T-Mobile offering new Unlimited Data Plan

[jefbal99]

The coolest part is, you can do the prepaid route via SIM and BYOD.

 

Great if you live in an area that has great T-Mobile coverage.

 

I've been tempted to get an unlocked GS3 and buy a no contract T-Mobile sim just to play around with it.

 

My Buddy is in town from New Zealand and he brought his Nexus S with him. Picked up a $20 SIM and bought a couple of weeks unlimited talk and data at $3/day. His experience has been very good as t-Mobile has their HSPA+ network in Lansing. However, if he leaves the city it drops off quickly.

[iansltx]

As far as TMo's spectrum holdings are concerned, you can make a network work with those frequencies...look at what Sprint has done...however you aren't going to be in very many rural areas. T-Mobile has a decent amount of capacity between PCS and AWS, and it seems like they're already doing something akin to NV with RRUs, enhanced backhaul and new LTE-capable equipment from Ericsson and NSN. However I can pretty much guarantee that there will be 10% or so of their towers that will continue poking along on EDGE or GPRS with T1 backhaul for the foreseeable future.

[lynyrd65]

So to sum it up, I've decided to stay. I ran some speed tests and noticed things are a lot better than what they used to be.

 

Aside from my house which has an Airrave, I am now getting 600+kbps consistently in and around Tulsa and even some 1mbps+ speeds occasionally. I am typing this on a tethered laptop which is working great on this high speed (relatively) connection.

 

The band-aid fixes appear to be real. Prior to the beginning of this semester I would only get 300kbps or so. Now, like I said I can get 1mbps plus at school. At work (where I worked this summer), I used to get 50kbps or less. Admittedly that is an extremely low signal area with no roaming available (sprint is the only one who provides any cdma service there, go figure) and now I also can occasionally pass 1mbps there and always have at least 500kbps of bandwidth minimum (unless I lose service).

 

Edit: damn, this is no T1 backhaul, TU must have AAV or something. I can comfortably say that I now get 1mbps+ most of the time (at TU) and occassionally, this happens.

 

[S4GRU]

So to sum it up' date=' I've decided to stay. I ran some speed tests and noticed things are a lot better than what they used to be.

 

Aside from my house which has an Airrave, I am now getting 600+kbps consistently in and around Tulsa and even some 1mbps+ speeds occasionally. I am typing this on a tethered laptop which is working great on this high speed (relatively) connection.

 

The band-aid fixes appear to be real. Prior to the beginning of this semester I would only get 300kbps or so. Now, like I said I can get 1mbps plus at school. At work (where I worked this summer), I used to get 50kbps or less. Admittedly that is an extremely low signal area with no roaming available (sprint is the only one who provides any cdma service there, go figure) and now I also can occasionally pass 1mbps there and always have at least 500kbps of bandwidth minimum (unless I lose service).

 

Edit: damn, this is no T1 backhaul, TU must have AAV or something. I can comfortably say that I now get 1mbps+ most of the time (at TU) and occassionally, this happens.

 

[/quote']

 

I performed a continuous test while driving around Santa Fe, NM yesterday. I averaged 800kbps with 85 tests using the RootMetrics app. That is a huge improvement over the last time I did that in Santa Fe. It was under 300k last time. I had one site in the Historic Plaza area where I got over 2.1Mbps DL. That is the first time I've had a speed greater than 1.4Mbps in Santa Fe ever. Now only two sites in the city have sub 200kbps speeds.

 

Robert via CM9 Kindle Fire using Forum Runner

[iansltx]

Maybe Sprint is pushing to get AAV deployed nationwide now, independent of NV deployments. So that way, when NV crews come in, they have enough bandwidth to light LTE right away, rather than having 3G-only service for awhile (ahem, Chicago).

[S4GRU]

Maybe Sprint is pushing to get AAV deployed nationwide now, independent of NV deployments. So that way, when NV crews come in, they have enough bandwidth to light LTE right away, rather than having 3G-only service for awhile (ahem, Chicago).

 

I was wondering the same thing. I think that one of the vendor's legacy equipment cannot handle anything other than T1's. But I cannot recall which one. However, they should deploy AAV over more T1 lines at all these maintenance speed upgrades sites where they can. AAV is faster and cheaper. It's also quicker to get an AAV vendor out to a site for backhaul then it usually is for an ILEC. However, there needs to be room in the legacy telco box for the AAV backhaul.

 

Robert

[iansltx]

If a CLEC is in the area, they may be able to demux X Mbps of EoC (stopgap) or fiber (permanent) down to T1s, albeit at a higher price per megabit to cover the equipment, I suppose. Seeing as how a T1 these days is just super-fancy DSL...

[lynyrd65]

I was wondering the same thing. I think that one of the vendor's legacy equipment cannot handle anything other than T1's. But I cannot recall which one. However, they should deploy AAV over more T1 lines at all these maintenance speed upgrades sites where they can. AAV is faster and cheaper. It's also quicker to get an AAV vendor out to a site for backhaul then it usually is for an ILEC. However, there needs to be room in the legacy telco box for the AAV backhaul.

 

Robert

 

That would make a lot of people happy and really put a stop to complaints. Data capacity and speed issues are the primary complaint for Sprint customers (usually only if the speed is consistently less than 500kbps). I have a feeling most people would be fine with 1mbps on their phone and AAV on legacy equipment can deliver it.