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Comment by themckman | Hacker News Reader

I bought the iPhone 5 outright, unlocked and switch to T-Mobile after doing so. In the city (Chicago) the service can't be better. Really like that tethering is just included. LTE tethering has come in handy at a few coffee shops that don't have WiFi.

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.

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> In the city (Chicago) the service can't be better.

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.

Conversely, I spent two weeks driving an RV from Chicago to Burning Man (where I had coverage on the playa), and then back to Chicago through Yellowstone. Yes, I had a roaming data cap, but it was higher than yours since I'm on the unlimited $50 voice/text/data plan (I believe I get 100MB/month of roaming data).

I can't really complain when my wife was sending MMS pics back home of Burning Man from inside our RV. That's coverage.

My brother did 1.2 GB of tethering in a couple hours on my T-Mobile phone while I was driving down I-75 from Detroit to the middle of Ohio. No coverage problems, no overage fees (I'm on the unlimited data plan), and we had a movie to watch by the time we got to the hotel.

Yeah, but keep going down I75 and coverage gets spotty, you start roaming on AT&T, and then is mediocre T-Mobile until you hit southern Tennessee/Northern Georgia. Luckily though I was getting good 3G around Georgia though.

I'm driving from Chicago to Tampa, FL this weekend. I'll have to use the OpenSignal app to see how the T-Mobile coverage is.

> our devices were roaming on to AT&T, where we only had 10MB of data to use.

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.

It's funny. We're a nation of few people, spread across a very large piece of land. You would think that coverage would be a critical issue for telecoms, but it's not.

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.

Because most people never leave the cities (or do so very rarely). They do, however, have to pay the extra per month. Telstra's extra coverage just isn't worth $120 a year (to some/most).

I also assume when traveling I have no data, and download a map to my phone before leaving for GPS. When driving around LA however, for example, I'll use Google Maps which is a total data hog and works great on T-Mobile most anywhere. Google Nexus + T-Mobile: one of the best combos out there when in a US city.

No, for us it wasn't that much of a problem at all - but we'd made similar trips using Verizon as our carrier, so we were expecting a similar area of coverage. Since this wasn't really advertised to us up front, it gave us the perception that the service was sub-par in comparison to other offerings.

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.

Which roads were you driving? We drove all the way through outback QLD->NT->SA, and it was pretty reasonable coverage on the highways. That's with Telstra though, the other telcos suck.

How does the 10MB work. I have T-Mobile and didn't hear about the 10MB roaming limit. Is it in the fine print?

http://t-mo.co/DataRoam

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.

Their new Simple Choice plan has unlimited roaming

That is what I was wondering. I just switched to T-Mobile and was worried I missed something in the fine print.

You might also check out Consumer Cellular (https://www.consumercellular.com/Info/Plans). Even though it is targeted at an older demographic, it is a stellar service all around.

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.

Add the $450 extra you pay for the unlocked iphone and it's closer to $90 a month. I pay $55-60 a month for AT&T (including a $12 discount thru my employer).

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.

Yes, but after 2 years and you've paid off the phone, that extra $30 or so comes off your bill (quite nice).With ATT, even after your contract expires, you're still paying that extra money for the subsidized phone.

Carriers are already moving to discount fully paid phones. AT&T hasn't done it yet but Verizon is and AT&T is likely to follow.

After how many years of pocketing the extra money? I feel like T-Mobile is truly disrupting the industry, and I'm voting with my wallet to support them. I can't wait until the other carriers actually start competing with T-Mobile, instead of just playing catch up. I hope that's when the industry actually becomes consumer-friendly, instead of hostile.

So that's half the problem - the other half is the locked handsets. With TMobile, you pay for unlocked you get a fully unlocked handset. If you are on the TMO installment plan, your phone is locked until you pay up, at which point they unlock it - no 2 years required.

After 40 days they are willing to unlock it too, you don't have to pay it off entirely...

Last I heard (6 months ago), AT&T makes you wait till your contract is up before unlocking, and on the other side Verizon won't let you bring your unlocked phone to their service - forcing you to buy one from them.

AT&T hasn't unlocked any of my iPhone's... and still won't even after my contract with them was ended in good standing.

I was able to use their unlock portal to request and receive unlocks for all of my iPhones (3G, 4, 4S) after my contract was up.

https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/

I'm paying $50/month for unlimited voice/text and 2.5GB of 4G data before I drop to 2G speeds. Is that what AT&T offers for the same price? Also, I run on a Nexus 5 (half the price of an unlocked iPhone 5s).

I'm not an encyclopedia of AT&T offerings but...

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...

I highly disagree that the N5 is more comparable to the 5C than the 5S [1]. It matches or beats the 5S on almost every single spec.

1. http://www.phonearena.com/phones/compare/Google-Nexus-5,Appl...

The consensus opinion of professional reviews is that the 5s is superior. The Nexus beats the 5s on display but lags the 5s in battery life, camera and build quality. CPU/GPU are comparable. We could continue to list minor features in each phones favor all day but those are the major specs most people care about. If you look at reviews across the board the 5s is a better reviewed phone and the Nexus 5 receives marks around the 5c. Vs the 5c it wins on display and CPU/GPU but loses on battery life, camera and build. It may be better than the 5c but I think it's a closer comparison.

It's not what AT&T offers for the same price. Before I switched to Tmo two months ago, my wife and I had AT&T. Probably the same 23% corporate discount. 500Mb plan for her, grandfathered unlimited data for me, no text plan (Google Voice or iMessage), 700 minutes/month split between the two of us. Total bill (taxes, etc.): $121/month with discount.

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.

Steko - I think toomuchtodo is asking if you get unlimited voice/text and a comparable amount of data for that amount of money with AT&T.

And I think my exact point was that is an Apples to oranges comparison. The whole point of the subsidy is you pay more per month and less up front. The whole point of a shitty network is that it doesn't cost as much to maintain.

I'm not talking about subsidies or networks. Just if we're talking about a comparable plan. Comparing an unlimited text/voice plan on TMo to a 500 min plan on AT&T doesn't make for an accurate comparison. You may not like TMo for your purposes, but for most people it works just fine.

Where I live T-Mobile is just as good as AT&T. OTOH I know people in large cities that can't get TM at their house. I'm not a T-Mobile hater, but I think it's important to realize that T-Mobile is not the promised land. There are important reasons why T-Mobile is in 4th place and has been hemorrhaging subscribers. And while it's going to be the best carrier for some people, many others are going to have a bad time.

I'm in Chicago too. Was really concerned about the coverage when I switched - but it's actually better than what I'd get with AT&T.

T-mobile has been the one carrier that hasn't made me want to gouge my eyes out.

For the past year or two, AT&T and Verizon have also offered free LTE tethering.

To be precise, since the FCC told Big Red to stop back in July 2012.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/07/tethering-apps-must-b...

Not if you had one of the pre-existing unlimited data plans...

Just switched to T-Mobile last month: much better experience than what I had with Verizon so far.

I drank Red's 4G flavor-aid early and gave up my unlimited plan. The map said I was in 4G range but my pricey modem disagreed. I switched to Tmo two years ago and love it...better than expected coverage in metro areas, 1/2 price and unlimited everything.

Is this with new subscriptions? I don't see this in my AT&T options.

The flag to enable the built in mobile hotspot feature of your phone's os is enabled by default when you choose the share everything plan on Verizon or the mobile share plan on AT&T.

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.

> The flag to enable the built in mobile hotspot feature of your phone's os is enabled by default when you choose [..] the mobile share plan on AT&T.

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...

That does not appear to be true in my case.

Where is this free LTE tethering? Have been told it still requires the extra monthly fee.

I got free LTE tethering (on AT&T) once I switched from my grandfathered unlimited plan to the newer metered plans.

Which is ironic, as tethering is the only context in which I would come anywhere close to using up my monthly bandwidth allocation.

You get tethering when you switch to the mobile share plan. If you are grandfathered into the unlimited plan then you don't get tethering.

Wtf? I frequently tether my T-mo 3G phone when needed, and I got some sms saying I needed to sign up for a tethering plan when I used it for apparently long enough for them to detect it. What plans have tethering included?

You would need the Simple Choice plan with unlimited data to receive 2.5GB of mobile hotspot [1]. If you click unlimited and look at the panel on the right you'll see it. "Unlimited high-speed data on our network. Up to 2.5GB of Smartphone Mobile HotSpot (SMH) service."

1. http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/individual.html

All of the simple choice plans include tethering. The plans below unlimited use from your normal pool of bandwidth for the tethering though.

(I have the cheapest 500mb data simple choice plan.)

Did tethering on the unlimited plan work on your iPhone? Only a couple of months ago I switched from $60/2.5Gig to $70/unlimited and suddenly tethering didn't work anymore

Works for me on a T-Mobile locked iPhone 5s.

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