20 bucks to me.
Airvoice, an AT&T MVNO, will sell you two plans with 3GB each for $120 or 2 plans with 1GB each for $80.
When I went over data allotment on AT&T, I got charged extra for that month (especially infuriating late in the cycle). Here on Tmobile, I just get bumped down to 2G (acceptable - esp. if it happens 27 days into the cycle).
When TMobile launched the iPhone5 with HDVoice, AT&T and VZ loudly proclaimed that HDVoice was coming "late 2013". Still no news. How long does it take for them to support an additional codec that improves voice and lowers their bandwidth? I'm only waiting for them b/c I have a relative that is still on AT&T, and I'd love the calls to be HDVoice.
TMobile's coverage outside of metros sucks. And I doubt it will get better soon (likely they'll double-down on becoming better than ATT/VZ in-city than worry about low-density areas). If you really need coverage in exurban and rural areas, then yeah, go with one of the two biggies - but you'll definitely pay more.
Once t mobile establishes a foothold, it will have enough agency and capital to gain access to wider coverage. The biggies will be bleeding revenue and will have to license out their network to T Mobile to compensate.
Sure, their network is not a blanket. But that is temporary. T mobiles approach is likely possible due to differences in their operations which provides a competitive advantage that the biggies can't easily replicate.
Mobile networks will evolve faster than backbone. I'm excited to see what lies ahead.
With T-Mobile I can't even get get 5 miles out of the metro area without losing coverage. We're not talking about road trips across North Dakota, we're talking about a 40-mile drive to the next city over. Hope you weren't super into that Pandora song!
My most recent change over to http://ting.com/ (Sprint) has a series of data/voice/text brackets you are priced at depending on overall usage. My bill ignoring first month subsidy credit of 25usd resulted in: 26usd before tax. The Bring Your Own Device theme of prepaid carriers lately is lovely, so I have the up-to-date Cyanogen mod on a modern phone I wanted.
I really don't know what venues people are buying these expensive plans at, most seem to revolve around AT&T and shopping malls though.
Thank god I live in Europe (in the UK, the equivalent costs about 20GBP per month).
One which really rankles me is the telcos charge a fee to comply with the law. Tmo currently charge almost two dollars a line per month for that ("Regulatory Programs Fee"). I kid you not - the fee literally is for them to comply with legal requirements. This is all a side effect of the regulatory capture of the FCC.
Here are the taxes for California http://www.mywireless.org/state-issues/california/ - and note that doesn't cover federal taxes. You can see a sample tmobile bill on their support site - http://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-1101 - and notice the section at the bottom taking up almost a quarter of the space is the taxes. They didn't include their fees in that example either.
Seriously though, Poochie had no substance---that was the joke. This guy has brought on some real change at T-Mobile, and consequently the US wireless industry. Unlocked phones? Free roaming? I never dared hope!
You take that back about Poochie!
I am not sure if this plan is still available, but I am on $30/month no contract plan. This has unlim. data, text and 100 voice minutes. It works perfectly with unlocked Nexus 4 which I got in Jan 2012. I'm never going back to contracts anymore.
All you need to do is get a new sim card from T-mobile.com which is usually close to free. And then activate the sim card online. Going through the steps you get to select your prepaid plan, and the $30 a month plan is one of the options.
Disclaimer: 12 year T-Mobile customer.
I guess you're a long-time T-mobile customer because you like being with them, and find them better than the alternatives. So what you're getting is, hopefully, already the best they can offer in terms of service, contract terms, etc.
Telcos are a game of scale. In order for T-mobile to be able to give you even better terms, or an even better infrastructure with even better services, they need to grab a larger slice of the market. So really, what they're doing does help you in the end, just indirectly and more slowly. As their market share grows, it justifies even greater investments in infrastructure and services, and so you benefit.
Is this along the lines of what all these other companies (Amazon, Netflix, etc) are doing where they bring you in at low rates, sell to you at unsustainable prices, and then plan to increase prices over time (or do what they have to do to start turning a profit?)
Or is there a chance that, even after these incentives, prices will remain competitive?
Then, assuming people warm up to T-Mobile and say "hey - this is a good company!" , then you lock them in longer.
The cost of paying for an early termination fee could be considered equivalent to a Marketing and/or Distribution fixed cost.
After that, you just want as many people on your network as possible so long as they don't largely degrade the service for each other. And if you dominate a market you don't even care about that part because your customers have no choice.
I purposely switched because I wanted a GSM phone because I've been toying with Arduino cell phone kits, but when it came down to the decision between AT&T and T-Mobile, it quickly became clear that T-Mobile offered a better product.
What I hadn't expected was that I wasn't going to miss Verizon one iota.
He even goes to create some horeshit when he says "T-Mobile's network is fastest." I call bullshit, and ask "where is it faster, asshat?"
T-Mobile has always had pretty good customer service, but their network isn't nearly as large as other providers...
For those who don't know, providers have different licenses in each area, more licenses = more spectrum = better reception. T-Mobile, in general, as the least amount of spectrum available (by a huge margin). They also operate at a much higher frequency than their competition so their building penetration is worse (especially over 3G/4G).
This same thing goes with network speed; some areas have more spectrum and thus can offer better speeds. Some can't. So any measurement of "we're faster" is very, very geographically specific.
Note: I worked in the wireless industry for 5 years (with a few of those at T-Mobile).
Their data does get a little flaky the when out of fairly populated areas, but I have seen this improving very quickly and can make many long drives with full data coverage.
I don't know, I think it might just be marketing.
I took the Empire Builder recently, which basically skitters along the Northern border from Chicago to Seattle/Portland, and T-Mo coverage was nil for the bulk of the trip. Can't say I really minded, though.
Usually coverage is fine.
You're correct though, around my city and most cities I've been too domestically, I've found the coverage to be pretty good. Either way, the cost and ease have kept me on their program even with the occasional coverage gaps. But somebody routinely out for non-metro trips might not like it.
However, I would never go back to ATT/VZ absent a major change in their behavior. Happy TMO customer.
I also have some pretty bad coverage when I go up to Vermont.
So, if you stay in the cities. Excellent Coverage. Roam into the rural world: Spotty coverage.
Fact, though, even AT&T's coverage in some of these same locations is pretty poor. Verizon seems to work best.
In my area (Santa Cruz, CA) tmo are weak. Heck I barely get coverage in my house, and walking along West Cliff drive has sections with no coverage. Verizon is strong.
However I very rarely actually use the phone as a phone so I mostly don't care.
The places where coverage hasn't been a problem: anywhere else.
The only places I don't have coverage are usually the places I go to get away from phones/internet so I don't mind too much.
I pay for the phone off contract ($299 for Moto X), then $5 to $40 / month for various service options (all unlimited, from WiFi calling only up to 4G LTE).
The Sprint network isn't the fastest, but it's hard to beat $25 / month for unlimited talk/text/3G data. I even went a whole month on the $5 WiFi only plan (You can change your plan twice a month).
I love not being locked into a contract and only paying < $50 / month for 2 unlimited phones.
Actually, even if you are a cab driver, GPS + offline maps are completely free.
That said, I just noticed T-Mobile $30/month 100 minute voice, and unlimited data (4G up until 5GB) plan. That's pretty amazing and I will probably jump ship from Verizon.
Coverage and bandwidth is great (where I am), and the no-contract plans are certainly great.
To reuse a famous quote "The nice thing about standards is, there are so many of them"
Then a couple of weeks ago, someone on an HN thread told me about the Nokia Lumia 520. I checked it out, decided to buy one, and I'm damn glad I did! Windows Phone is frankly amazing - it does everything I need it to do, it's beautiful, and it just works. I ordered a sim card from Straight Talk for their Bring Your Own Phone program for $7, and voila, I have unlimited everything on ATT's network for $45 a month.
I have around a dozen people on one Ting plan, and since the monthly bills adjust for usage I usually only owe around $120 total, and literally $60 of that is from the few people that use 1k+ minutes / texts a month. By comparison I know a family of 4 on Verizon with iphones and such that pay $400 a month for not even unlimited service.
Now if I was going to hire you for a big freelance project and you used language like that over the phone while I was asking you some questions it would definitely change my confidence in hiring you.
And that would make rethink working for you.
What's the problem with the language?
A candidate is not inherently less capable of doing the job simply because of their language unless, of course, their job is to please people who care about language.
Personally, I appreciate a person who says what he thinks, and I think we see painfully little of this in the business world.
He's doing a damn fine job, for what it's worth.
In business, 2 years is not a long time at all.
My personal opinion is it's unprofessional and not appropriate language. (I can see by the downvotes that others don't agree).
If you are an entertainer that's one thing and you can be outrageous so you stand out (but you probably wouldn't even in all entertainment venues). [1] But you also don't want to come across as a lose canon either. In business people need to feel they can trust you and one of the things they look for is a certain amount of conformity to accepted standards.
Maybe this example will make sense. You meet the woman of your dreams. You want to marry her. You would die if you lost her. It's that important. You meet her father and grandfather. How will you behave? Will you watch what you say a bit? Or will you act the same way as with your fraternity brothers or friends when you are just hanging out?
[1] And yes I can definitely see the PR value of what he is doing.
Sorry if the profanity bothers you. I consider the anti-consumer stance of other telecom CEOs to be more profane.
Substance > Formality, and so far TMobile has been delivering.
It works? For how long? The person using the language has been at tmobile for +-2 years.
Tmobile has been around for way longer than that, right and before that afaik a public facing person didn't use that languag.
Add to that the fact that the rest of the traditional business world (not talking about startups) doesn't use that language.
I'm not even talking about elevators. Just sidewalks of major central pedestrian roads like Bay St and Hyde St. I also have no coverage in my apartment with them or at work.
Coupled with the cancelation of Cel-Fi, it is impossible to use their service in many densely populated areas.
Also, you are aware that ATT and TMO have a roaming agreement? http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/20/2649023/t-mobile-to-get-s...
Basically, the only time I've ever gotten good quality calls from T-mobile was when I was calling the emergency number from an area I normally have no service in.
I switched to Sprint because I felt like I wasn't going to be nickle and dimed (and despised as a 'data hog') like I was on AT&T. I'll never got back to AT&T. For the most part my plan on Sprint is great - unlimited data, phone, and text and 5GB hotspot for little bit less than what I was paying for AT&T.
But the network in SF just sucks. Ya know, it's 2014 and I'd just like decent LTE. I'm shelling out a lot of money for sub-par service. So, I'm gonna ask around about T-Mo and if it has good service, I'll switch over. Now they seem least douchy of the bunch.
The other issue I have with them is that if you cancel your month-to-month subscription, they don't let you keep talking for the month you already paid for if you move your phone number to another company. That is they won't issue you a new phone number if you transfer the one you had with them.
I also hate Verizon because of the 2 year contract and useless preinstalled apps, but that seems to be the only option.
May I ask what device you use, and what plan you're on?