Another win for T-Mobile. I have to say, for all the negative things I've heard about them in past years, the more I hear about the company the harder I think about switching from Verizon.
No contracts for service, they separated phone subsidies from phone service, and reasonably priced data plans. Does anyone use T-Mobile? How is their network?
In the peninsula where many Hacker News readers probably reside, their network is pretty great. In Austin, using T-Mobile is a lot like not having a data plan and having a phone with only moderately high probability. People who call you will sometimes get some message saying that your number doesn't exist.
The opt-out process for T-Mobile's DNS hijacking is not satisfactory:
> Note: In order for opt-out to work properly, you need to accept a "cookie" indicating that you have opted out of this service. If you use a program that removes cookies, you will have to repeat this opt-out process when the cookie is deleted. The cookie placed on your computer will contain the site name: "http://tmob.search-help.net.
I have had T-mobile for almost a decade and never had any problem with them. They are a GSM network so you can just swap out your sim card if you want a new phone, without having to jump through any hoops. They even went so far to correct problems that users were having with jailbroken iPhone on their network when they were still relatively new, which is pretty incredible.
I have never had any problem with coverage in major cities, if you get out of populated areas you will see that you are typically bouncing off partner towers, so you may lose data service, but will almost certainly have cell service. Basically as long as you live in a large city you will be fine. I never have had any problems (at least noticeable enough for me to remember) with dropped calls, or flaky service where I live.
I assume other peoples experiences may vary, but I think they are hands down the best cell provider.
I signed up with Voicestream, later bought by T-Mobile. I've been with them more than a decade. A couple of times they've called to inform me I need to switch plans because they're phasing out the one I was on. It's been a total win, no extra money, more stuff every time. I'm in Arizona, and coverage is fine here. Traveling in the US sometimes I get T-Mobile and sometimes I roam. A visit to Europe a few years ago I saw solid coverage, mostly T-Mobile. Yeah, it was $1/minute to call home. So I called every night for only 5 minutes to talk to my wife and daughter. Compared to hotel and restaurant expenses? Whatever.
I never think T-Mobile is especially good until I hear others bitching about their carriers.
I have had great experience being on T-mobile for about 5 years. Their customer service is exceptional and they also allow you to unlock your phone after 3 months.
However there are a couple of things that do irritate me:
[1] They sniff the header of every web-request looking for desktop browser string. If found they sent you a warning text threatening to cut off your service. It sucks especially when you move to a new home with no immediate internet service and want to tether for a few days.
[2] Non-existent domains redirect to a page with ads (Similar to OpenDNS). Sucks on a mobile since you have to wait for it to load to find out while adding to your data usage.
I switched from AT&T to T-Mobile because AT&T just pissed me off with mandatory data plans.
T-Mobile's network is nowhere near as good for me as AT&T's was. I hope that it improves. The biggest problem is looking at my phone and seeing "0 bars."
Also, the data plan doesn't work with one of my phones. Ironically, the same phone AT&T forced me to have a data plan for. Maybe it would have never worked.
I've used T-Mobile for the last 4 years. Generally pretty happy with them - their customer service is unobtrusive and generally pretty good, website is solid, plans are reasonable. I think I did accept a 1-year contract when I upgraded to unlimited voice + data + texting, but the initial plan wasn't contract-based.
Coverage in the Bay Area is great. Out east it tends to be a bit spottier than most of the other networks - in rural areas or inside certain malls my relatives on AT&T or Verizon might get service but I won't. They're generally fine in major urban areas and around major highways, but somewhat sparser on the long tail.
TMobile in Portland OR, Seattle WA, SF/Bay Area I tested around 16-20MG/s, in other areas (Reno NV, Boise ID) of western US, "4G" runs between 4-8MG/s.
OpenSignal and SpeedTest are the apps that I used.
I use them in NYC, and I'm never looking back. I pay $30 a month for unlimited data, unlimited texts and 100 minutes of calls. I bought my phone (Nexus 4) outright for $350. I even tried out hacking LTE to work with it, and I get T-Mobile LTE in Brooklyn (though not in Manhattan).
In summary; it's awesome. However, when I leave the city, coverage is definitely limited. I do so very infrequently, so it's fine for me.
Using an unlocked AT&T iPhone 4 in the Chicago area. Many places have not completed the "refarming" effort of switching the 1700 MHz towers to 1900 MHz, so most of the time I am on Edge (2.5G).
When I happen to be in an iPhone 4 compatible cell, the 3G is pretty solid, often 6mbit down, 2mbit up.
Waiting for the 5S to upgrade - hoping the LTE and HSPA+ is good.
TMobile is great until it isn't. I had them for years with a $19.99/4ever plan grandfathered from Omnipoint many years ago.
Unfortunately for you, that means that you can't make a phone call 30 miles from your city center (or in remote locations like Brooklyn, NY or the state of Maine) , or in the back of your home, or 1000 ft from the interstate, etc.
I've been with them for 3-4 years in NYC/NJ. I've been nothing but happy, and in Jersey City, they've got better coverage than AT&T and Verizon (anecdotal, but repeatable, data).
Their phone support has always been fantastic for me.
Right before they switched to no-contract mode, I called in to cancel a USB data card I wasn't using much anymore. I have a phone (no contract, unlocked nexus 4) as well as that card, that had finished its contract some time ago. They gave me ~40% off of my entire bill if I agreed to a 2 yr contract.
Then again, when I go out into some parts of the country, I get almost no signal. There was an HN post some time ago with a map of comparative cell-coverage.
Eh, in the UK they have / had a package of "unlimited" 3g, £30 for 90 days.
Unlimited means they do weird stuff to prevent some content from working after one gigabyte per month - flash videos don't work, for example.
They throw up interstitial warning pages which break forms and the back button, which can be annoying.
They have fierce image compression proxies, but the Windows client (if you chose to use it, you don't have to) allows you to turn it off.
I carefully checked that it was unlimited, and I gave them fair warning that I consider myself a heavy internet user, and I made sure they knew before they took me on that I'd be hammering the bandwidth. And I do.
Never had a dropped call in Minneapolis. My girlfriend is getting lots of LTE on an unlocked iPhone even though Minneapolis isn't one of the officially announced markets yet. (Our apt is still EDGE, but that's what wifi is for, right?)
Be careful with T-Mobile. I live in a fairly small town (about 12,000 people) that is practically a suburb of a bigger town (over 200,000). I have 18 MBps Internet from AT&T Uverse, and the local cable company just started offering a much faster connection. T-Mobile? I can't even get a signal at my home. No signal.
I'm on T-Mobile, but I'm not going to lie: Verizon has a superior network. All that 700mhz LTE is amazing. However, T-Mobile's network is fine for me (their DC HSPA network really does approach LTE speeds at times), and they more than make up for it with things that I also care about that you mentioned.
Indeed, T-Mobile seems to be turning things around a bit between the new pricing the the LTE Network rollout. I'm considering switching from their other half (MetroPCS) after I ran a DSLReports speed test on my buddy's iPhone 5 and saw 22Mbps. I was floored.
I just moved to the valley and I love that they offer $10/m unlimited international calls and texts. They also offer free tethering up to 2.5GB's and unlimited data (w/o tethering). They claim not to slow you down at a certain point with unlimited data.
It really sucks that carriers do this, but I think it's important to realize that the issue is transparency, not that they do it.
Verizon and AT&T have a problem with scaling. They should be honest and upfront about what speeds you're realistically going to attain, but I don't think they have an obligation not to throttle people. It's honestly hard to exist without it. I don't know if Verizon and AT&T could operate such competitive networks without throttling.
Another thing to realize is that this also happens to internet download/upload speeds. How often do you realistically hit the maximum speeds you're advertised?
I think there should be accountability for lack of transparency, but I can't say I blame them for throttling. I don't have enough expertise on cell tower networking to know if they could stay profitable with competitively sized networks otherwise.
It doesn't seem at all reasonable to throttle a particular device and not other comparable devices. It seems more reasonable to have the tower/router adjust the bandwidth made available to each device in real-time to ensure there's enough bandwidth for all users in the face of capacity issues.
I think it's fine to advertise peak speeds if those are regularly attainable even if sometimes they are not. It's not OK to advertise such speeds if the device is sold in a configuration that can't take advantage of them without a hack or update from the carrier or manufacturer.
Agree, the lack of transparency is something I have a problem with, but the speeds are _way_ more than I need. I'd rather get slower speeds and higher bandwidth caps for the same money (if I could choose).
Just a couple of days ago I managed to get my unlocked iPhone 5 on T-Mobile with a great plan: 30/mo with unlimited web and text, 100 minutes. I don't talk much on the phone so this is great for me.
It was kind of hard to set up at first, but now I would easily be able to do it again.
Funny, I have been thinking about this just today. I'm currently paying $200+ a month for my iPhone on AT&T. How does T-Mobile compare, and how good are they in Southern California?
I live in Los Angeles and I've just switched from T-Mobile to Verizon. An S2 to IPhone 5. My service has got so so so much better. The T-Mobile network is so bad that I never used up my 100MB/month allowance at 3G speeds in spite of the fact that I tried to use data on my phone all the time.
Ridiculous in such a large metropolitan area. So don't all go rushing to T-Mobile!
Indeed. And much like high-speed highway driving, if my iphone 4s were to use its full internet bandwidth, i would be a mortal danger to my fellow man. Oh wait.
I imagine cars are tested for max speeds much like ropes and carabiners are given weight ratings. The governor probably enforces these ratings because although your car could go faster, things might start breaking. Faster internet speeds aren't going to melt your CPU.
I agree with you in principle, but to be honest, I think this analogy gives people the wrong idea. They're attacking it based on phones being non-lethal, which is probably unproductive to your point.
I wonder though if overall user performance would be worse if they didn't throttle - carriers may think (correctly or incorrectly) it is their best option for the capacity/throughput issues they have?
Can't wait to a future of non-monopoly/duopoly wireless last mile...
Sprint iPhone user here (4S, Jailbroken)-- is there a way to change the DATA_TRTL_ENABLED value and disable the throttle? I tried editing the carrier settings file with iFile, but now I am having issues getting data (it very well could be the building I'm in right now, though, so I'll have to test again when I leave).
EDIT:
Yeah, it's the building-- the connection is actually fine, so it's not like Sprint is blocking me after changing the setting. I'll have to test speeds with and without the toggle enabled to see if it works (after I get out of this dead zone of a building)
I just added two iPhone 5s to my AT&T family plan, and I regret it. They use up their data allotment in about 4 days, even if they never leave the home wifi, so I insist that the cellular data is kept off and only enabled when needed. Meanwhile, the WP8 and Android devices on our plan use only a fraction of their data allotment each month. Is it possible that Apple is responsible for this problem, and should do something about their devices being such data hogs?
I can say that this is not correct with my friend's AT&T iPhone 5. We are in Dallas (in McKinney, a suburb) and just last week we turned off his wifi, ran a speed test, and it reported 22mb d/l and 10mb u/l. There is nothing special about his phone - not unlocked, nor has he done anything to it to remove the limits. I was testing out the 4G LTE speed on his to see if it was worth it to upgrade from my iPhone 4S. My 4S' speed was only 5.5mb d/l and 1.5mb u/l.
[+] [-] kgermino|12 years ago|reply
No contracts for service, they separated phone subsidies from phone service, and reasonably priced data plans. Does anyone use T-Mobile? How is their network?
[+] [-] anonymoushn|12 years ago|reply
The opt-out process for T-Mobile's DNS hijacking is not satisfactory:
> Note: In order for opt-out to work properly, you need to accept a "cookie" indicating that you have opted out of this service. If you use a program that removes cookies, you will have to repeat this opt-out process when the cookie is deleted. The cookie placed on your computer will contain the site name: "http://tmob.search-help.net.
[+] [-] LandoCalrissian|12 years ago|reply
I have never had any problem with coverage in major cities, if you get out of populated areas you will see that you are typically bouncing off partner towers, so you may lose data service, but will almost certainly have cell service. Basically as long as you live in a large city you will be fine. I never have had any problems (at least noticeable enough for me to remember) with dropped calls, or flaky service where I live.
I assume other peoples experiences may vary, but I think they are hands down the best cell provider.
[+] [-] dwc|12 years ago|reply
I never think T-Mobile is especially good until I hear others bitching about their carriers.
[+] [-] nivla|12 years ago|reply
However there are a couple of things that do irritate me:
[1] They sniff the header of every web-request looking for desktop browser string. If found they sent you a warning text threatening to cut off your service. It sucks especially when you move to a new home with no immediate internet service and want to tether for a few days.
[2] Non-existent domains redirect to a page with ads (Similar to OpenDNS). Sucks on a mobile since you have to wait for it to load to find out while adding to your data usage.
[+] [-] danielweber|12 years ago|reply
T-Mobile's network is nowhere near as good for me as AT&T's was. I hope that it improves. The biggest problem is looking at my phone and seeing "0 bars."
Also, the data plan doesn't work with one of my phones. Ironically, the same phone AT&T forced me to have a data plan for. Maybe it would have never worked.
[+] [-] nostrademons|12 years ago|reply
Coverage in the Bay Area is great. Out east it tends to be a bit spottier than most of the other networks - in rural areas or inside certain malls my relatives on AT&T or Verizon might get service but I won't. They're generally fine in major urban areas and around major highways, but somewhat sparser on the long tail.
[+] [-] andre|12 years ago|reply
OpenSignal and SpeedTest are the apps that I used.
[+] [-] untog|12 years ago|reply
In summary; it's awesome. However, when I leave the city, coverage is definitely limited. I do so very infrequently, so it's fine for me.
[+] [-] nsxwolf|12 years ago|reply
When I happen to be in an iPhone 4 compatible cell, the 3G is pretty solid, often 6mbit down, 2mbit up.
Waiting for the 5S to upgrade - hoping the LTE and HSPA+ is good.
[+] [-] Spooky23|12 years ago|reply
Unfortunately for you, that means that you can't make a phone call 30 miles from your city center (or in remote locations like Brooklyn, NY or the state of Maine) , or in the back of your home, or 1000 ft from the interstate, etc.
[+] [-] lallysingh|12 years ago|reply
Their phone support has always been fantastic for me.
Right before they switched to no-contract mode, I called in to cancel a USB data card I wasn't using much anymore. I have a phone (no contract, unlocked nexus 4) as well as that card, that had finished its contract some time ago. They gave me ~40% off of my entire bill if I agreed to a 2 yr contract.
Then again, when I go out into some parts of the country, I get almost no signal. There was an HN post some time ago with a map of comparative cell-coverage.
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
Unlimited means they do weird stuff to prevent some content from working after one gigabyte per month - flash videos don't work, for example.
They throw up interstitial warning pages which break forms and the back button, which can be annoying.
They have fierce image compression proxies, but the Windows client (if you chose to use it, you don't have to) allows you to turn it off.
I carefully checked that it was unlimited, and I gave them fair warning that I consider myself a heavy internet user, and I made sure they knew before they took me on that I'd be hammering the bandwidth. And I do.
[+] [-] abrowne|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MarcParadise|12 years ago|reply
There are plenty of businesses nearby where I'll have a full signal outside, but once I'm indoors it drops off to Edge network.
There are also blank spots of little to no data coverage that have no reasonable explanation.
That said, I'm aware of this and think it's worth the trade-off. I'm not going to another network anytime soon.
[+] [-] skittles|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkulak|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PeterBB|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Moto7451|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brackin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idont|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylangs1030|12 years ago|reply
Verizon and AT&T have a problem with scaling. They should be honest and upfront about what speeds you're realistically going to attain, but I don't think they have an obligation not to throttle people. It's honestly hard to exist without it. I don't know if Verizon and AT&T could operate such competitive networks without throttling.
Another thing to realize is that this also happens to internet download/upload speeds. How often do you realistically hit the maximum speeds you're advertised?
I think there should be accountability for lack of transparency, but I can't say I blame them for throttling. I don't have enough expertise on cell tower networking to know if they could stay profitable with competitively sized networks otherwise.
[+] [-] Zak|12 years ago|reply
I think it's fine to advertise peak speeds if those are regularly attainable even if sometimes they are not. It's not OK to advertise such speeds if the device is sold in a configuration that can't take advantage of them without a hack or update from the carrier or manufacturer.
[+] [-] shurcooL|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bonchibuji|12 years ago|reply
Edit: Google Cache.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
[+] [-] runjake|12 years ago|reply
The IPCC file is a ZIP file with a bunch of images and XML files with interesting settings within.
There's a lot of superfluous FUD ("iOS uses more data than other smartphones, even when idle", which is not true) regarding iOS in the article.
[+] [-] mtgx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bgar|12 years ago|reply
It was kind of hard to set up at first, but now I would easily be able to do it again.
[+] [-] enraged_camel|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reillyse|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] liquidise|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zak|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samolang|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xutopia|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylangs1030|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucb1e|12 years ago|reply
> Access has been blocked as the threat Mal/HTMLGen-A has been found on this website.
Where the name links to: http://www.sophos.com/en-us/threat-center/threat-analyses/vi...
Any mirrors or something?
[+] [-] indeyets|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] technosmurf|12 years ago|reply
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7037/apple-not-throttling-ipho...
[+] [-] gz5|12 years ago|reply
No transparency, as usual, from those carriers.
I wonder though if overall user performance would be worse if they didn't throttle - carriers may think (correctly or incorrectly) it is their best option for the capacity/throughput issues they have?
Can't wait to a future of non-monopoly/duopoly wireless last mile...
[+] [-] ampsonic|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewmunsell|12 years ago|reply
EDIT:
Yeah, it's the building-- the connection is actually fine, so it's not like Sprint is blocking me after changing the setting. I'll have to test speeds with and without the toggle enabled to see if it works (after I get out of this dead zone of a building)
[+] [-] jackalope|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ScottWhigham|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] breck|12 years ago|reply
Decent service, and the $50/month prepaid plan including mobile hotspot is a great deal.
[+] [-] coldtea|12 years ago|reply
Beat that, US!
[+] [-] aviraldg|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thecosas|12 years ago|reply