A Comparison of Verizon Wireless,
AT&T, T-Mobile, and Discussions of Coverage, Drops, Reliability, and Service-Related Issues
Last Update: 05/08/2023
This comparison of the various US-based carriers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile)
serves as an umbrella posting to the "dropped call" lists for the
individual carriers iterated immediately below.
While call drops and coverage are important aspects of a given carrier's
service, other factors which can not be readily reflected nor easily
contrasted on the individual lists, such as reliability, call set-up
speed, ease-of-use, customer service, billing practices, etc, are detailed
here in a macroscopic discussion of the various wireless carriers and how
they compare to and stand out from one another.
[ Wirelessnotes Home
| Interpage
| Overview/General
| Criteria for Inclusion
| Verizon Cellular Dropped Call List
| Verizon Data Network 3G/4G Problems/Drop List
| Annoying Verizon
| AT&T Wireless Dropped Call List
| Sprint Dropped Call List (Historical)
| T-Mobile Dropped Call List
| Nextel Drop List
| Disclaimer
| Cellular Audio Delay/Latency
| Contact Wirelessnotes.org ]
The Wireless Notes Cellular/Wireless Comparison Page will hopefully serve
as an ongoing overview United States wireless carriers and how they
measure up against each other. The discussion primarily concerns itself (as
do the dropped call lists) with the quality and
reliability of cellular service in the United States, and is not
intended as a roster of price or "deal of the month" comparisons between
the various cellular carriers. While price is of course an important
component of wireless service (made significantly higher - by as much as
35% in some states like New York - by endless taxes and charges), this
reference is not primarily concerned with specific price plans, but
instead concentrates more generally on technical, reliability, and
customer-service oriented aspects of the four major US wireless
carriers.
As per the Wireless Notes main
page, we of course realize that this isn't a pretty list, or one which
has lots of scripting or Flash or HTML5 content. It, like the various
dropped call lists (Verizon Dropped Call List (Voice), Verizon Data Dropped Call List, AT&T Wireless Dropped Call List, Sprint Dropped Call List, T-Mobile Dropped Call List), is mainly te
xtual and not much more than that, but the point is we're not interested in form as much a substance.
And the substance is based on over 30 years of experience with cellular
service in the US and Canada - many of the authors and contributors of
the Wireless Notes site, and in particular this cellular carrier
comparison, have had wireless phones since the inception of cellular
service in the North America, and witnessed the cellular industry's
growth and evolution.
In fact, a few of us even had used the MTS/IMTS (Mobile Telephone
Service/Improved Mobile Telephone Service) which predated analog
cellular/AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone Service), and can compare and
contrast the benefits (few) and drawbacks (many) of the older MTS/IMTS
services to the newer AMPS Analog Cellular Service (which led to the
digital network we now use), but that's for another post!
Suffice it to say that most of us remember when coverage, even in large
cities, MSAs (Metropolitan Statistical Areas), and major interstate
corridors was lacking to non-existent, when calls were not delivered to a
mobile subscriber outside their "home" market without the use of Roam Ports, when roaming cost
$3+ per day and 99 cents per minute to talk (PLUS a long-distance charge
in some cases!), and many other aspects of the early stages of North
American Cellular Service were still in their infancy (see the Wireless Notes Main Page for an index
of various posts and articles dealing with early stages of North
American cellular service).
A lot of progress has been made since the days of roaming, cellular long
distance, first incoming minute free, or even abortive attempts to provide
"equal access" (by dialing 10XXX prior to the number, where XXX was a
given long distance provider) for mobile customers, and cellular has to a
greater or lesser extent become commoditized, that is, all the major
carriers now offer more or less the same baseline product, with no roaming
charges, caller ID, text messaging, and truly unlimited voice minutes
("Unlimited" data is different story; like most Voip and
less-than-scrupulous telephone providers, cellular carriers find
what they perceive to be clever ways to impose limits on their
purported unlimited use/data plans. If they say unlimited
that's what they should actually offer, but more often than
not, even in 2023, this is still not the case).
Although cellular service plans have more or less equalized between the
remaining three carriers, the quality of the "product" of each of the
carriers, that is, wireless voice and data service, is not the same. Some
carriers have superior coverage, others better sounding voice quality, and
still others lower (thus more life-like) voice or
data latency.
The carrier comparison/discussion below focuses on each of the three major
US carriers (Verizon, AT&T Wireless, and T-Mobile) and their associated
MVNO's (Mobile Virtual Network Operators)/resellers, and compares how each
carrier and their respective network stacks up from our somewhat extensive
use of each of them. (Sprint as a separate entity is included for
historical reference now that they are part TMO.) More detailed coverage
problems and other issues are discussed on carrier drop lists, via the
individual drop links above.
Note: As of January, 2023, other than T-Mobile (which wisely still
supports 2G/GSM services for legacy devices), both AT&T and Verizon no
longer support anything less than 4G/LTE (Long Term Evolution) on their
networks. 4G/LTE is part of the migration path towards a single,
world-wide, 5G/NR (New Radio) protocol. The historical and current
protocols of the carriers are indicated below in their respective
sections.
Disclaimer/Note: This comparison of
US cellular carriers, and all other materials on the Wirelessnotes.org site, are purely the
opinions of the authors and do not represent the viewpoints of any other
entity. In other words, these are just our and/or other's observations --
we try to be accurate, but we make no representations other than what we
have observed (and if others notice an error or other statement which we
are wrong about, please mail us so we can evaluate the correction and
modify the list accordingly if so needed).
Carrier Comparison of Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile's (Sprint's) Wireless
Networks and Services
Verizon Wireless
(Verizon Dropped Calls/Locations List)
Protocols used (historical and current) by Verizon Wireless
(See also the Annoying Verizon page for a general and ongoing list of Verizon Wireless (and landline) outrageous ptractices, aggravating and annoying customer interactions, and outrageously cheap and penurious actions on the part of Verizon towards its customers.)
In all of these wireline markets, Verizon to varying degrees is often the
most dependable and drop-free carrier, and Verizon customers can generally
expect same degree of reliability as would be expected from a land-line,
wired phone (but, like any cellular/wireless carrier, they are often
not a substitute for landline service, no matter how much Verizon
Corporate seems to want to believe this or convince regulatory agencies
and customers of this being the case!).
Calls placed on Verizon regularly go through on the first try, circuits
are rarely jammed or busy, there is little distortion (other than the
voice/audio distortion associated with Verizon's digital cellular
protocol(s) on their 4G/LTE and some of the 5G networks, see below), and
calls rarely drop. Indeed - we've been on calls from Maine to Washington
DC which did not drop for the entire distance. We have found no
other carrier capable of coming even near such a capability, although as
of late 2022 AT&T is almost at the same level, and along some roads and
corridors offers superior drop-free and distortion-free coverage to
Verizon.
Verizon's coverage penetration is generally still the most mature and
developed of all the other carriers - there are countless areas of the
country where Verizon service works and penetrates reasonably well, while
every other carrier in the given area has either no signal at all
or such weak and spotty coverage so as to render any calls which go
through to be inaudible, distorted, full of audio drop-outs, and generally
useless for any type of conversation.
However, as noted above, as of early 2023, and thus after the Dec 2022 3G
CDMA shutdown, rural coverage in topographically challenging areas seems
to still be on a downward trend for some reason. Perhaps Verizon still
needs to re-apportion the 800 MHz or other similar frequencies which
3G/CDMA used to their 4G/LTE or even low-end 5G networks, but areas which
used to have very good coverage on 3G/CDMA have barely any coverage now
on 4G/LTE!
Until recently (Dec 2022), Verizon utilized the CDMA (Code Division
Multiple Access) protocol (as did Sprint until being absorbed into TMO in
the spring of 2022) to encode, transmit, and decode voice traffic. While
spectrally efficient and technically robust, CDMA voice quality was
distinctly sub-standard as compared to traditional landline service, and
somewhat lower in quality compared to GSM service (offered by AT&T
Wireless and T-Mobile) when a strong GSM signal was present. CDMA also
suffered from a metallic, distorted "twang" audio character, which was
especially noticeable at the beginning and end of spoken words. It also
significantly distorts music and non-verbal sounds, especially in
circumstances of high background noise. Finally, it suffers from a greater
degree of latency, where it
takes a longer period of time for your voice to reach the caller (and
their's to reachyou) as compared to the nearly instantaneous case of a
landline (non-VoIP) phone, or the somewhat better case of mobile phones
using the GSM protocol. Latency is further compounded (hence a greater
delay) in cellphone-to-cellphone calls, adding even more delay and making
natural conversation much more difficult (almost as if on a satellite
call). We feel that while digital cellular service has certain benefits
over the older analog services (longer battery life, greater degree of
privacy, less static), customers should not have to "give up" the
high-quality conversational experience they are used to from landline (or
analog cellular) for the less than stellar sound and latency issues of
CDMA.
As a result, even though Verizon's choice of CDMA allowed it as a
corporate entity to provide for rapid growth and reliable service,
the call experience of CDMA is quite lacking, and we will generally use
Verizon while driving or traveling since it is least likely to drop and
has extensive coverage, but if we need to be on a conference call, have a
detailed conversation with a lot of "back and forth", or just want to
hear (and be heard by) the other party well, we'll use AT&T or TMO with
their GSM protocol for the better call quality, assuming we're in a good
coverage area.
Verizon's data services, including 1XRTT, EvDO and 4G/LTE are also equally
developed, and reliably penetrate/cover significantly larger coverage
areas than any other carrier. Generally, Verizon data
sessions/connections demonstrate a similar 'drop-free' character as do
voice calls, and we regularly start Verizon data sessions in one state
and travel through many others without the connection dropping and
needing to be reset.
Unfortunately, however, Verizon's data service in many cases has a 24-hour
reset window, where data connections are forced to disconnect, and require
either automated or manual intervention to re-establish a given data
session. This forces any applications or file transfer to abort,
resulting in additional data usage charges (to retransmit files, videos,
etc which the 24-hour window disconnected), and generally makes for an
entirely unnecessary and annoying experience in re-establishing the
connection and re-obtaining the files, videos, etc, which were being
received (or sent) when Verizon arbitrarily and foolishly forced their
data connection to disconnect.
A more recent problem, which surfaced in late 2010 or so, and has been
reported in a number of online fora (including
OnSIP and Howard
Forums), is Verizon's use of an Application Layer Gateway for SIP
telephony over its wireless data network. Generally, Application Layer
Gateways (ALGs) are problematic for voice-over-IP/SIP, and Verizon's
reported/suspected use of an ALG interferes with SIP "register" requests
(used to set up a SIP connection to place and receive calls). It appears
that different devices and software clients (virtual phones used to place
calls from a laptop or smartphone) are affected, and more often than not
the problem affects tethering of SIP equipment (such as using a phone as a
hotspot and placing calls from a softphone on a laptop tethered to the
phone). It's unclear why Verizon has implemented this -- some posts claim
they don't want people competing for voice carriage with them, others
posit that the use of an ALG was based on good intentions but sloppily
implemented, resulting in the ongoing blocking problems. We've tested a
number of SIP clients (devices, softphones, etc.) and we've had very
limited success in terms of connecting and placing/receiving calls using
Verizon Wireless Data; we tested 1XRTT, EvDO, and 4G/LTE, all of which had
problems and only worked with a very limited number of softphones and
other equipment. The same clients/equipment had (and continue to) have no
problem whatsoever with AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile, yet the issue still
persists something Verizon needs to remedy, both for the convenience and
utility of all Verizon data customers, as well as to remove any suspicion
that they are trying to block or adversely affect certain types of data
and services.
Other Verizon data problems/issues include rapid timeouts/disconnects for
momentary poor coverage (while moving, forcing a customer to re-establish
a data session after only a minute or so of no coverage), and overpriced
Static IPs. More information is available about these issues on the Verizon Data
Drops and Issues Page.
Overall, in terms of technical proficiency, reliability, and
having a phone (or data card or device) which works where one would
expect it to, doesn't drop, and can be relied upon, Verizon is in a class
by itself and no other carrier comes close to approaching their high
level of reliable service.
Perhaps as a result of their solid performance technically, they may feel
less of a need to be competitive in other areas, such as customer
service, attentiveness to customer complaints, and staffing of their call
centers. While we haven't yet had the displeasure of dealing with an
off-shore call center (which on one call is answering Verizon queries and
the next answering questions on how to install a Maytag washer! :) ),
we've had our fair share of less-than-competent Verizon Wireless call
center reps who seem more interested in up-selling to a new phone or plan
rather than addressing a problem, or equally as often incapable of
resolving anything but the simplest of issues.
To be fair, Verizon does provide supervisory escalation and eventually,
after going through protracted calls, one will generally reach someone
with the competence, common-sense, and abilities to resolve most issues.
However, the process of going through all these de riguer steps just to
get someone who can actually help (a problem which is unfortunately
increasingly in evidence is most American companies these days) is
tiresome and can easily discourage most customers from having their
issues properly addressed, and there is certainly room for Verizon to
improve in this area.
Verizon Wireless Summary:
AT&T Wireless
Protocols used (historical and current) by AT&T Wireless
AT&T Wireless started as Seattle-based, 1900 MHz (only) competitor to Bell
Atlantic/GTE/Alltel et. al. (which eventually merged to form Verizon),
Cingular Wireless, and Nextel, around the same time that other 1900 MHz
"PCS" carriers were starting up, such as Sprint PCS (which eventually
bought/took over, and subsequently ruined Nextel), Voicestream (with the
"parrot logo", eventually bought out by T-Mobile), and others.
AT&T Wireless was the first carrier (around late 2002) to offer truly
unlimited voice calling, both inbound and outbound, with no long
distance or "toll-delivery" charges (charges to send calls while roaming
or out of a customer's local calling/home market). AT&T Wireless's
inception and early days of service also demonstrates how bloated and
"nickel and diming" many other carriers (Bell Atlantic, GTE, AirTouch,
McCaw/Cell One, etc....) at the time were, which charged their
own customers to roam in their own markets, so that if a
Bell Atlantic/00008 Philadelphia area customer were to drive to Bell
Atlantic's Washington DC (00018) market, the given customer would pay (a)
a higher per minute rate, (b) a "daily roaming fee" (eliminated at some
point around 2000), (c) toll/long distance charges to call outside of the
DC market, and (d) toll-delivery charges for Bell Atlantic to carry the
call (over their own network) to DC to ring the mobile subscriber roaming
in the DC market. (Some of these charges were a result of stodgy FCC
rulings which required arms-length dealings between wireless and more
traditional wireline services, such as long-distance, but the rates which
were charged were likely significantly higher than the actual cost to the
carriers, and likely served as a good source of profit until AT&T Wireless
started service and eliminated all such charges.)
This is a good example of why North America needs a competitive market to
maximize cost/value to consumers, as carriers left to their own devices
without much competitive influence will generally try to obtain as much as
they can from customers (who have little choice in an UN-competitive market
but to pay).
AT&T Wireless's introductory $99 per month unlimited plan, with no
airtime, long distance/toll, or roaming charges was the only one like it
at the time. Unlike Sprint PCS (which also did not charge for roaming
outside of a subscriber's home market, nor for toll-delivery to the
roaming subscriber and "First Incoming Minute Free") or Nextel (which
around the same time started offering unlimited incoming calls, also
without any roaming or toll delivery charges), AT&T Wireless's product was
the progenitor of the cellular pricing model which all carriers employ
today: unlimited voice minutes, no long distance/toll charges anywhere in
the US, and no roaming charges.
However, like most 1900 MHz entrants into the market at the time, coverage
was limited, and the 1900 MHz spectrum didn't propagate into buildings
well, and was hard to fully cover topographically challenging areas (such
as Vermont, Colorado, the California Sierras, etc.). Thus, due to AT&TWS's
limited coverage (as were the service areas of Sprint, Voicestream, and to
an extent Nextel as well), the more established carriers
(Verizon/Alltel/GTE/AirTouch/Cingular), with their A/B 800 MHZ licenses
and larger coverage areas, were able to maintain their rate plans which
did asses all sorts of charges for a few years longer.
Eventually, AT&T Wireless merged with Cingular (with AT&T Wireless
customers being labeled as "blue" and Cingular customers as "orange" for
the colors of their respective carriers prior to the merger), Verizon was
formed from Bell Atlantic, NYNEX, PrimeCo, and GTE, Voicestream was
bought by T-Mobile, and Nextel was bought out by Sprint, resulting in the
four major carriers which currently (2016) operate today. But it should
be noted, and AT&T Wireless (Seattle/Blue), by virtue of it's foresight
and a competitive wireless market, laid the groundwork for the modern
rate basis for North American cellular service.
While the merger with Cingular held out the promise of a vastly improved
network (AT&T "blue" customers could benefit from the much larger and
widely built-out Cingular network, along with the benefit of the original
800 MHz A/B spectrum), service did not really improve too much, and
besides being subjected to the usual billing and price-plan integration
issues which typically follow any merger, AT&T Wireless/blue customers
saw no immediate (or even mid-term) benefit from the merger in terms of
coverage. And, with other carriers beginning to offer truly unlimited
airtime products (Nextel, Sprint, and eventually Verizon), many of whom
had superior coverage footprints to AT&T/Blue, 800 MHz frequencies
(including Nextel's exclusive range for iDen), the AT&T Wireless/Blue
service plans were no longer competitive and offered inferior service in
terms of coverage and dropped calls.
While AT&T in the late 2000's claimed to have "the fewest dropped calls"
(see the AT&T Wireless Dropped Call
List for details on their "Fewest Dropped Calls" advertising campaign
and the questionable methods and metrics employed to attempt to support
the claim), they in fact appeared to be getting worse, and the increased
in drops and distorted GSM calls are reflected on the aforementioned
list.
In the past few years, from 2014 onwards to now (2016), it appears that a
good deal of progress has been made by the merged AT&T Wireless/Blue and
Cingular Wireless/Orange (henceforth AT&T Wireless), and many of the
drops, which occurred way too often on roads and transit corridors which
were heavily traveled and which even carriers like Sprint were able to
cover well, have been remedied.
However, there still remain a significantly higher number of drops on AT&T
Wireless's network which do not occur on Verizon, in greater proportion
than one would expect the difference (if any) to be between the two top
American carriers. While we find that in areas where AT&T Wireless has
good, strong coverage, their GSM over-the-air protocol offers superior
voice quality, slightly less latency, more life-like voice reproduction,
and generally comes closest to "landline-like" sound quality as compared
to Verizon and Sprint's at times "metallic"/"robot" sounding and
generally more distortive CDMA protocol, the apparent inability for AT&T
Wireless to offer the same degree of "drop free" coverage as does
Verizon thus reduces their general utility, and in our opinion places
them in second place (and not really a close second) behind Verizon.
A side consideration which mitigates in AT&T Wireless's favor: They
appear to use the circuit-switched network of AT&T Long Distance, which
offers superior voice quality and reproduction over most if not all other
Long Distance networks, especially to locations outside of the US/Canada
(who's telephone network was set up and run for many years by AT&T). AT&T
Wireless calls seem to have the fewest echos on the long-distance
component of a given cellular call, and international calls sound more or
less the same in many cases to domestic ones - there is no "least cost
routing" or use of Voice-over-IP or some other lesser-quality voice
calling protocol.
For example, ever since Verizon took over the failing MCI Communications,
it appears, from both the reduced and at times more "echo-prone" landline
as well as cellular long distance calls, that they have opted to utilize
MCI's network for their long-distance calling, for landline, cellular
(cellular back-haul), and international calling. For example, we've
extensively tested and used faxing with Verizon and AT&T, from the same
line in the US, to the same set of numbers in Europe and Hong Kong, and
in most cases calls placed using "Verizon Long Distance" (eg, likely
MCI's old network or some hybrid thereof) failed and/or produced
distorted faxes at the received end, while those sent (again, from the
same line to the same line) using AT&T Long Distance went through
flawlessly.
And it's not really necessary to test out the difference between AT&T's
(Landline and Wireless) Long Distance and Verizon, Sprint, TMOs, et.
al.'s long distance by (impracticably) sending faxes via a wireless
phone; just dialing a number abroad, seeing how long the call set-up
takes, and the quality of the sound, latency, and ability to hear
background noise (usually filtered out by more Voip-ish protocols) will
generally serve to indicate the superiority of AT&T's North American and
Worldwide Long Distance Network.
So, if North American and/or international long distance voice quality and
the "very close to a local" sound and calling experience are important to
you, and you use your phone in areas with good AT&T Wireless coverage (ie,
areas where their drops won't be a problem and where the coverage
adequately supports a conversation without audio drop-outs or distortion),
then AT&T Wireless's GSM protocol's and long distance's voice quality may
be the best choice.
In general, then, where AT&T and Verizon both have similarly good coverage,
the sound/audio quality of AT&T Wireless, both due to the GSM protocol
which they employ as well as their superior long-distance connections,
mitigate in favor of AT&T Wireless. For customers who don't travel much,
and make use of their phones in generally fixed locations where there is
good coverage, AT&TWS may be a better choice. However, generally, for
customers who travel or commute regularly, who need dependable, drop-free
coverage, AT&T is in many markets a poor second to Verizon's more robust
and drop-free coverage.
AT&T Wireless Summary:
And then there's Sprint... We had high hopes for Sprint when they started
as a "4th Option" in the early 2000's. The "A" and "B" carrier duopoly was
only starting to be penetrated by Nextel at the time, and Sprint Wireless
came along (from the long distance carrier which was years later sold off
when long distance became a more or less a commoditized service) and
offered a fourth option, oriented more towards mobile consumer service as
compared to Nextel's more business-oriented offerings.
Sprint's service was initially offered on (then) new spectrum in the 1900
MHz, or Personal Communications Service (PCS) band, and in fact, Sprint's
branded name was "Sprint PCS" to reflect and differentiate itself from the
A (non-wireline) and B (wireline, usually the Bell Company or incumbent
local exchange) carriers on the original A/B 800MHz licenses.
Sprint's CDMA "all digital" network blended in with Sprint Long Distance's
"all fiber" (digital) network, and was promoted as end-to-end clear
digital communications from cellular handset to end destination (inasmuch
as CDMA sounds "clear" - we feel GSM sounds more natural and lifelike than
CDMA; see the Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless discussions, above).
Long-distance was, after some experimenting with charging for calls
outside of a large regional area, ultimately discarded, and long distance
calling was eventually included on most Sprint plans, so that calls
outside of a Sprint subscriber's local/regional calling area were "free"
(no long distance component; only "airtime" was charged when applicable),
and "call delivery charges" (long distance charges to deliver a call to a
subscriber outside of their local calling area, such as when they were
roaming) were eliminated as well. (The A/B carriers had for years charged
25 cents per minute or more to "deliver" calls to markets outside of a
given subscriber's home market, as well as to place long distance calls
outside of a given subscriber's local calling area; the competitive
pressure from Sprint and Nextel which eliminated these charges serves as
testament to the downward pressure on pricing which a competitive cellular
market affords, and why currently (2016) having four major carriers and
even more resellers serves as a continuing and effective market mechanism
to provide the best pricing for consumers.)
Sprint offered additional pricing innovations, such as "first incoming
minute free", and no roaming charges anywhere on Sprint's network (A/B
carriers such as NYNEX, Bell Atlantic, Cellular One, GTE/Mobilnet, McCaw
Wireless, US Cellular, and lots of other carriers set up along interstates
and major roads mainly to capture roaming revenue and/or be bought by the
larger carriers would regularly charge a $3 per day "daily roaming fee"
after the first call in their markets, plus ~$1 per minute airtime, plus
long distance, making roaming highly lucrative to the carriers).
The introduction of Sprint PCS's service and their 'no roaming charges"
policy was ground-breaking, and very quickly the established A/B carriers,
which derived a good deal of revenue from roaming, had to lower and
eventually drop all roaming charges in order to remain competitive.
Sprint was also the first carrier (from our recollection) to offer
reliable and nearly ubiquitous CallID delivery - with most other carriers
receiving CallerID in roaming markets or even in segments of a customer's
home market could be spotty at best, and more often than not, even
though a given caller's ID was available to a carrier, the proper Caller
ID was not delivered, whereas with Sprint, even from the outset, this was
appreciably less of a problem.
Sprint also advertised that it "built it's network from the ground up",
and didn't suffer from the market boundaries and regulatory issues which
the older, established A/B carriers had, and thus, for example, unanswered
calls while roaming went seamlessly to voicemail, calling features worked
flawlessly throughout Sprint's service area, and all calls were CDMA
(digital) so there were no handoff issues between analog to digital (or
the other way around), except when roaming onto Verizon's or another
carriers' network.
So in general, the introduction of Sprint PCS served to force the
cellular market to reform in a number of consumer-friendly ways, and move
the overall market away from "gouging" roamer/roaming practices,
Balkanized markets and service areas, the lack of the transportability of
calling features while traveling and roaming, and, in general, was at the
vanguard of the emerging cellular market by providing a low(er)-cost,
seamless, and innovative product beyond which the established carriers of
the time were offering.
But...as with most metrics of a mobile service, the phone must work well
in a mobile environment, and this is where Sprint's luster began
to wane (and still to an extent does today, over 15 years later), and, in
conjunction with their horrendous customer service (which again, doesn't
appear to be all that much better 15 years later) and at times
questionable billing practices (which if you had asked 10 customer service
reps to explain - after waiting 30 minutes for each of course - one would
receive 10 different and often contradictory answers form; see immediately
below for one of the more egregious cases), Sprint, in our opinion after
years of tortured interactions with them, ranks lowest of the top 4
carriers without question.
(As just one example of their confusing at best (and deceptive at worst)
billing shenanigans, in 2013 Sprint was apparently up to their usual
tricks by placing ambiguous addenda into their service agreement(s), in
this case modifying/eliminating unlimited 4G data accounts so
that they were no longer unlimited and subsequently began charging for use
accordingly as per a seemingly arbitrarily assigned data plan which no
one had agreed to!, in violation of their contract/service agreement
- Sprint basically seemed to be saying: "You know that unlimited 4G data
device you went out and bought, and that 4G unlimited service you
thought you were paying for? Well, we just changed your plan to
something which we think is so much better!! It's no
longer unlimited, _and_, we're actually going to _bill you_ without you
agreeing to it since we slipped a little ambiguous line about data plans
between two columns of otherwise barely-related text in your invoice a
few months ago...Aren't you lucky?!". Needless to say, this required
hours and hours of arguing on the phone with them, and we finally just
dumped them rather than continue to waste time with them, and filed a
complaint with the state AG's office and the FCC (which the Sprint
corporate lady with whom we were dealing tried to get us not to do by
saying something like "You can do that, but all it will do is have us
write back to them and they won't bother to enforce whatever rule or
contract term you think we violated, so why both to call them up?" (To
which we answered, "Maybe if everyone else called them up about your
questionable billing practices and lack of notice you wouldn't be so
cavalier and flippant about you apparent fraudulent practices!")
And the above more recent example isn't an isolated instance of problems
with Sprint both in terms of customer service and/or billing: most of our
experiences with their customer service and billing depts have been
typified by protracted, time-wasting calls, generally with people who
claim they are "empowered" to resolve issues but in actuality get nothing
done, necessitating another long call with someone else who claims the
matter will be escalated, yet still nothing gets done, after which we
escalate the call to the corporate level, and we are assured something
will be done, and nothing is (or it's not the proper resolution and just
makes things worse), and so on.
The file we keep on our Sprint accounts (more "ex-"accounts than current
ones) is likely the largest file of all the carriers, with notes of all
the reps with whom we've spoken, what they assured would be done, how it
rarely was, who the matter was escallated to, what wasn't again done, and
so on. In the mid-2000's, after being initially pleased with Sprint's
pricing and how their model was a refreshing change from the (then) A/B
carrier duopoly, we realized that we were spending so much time on the
phone with Sprint each and every month just addressing billing issues
that whatever savings were experienced using Sprint weren't worth the
cost of having to spend hours and hours every month arguing and fighting
with them just to get the bill correct!
And looking back, this may just have been their (unintentional?)
motivation in having such horrid billing and customer service departments
and practices -- it was often so difficult and trying to deal with them
that we basically didn't bother to call them about issues which were not
egregious, and their poor customer service simply dissuaded us (and
likely) others from sitting on the phone with them for hours trying to
resolve the usual issues which always seemed to find their way onto our
invoices with them or with our service(s).
Indeed, we generally had a semi-serious "Do not call
Sprint!" policy, which basically meant: "Every time you call
Sprint they will keep you on the phone for hours, get nothing done, and
likely mess things up even further, so now that after all these years things
are working in such a way that there is nothing we thankfully need to
call them about, do not ever call Sprint, since if you do,
they will manage to mess up all the 'progress' we've managed to achieve
with them over the years and waste all the effort we expended dealing
with Sprint's billing and customer service departments!"
Yet despite our "Don't call Sprint!" policy, which helped for a couple of
years while we enjoyed the peace and bliss of not having to deal with
them, as time passed, and as other carriers began to offer better
rateplans and in nearly every way eclipse Sprint, we needed to update our
plan with them to obtain something more competitive. Their inability to
update a simple rateplan, and to bill accordingly, was the final straw
with them (not to mention their relatively poor coverage, see below), and
after hours on the phone arguing with them about their (then newly
introduced) unlimited rateplans which weren't apparently as "unlimited"
as the word "unlimited" seems to mean, we just got fed up, and
disconnected service with them. Their retentions department had a field
day with our cancellation call, and kept offering more and more for us to
stay with them, including "upgraded phones" (if we agreed to sign
multi-year contracts with them, so we could loose more sleep and
experience multi-year monthly bouts of aggravation with them no doubt!).
Finally, after half an hour of begging and offering and used-car-salesman
"Let me check with my manager and get back to you!" nonsense (even though
we made it clear from the outset that we wished to cancel, we
were asked "What can Sprint offer you to keep you as customers?" and they
were told "There isn't enough money in the world that could keep us as
customers of Sprint - TURN THE LINES OFF NOW!", and that apparently
finally made it clear to them! Ridiculous...!!
No one has regretted that decision for one second, and transitioning the
services to Verizon resulted in a degree of peace of mind which we never
had experienced under Sprint! :) (not to mention the superior coverage...)
And speaking of coverage, well, here's another area where Sprint needs to
make vast improvements (and to stop relying on their crutch of roaming on
Verizon coverage in the many areas where they simply have none!).
Sprint's coverage area, while gradually improving, is still quite limited,
and (much like T-Mobile, below), once out of large metropolitan areas
and/or urban corridors, Sprints coverage can be lacking. In such instances,
Sprint customers are generally allowed to roam on Verizon's significantly
larger network, and oftentimes don't even realize that they are no longer
on Sprint's (that us, however, unless they roam "too often" on Verizon,
ie, they cost Sprint too much money and then Sprint invokes their service
agreement and either terminate roaming on Verizon or the entire given
customer's service).
Sprint also lacks coverage (even now in 2017) in major transportation
hubs, such as under the Park Avenue "air rights" Metro North tunnels in
New York City (heading north out of Grand Central Terminal) (while AT&T
Wireless has coverage, and Verizon's is more limited, and none on
T-Mobile, of course), in the East River Tubes and Hudson River Tubes
heading east and west from Penn Station respectively (Verizon offers
drop-free coverage over the entire length, from the Sunnyside Yards on
Long Island all the way to New Jersey), on WMATA/DC Metro between stations
(Verizon's voice/data services have adequate, but not drop free, coverage
between stations). See the Srint
Dropped Call List for additional details pertaining to places and
locations where Sprint drops calls, including heavily traveled locations
such as the above where it would be expected that Sprint in this day and
age offers coverage but does not.
While it's convenient for Sprint and their customers to have the crutch
of Verizon to serve as a backup CDMA carrier for the many areas outside
of large cities or urban corridors which Sprint doesn't cover, there are
generally no handoffs between the two networks, and as Sprint customers
transit out of Sprint's coverage area, calls do not generally
hand off between the two, and the Sprint customer's call will drop upon
exiting the Sprint coverage area, requiring a new call to be placed in order to roam on Verizon. The repeated aggravation of having to disconnect (or
be disconnected) upon leaving Sprint's more limited coverage area so as
to continue a call or data session on Verizon severely limits the utility
of Sprint's network.
Additionally, as is the case with many Mobile Network Virtual Operators
(or MVNOs), Sprint's MVNOs, such as Boost, do not alllow roaming on
Verizon, and thus even in areas where post-pay Sprint subscribers
have good coverage vis a vis roaming on Verizon, a MVNO customer, such as
one on Boost, will have no coverage in the same area.
In general, like all of the top four carriers, as time passes coverage
generally improves as more sites are added, existing large sites are
segmented into smaller ones, handoff and capacity issues are addressed,
etc. And indeed Sprint's coverage has improved - there are many drop-free
highway corridors which a Sprint customer can currently traverse without
experiencing difficulties which only a few years ago suffered from
multiple drop areas. However, Sprint still lags very far behind Verizon
is terms of the size/scope of it's coverage area, coverage in transit
hubs and other areas where coverage would be expected, and drops along
major corridors and roads which should have been detected, addressed and
correct years ago. Both Sprint and Verizon are CDMA carriers, and while
Verizon benefits to some extent from it's 800MHz licenses, there is no
technical impediment preventing Sprint from offering comparably reliable
service on it's higher frequency spectrum. The fact that after all this
time they have failed to address these issues significantly reduces the
incentive and value proposition a prospective customer would have to
select Sprint, when Verizon uses the same protocol and offers
significantly superior and problem-free coverage.
While Sprint has it's place in the (currently) competitive cellular
marketplace, it's early aspirations as a true nationwide carrier to
compete with carriers such as Verizon and AT&T Wireless are still that -
just hopes. They have never developed their coverage footprint and
quality of service to match their much larger superiors. And while they
do offer competitive products, such as their "unlimited" data plans (who
knows how 'unlimited' they are or how long they will remain given
Sprint's arguably deceptive track record in this area!) which exert
competitive downward market pressures on the other carriers, and thus
have some utility, overall, the average consumer would likely be better
served by Verizon (if they travel a lot and need solid, trouble-free and
drop-free coverage) or T-Mobile (if they were able to tolerate Sprint's
lesser coverage area but were just as fed up with their customer service
as we were/are).
Perhaps with the recent Japanese acquisition of Sprint and the (hopefully)
increased subsequent investment which will be made in it's network (or
it's customer service, for that matter), Sprint may one day enjoy a
large, drop-free coverage network as does Verizon, but as things stand in
early 2016, it's hard to see the value proposition in Sprint in terms of
coverage, reliability, or service, and they rank, in our opinion, lowest
of all the four major carriers.
Sprint Wireless Summary:
T-Mobile
T-Mobile (TMO) provides an attractive, but significantly more limited,
alternative to Verizon and AT&T Wireless, and avoids many of the problems
which still persist at Sprint. Additionally, with T-Mobile's international
unlimited (often only 2G, though) data plans (which are included on most
new plans as of 2015), uniform and low international roaming rate of 20
cents per minute, and other international GSM roaming features, TMO offers
the best "single number" service for frequent travelers outside of the US.
T-Mobile started out in the mid-1990's, around the same time as Sprint and
a bit after Nextel, when competition was just getting started in the US
cellular industry. Initially it was named "VoiceStream PCS" under its then
owner, Western Wireless, which eventually built out it's footprint to a
number of larger American cities. However, some major markets, such as New
York City and Boston, were not included in the earlier years, thus
delimiting the utility of their alternative cellular product and not really
serving as much of a competitor to the established A/B
(non-wireline/wireline) carriers.
After some consolidation with other GSM-based competitive "PCS" carriers,
such as Omnipoint (a Northeastern GSM PCS carrier which had the "parrot"
logo) which allowed Voicestream to move into Omnipoint's Northeastern
markets, and Aerial Communications (Midwest, South, and the I-4
Orlando/St. Pete/Tampa corridor), Voicestream was acquired by Deutsche
Telekom in 2001, and was re-branded as "T-Mobile (USA)", the "T-Mobile"
component being the same as Deutsche Telekom branded its other cellular
properties worldwide.
With the Deutsche Telekom takeover, as well the more recent acquisitions
of SunCom (which supposedly only had coverage in Southeastern states but
we recall roaming on them in New Hampshire along the Spaulding Turnpike),
T-Mobile began to develop a nationwide network and by the late 2000's had
less of a need for roaming on AT&T Wireless (or carriers which AT&T
wireless had acquired). While this may have saved TMO some money, it
effectively reduced the overall area of TMO's "coverage", and as TMO has
nowhere near the coverage area which AT&T Wireless customers enjoy, TMO
customers are often dropped, disconnected, and/or experience no
coverage/no service in areas where AT&T, Verizon, and at times even
Sprint offer relatively strong cellular coverage. This lack of a
competitively large coverage area (at least compared to ATTWS and
Verizon; Sprint is somewhat, not not significantly better than TMO in
terms of coverage) is a major limitation of T-Mobile's overall service,
and why they are placed last in in terms of coverage area of all
the four major carriers.
As noted above, T-Mobile uses the GSM protocol, which has generally
superior voice quality and more "phone company"/land-line line voice
quality than the often distorted and metallic-sounding CDMA protocol
utilized by Verizon and Sprint, and with somewhat less latency (voice
delay) than CDMA. (See the cellular, landline, and voip latency
discussion for additional details.) Thus, in areas of strong, good
coverage, if a T-Mobile phone were to call a traditional landline
(copper or SLIC/multiplexed) or some new technology with the same
specifications of copper, such as Fiber-to-the-Curb (FTTC, like AT&T
U-Verse's landline component), Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH, like Verizon's
FiOS landline component), or business T-1s with DIDs, the sound quality
and audio delay would be less than is a Verizon or Sprint customer - both
of which use the CDMA protocol - were to call.
Note that at times TMO seems to use some form of Voip-ish "backhaul" (how
TMO takes the signal from the cell tower and interconnects with the
landline/terrestrial network), and calls placed via TMO have a good deal
of latency and echoing; we're not sure what causes this but it seems to
vary from location to location independent on how strong the air
interface signal is (the signal strength), and we can only conclude that
this pertains to backhaul issues. This isn't too common, though, although
it is annoying when it occurs. (We also note that AT&T Wireless, also a
GSM carrier, doesn't see to have these sort of backhaul (or whatever
they are) issues on it's network and calls at nearly all locations of
good coverage experience the same call characteristics, voice quality,
and low latency.
Overall, TMO's coverage area is lacking, but improving. Without the ATTWS
roaming in areas where it was previously (prior to 2009) allowed, TMO has
a lot of catching up to do, and as of now in 2016, is in no way
competitive with ATTWS or Verizon outside of major urban areas or
corridors, and experiences a good deal of drops (or just areas of no
coverage) where especially Verizon, and to a lesser extent AT&T, do not.
(See the T-Mobile Dropped Call
and Coverage List for details.)
As to data, TMO's data service in urban/developed areas is generally quite
fast (with low data latency), and 4G coverage in our experience is as fast
or faster than most of the other carriers' top speeds, and offers a
similar experience (again, in areas of good coverage) so a slow DSL
connection, without the gaps and stops for streaming data which we
sometimes experience with Sprint. However, outside of their urban/corridor
footprint, T-Mobile's data product quickly drops from 4G to 2G (or no data
at all), while their competitors manifest no problems with their data
services in the exactly the same location. This again demonstrates
T-Mobile's main failing -- too limited coverage!
Additionally, in areas which straddle 4G to 3G to 2G coverage markets (or
where they allow data roaming), the lack of a highly robust and built-out
network can often affect data throughput as the customer's phone will
continuously "cycle" between the 4G to the 2G or 3G services, which, while
the cycling and synchronization is going on, prevents much of any data
from being sent/received. This used to be a problem with Verizon, ATT, and
Sprint, but have mostly been remedied as their networks developed and data
services made more uniform (see the Verizon
1XRTT/EvDO cycle hangs discussion for an example of this issue
manifested itself on Verizon during its implementation of EvDO data
services). TMO still seems to be experiencing these issues and data
service at the periphery of the current 4G footprint is "doubly" poor -
firstly via the drop down to 2G from 4G, and secondly by delays caused by
attempts to re-synchronize at 4G speeds each time a bit of 4G signal
momentarily gets strong enough.
Another peculiar issue with T-Mobile is that phones on TMO's network (from
simple flip-phones to smartphones) appear to take an inordinately long
period of time to re-establish their connections to the nearest tower
after being out-of-coverage, such as when going through a tunnel or
between underground train stations. With Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T
Wireless, very shortly (if not immediately) after coverage returns, a
given phone will show coverage, but with TMO, it can take a minute of
more before phones on their network seem to "re-synchronize" and connect
to TMO's network. This does not appear to be a GSM problem,
since if two identical phones are used, one on AT&T and the other on TMO,
and they both transit simultaneously through a tunnel where neither ATT
nor TMO have coverage, upon emerging from the tunnel and back into
coverage, AT&T will re-register almost immediately, while TMO can take
from 15 seconds longer to over one minute longer, which is odd and quite
frustrating.
More recently (summer 2016), T-Mobile began to implement some frequency
changes in the DC/Baltimore metro area (and possibly other areas as well)
which caused customer who had enjoyed 4G data service to revert
to 4G!
Another area where T-Mobile stands well ahead of all of its competitors
is that of international roaming, both in terms of North American roaming
in Canada and Mexico, as well as for customers who travel offshore of the
continent.
In terms of roaming in Canada and Mexico, T-Mobile as of July 2015 began
to offer "home" area calling in both Canada and Mexico, as well as free
calling to/from/within the US, Canada, and Mexico, essentially making
all of North America a single calling market!. Voice calls, text
messages, and data rates are the same in Canada and Mexico as they are in
the US, with no roaming or other charges within/between the three
countries! Even as of Spring 2016, no other US carrier is offering such an
attractive and simple plan -- Verizon wants $2 per day for
essentially the same plan, and AT&T Wireless has their usual convoluted
rate basis where voice is included in your home rate but data is charged
separately, or something like that (we're still having a hard time
figuring it out! ;) ). So the T-Mobile plan for unified
US/Canadian/Mexican service is groundbreaking and one of the reasons why,
despite their poor coverage, we use T-Mobile since they make up for their
poor coverage by exceptional value and simplicity in other aspects of
their service, such as North American pricing.
Outside of North America, T-Mobile continues to be on the vanguard of
simple and low-cost international mobile service by offering unlimited
international data roaming (at slower 2G speeds, though), unlimited
international text messaging, and 20 cent per minute calling to/from the
US in over 140 countries. As with the North American plan, no other US
carrier can match this, although Verizon does offer a $10 per day plan
(outside of Canada and Mexico) with full 4G data where available, and
data, voice and text messages are charged as per a given US-based
customer's home rates are (including unlimited). While Verizon's plan
effectively offers free calling to/from the US, making the plan very
attractive for customers who need to call back to and/or receive calls
from the US on a regular basis, the $10 per day add-on charge is quite
high, and in many cases T-Mobile's (free) international roaming plan
would be a better value. Sprint also offers a similar plan to T-Mobile,
it seems, and as usual, it's hard to decipher exactly what AT&T's plan is
and in which countries it would apply.
And finally, although we don't get into the nuances of pricing here as
plans change so often, another bright spot with T-Mobile is they don't
use the "taxes and other fees" section of a given cellphone bill as a
means to ridiculously "enhance" revenue like most other carriers do.
We've seen Verizon Wireless bills in New York City or San Francisco where
the $50 plan which one signs up for ends up costing $79 per
month with all the taxes and fees. For example, a $50 Verizon plan in NYC
will result in a bill for around $67 per month, if not a bit more, while
the same $50 plan with T-Mobile will result in a bill for $56.50 or so
per month - quite an appreciable difference!
Why is this the case? Well, first off, Verizon and some other carriers
charge you a "fee fee"! Yes, they actually charge for a "fee" for billing
you all the "fees"!! They call it an "administrative charge", that is, a
charge for complying with all the government mandated fees and taxes,
but, well, isn't that a cost of doing business??? Shouldn't that
be part of the base price which Verizon charges??? (It's like going to a
gas station where they advertise "Gas! 1 cent per gallon!" and when you
get your receipt you see it's $5 per gallon with 'distribution charge',
and 'state gas surtax' and 'pump cleaning and painting fee' and 'fee to
charge all the fees'!) T-Mobile doesn't seem to play these silly and
arguably deceptive games - they charge you the taxes which they are
required to charge, and the other "fees" which most other carriers charge
are made part of the rateplan, which we think is the more honest and
straightforward way to do business...
Overall, T-Mobile provides a nice alternative to Verizon and AT&T
Wireless in urban/suburban and corridor areas (like I-95 in Eastern
Connecticut, or US-1 through Southeastern PA), that is, areas in, or
close to, or along heavily traveled routes connecting major cities. Voice
quality is generally good, pricing is a good deal better (and less
deceptive) than their competitors, they offer excellent customer service
and very good high speed data. The added bonus of free international
text messaging and data in over 120 countries in an especially attractive
added bonus, as is their recent addition of all of Canada and Mexico
(matched by AT&T) as part of the "home" (rate) coverage area.
Unfortunately, however, in arguably the most important category, that of
actual signal coverage, TMO lags far behind, and is not a viable
alternative for those who live outside of urban areas/corridors. For
customers who don't travel too much, or do so within TMO's footprint,
this shouldn't be too much of a problem, but generally, TMO can not yet
compete with AT&T or especially Verizon in terms of coverage and
drop-free calling.
Overall, TMO, while a viable alternative to the Verizon and AT&T, and
certainly the obvious choice if paired up against only Sprint, still has
a lot more work to do in terms of building out its network. When it has
done so, and assuming all the other pluses which they have worked
towards and have going for them remain the same, they will be a highly
formidable competitor to Verizon and AT&T.
T-Mobile Summary:
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To begin with, we generally find Verizon Wireless to offer the most
drop-free, reliable, and dependable cellular network, especially in areas
where they were the initial "B" (wireline) carrier when cellular service
started. These markets include all Bell Atlantic Mobile Systems (BAMS,
including NJ Bell, Bell of Pennsylvania, Diamond State Telephone (DE), C&P
Telephone (DC, MD, VA, W.VA)) service areas, the NYNEX Markets (New
England Tel, New York Tel), and former GTE Mobilnet (Northern CA, Texas,
western Florida, etc.).
Final word: Overall, the top carrier technically and the
most drop-free and trouble-free. Customer service needs work, but
hopefully, due to their superior service, it won't need to be called too
often. Pricing can be a bit stodgy as well and they often lag behind
smaller, more competitive carriers, especially in terms of data and
unlimited use plans.
Final word: Overall, AT&T Wireless ranks in our opinion
as the second best carrier, which in areas of good coverage is relatively
trouble-free, but still suffers from an inordinate number of dropped calls
while driving and poor in-building signal propagation in many larger urban
markets (NYC and Boston, for example; are they using their 800MHz spectrum
for GSM/voice in these markets? It's hard to understand why their
in-building coverage is so poor compared to Verizon's in these urban areas
if they are...). AT&TWS Customer service is a weak spot, and the less we
have to deal with them the better, which serves as a disincentive to add
any new services or for that matter make any changes - much like not
changing the transmission fluid in and old car (which purportedly can do
more damage than leaving it alone), we just prefer to not deal with AT&T's
customer service so that they can't "mess up" anything on the accounts.
Like Verizon, AT&T's pricing can be a bit stodgy as well and they often
lag behind smaller, more competitive carriers, especially in terms of data
and unlimited use plans, but they seem to generally be a step or two in
front of Verizon (which really, really wants to keep a tight reign on
data). AT&T's GSM protocol offers many more call features and more robust
status reporting than Verizon/Sprint's CDMA protocol, and, when in areas of
good coverage, sounds significantly better than CDMA, in no small
part due to the call transport of AT&T's superior long-distance and
international long-distance network. This is especially true for call
abroad, where AT&T's IDDD International Long Distance service delivers
clear and latency-free calls worldwide, compared to many other carriers
with lesser and/or Voip-ish sounding international circuits.
Sprint Wireless
Final word: After an impressive and competitive initial
rollout in the early 2000's, Sprint degraded into a nightmare of barely
improving coverage, inexcusably poor customer service, billing errors and
incompatible networks (vis a vis the Nextel
acquisition, which also ruined Nextel in the process), and even as of
Spring 2016, still has not redeemed itself nor made the investments in
facilities and staffing to bring itself up to par with it's competitors.
One could only hope that the recent investment in Sprint by the Japanese
telecom firm SoftBank will allow Sprint some breathing room to make much
needed improvements, as well as to replace key management personnel, as
the failures of Sprint can not be attributed solely to a lack of funding.
While Sprint has made some recent efforts to stem and escape from it's
seemingly endless devolution, it still has a long way to go, and thus
ranks last for us as a carrier to recommend.
In the DC/Baltimore areas (and likely elsewhere in the US with similar
frequency constraints), as of late June, 2016, we've noticed that on more
or less all "nearly 4G" High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) phones, such as
the LG C-800 "My Touch" and similar non-LTE models, what used to indicate
as "4G" data service is now showing up as only "2G". We suspect that this
is due to T-Mobile's likely frequency shortage in the DC area (and many
other areas as well), as it converts the 1700/2100 MHz bands to LTE
("true" 4G) only. HSPA (and it's variants, HSDPA and HSUPA; generally
referred to as "HSPA" although there are speed and other differences) is
an earlier nearly-4G technology which offers download speeds close to true
4G but somewhat slower upload speeds; latency
is also a bit slower with HSPA than true 4G.
Originally, around 2008 or 2009, T-Mobile ran HSPA on the 1700/2100 MHz
bands which it owns/operates on, and later shared the spectrum with LTE
("true" 4G) when LTE was rolled out a few years later in 2014/2015. It
appears from TMO's announcements that it is moving HSPA service off
of 1700/2100 (which the older phones are designed to use for HSPA),
and moving all HSPA service to the "AWS" 1900MHz spectrum, which while
many older phones are able to use for voice calls, eg, talking,
they are not able to use it for HSPA data access, causing many
phones which used to show "4G" to now show only "2G". It is unclear if
this frequency re-alignment (or "refarming" as it appears to be called)
will eventually be effective in all TMO markets or just those without
sufficient LTE 1700/2100 bandwidth to also accommodate the slightly older
HSPA data service.
Thus, for those customers who purchased a T-Mobile phone (or
compatible/unlocked GSM model) from maybe 2012 or earlier, in markets
where TMO has moved HSPA to "AWS"/1900 Mhz frequencies, unless your phone
is able to handle data on 1900 MHz, it is likely that service will be
reverted to 2G only speeds. This seems to be the case throughout the
entire DC, Virginia, Maryland (including Baltimore) markets, and possibly
into the Philadelphia market as well. Rather than keep a little bit of
1700/2100 MHz spectrum available for HSPA phones which can not use data on
1900 MHz, T-Mobile just effectively blocked all customers with phones more
than a few years old from using 4G data!
On the other hand, a particularly outstanding bright spot for T-Mobile is
their excellent and competent customer service (which appears to be
entirely US/Canada based; No! On Feb 23rd, 2017, we spoke to some idiot in
the Philippines who had no idea how to process a simple credit card
update, nor transfer the call back to the States when it was obvious she
had no idea what she was doing - a disappointment as we felt that T-Mobile
used to offer nearly 100% US/Canada based customer service and
now we're forced to deal with the Philippines call center(s) just like
Verizon and AT&T, which, for whatever reason, seem much less competant
than their US/Canada based counterparts; just as an aside - the call to
update the billing credit card took 15 minutes to the Philippines and
resulted in nothing, a later call to a US-based call center took 30
seconds and we were all set; take from that what you will... ),
with people who (in the US) know their jobs and appear to be well-trained
and who have the authority to resolve problems themselves without endless
transfers to higher-up agents as is common with some of the other
carriers. We've had far fewer disappointing customer service interactions,
from their staff at the wireless stores, to billing issues, or general
customer service queries, than with any other carrier. Most issues are
handled in the first call, and don't require an endless litany of
follow-up calls when the problem was not properly addressed. We can put
aside a lot of T-Mobile's failures or weak spots when it is
offset buy such uncharacteristically efficient and competent customer
service!
Final word: Overall, T-Mobile has a lot of good things
going for it, and has made a decisive and effective dent in the
previously ossified and seemingly stagnant US cellular market. Features,
data speeds, billing, pricing, international roaming, and customer service
are generally above or well-above those of other carriers. What T-Mobile
lacks is coverage!! As noted above, once TMO builds out its
network a good deal more they will be a strong national competitor to
Verizon and AT&T, but as of now, they are an effective competitor only in
urban areas and corridors between them. They also need to work on their
drops and disconnections, but a lot of these may be remedied as their
network is build out. We put them in third place (way ahead of Sprint,
slightly behind AT&T, and well behind Verizon), but with some more
progress in terms of coverage and eliminating drops, they could easily
become a strong overall contender for number 2 right behind Verizon.
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