Jump to content

Pre-emptive strike: AT&T to offer T-Mobile users $200 to switch


GinaDee

Recommended Posts

It is nice to see AT&T worried about the little guys at the bottom. I don't dislike T-Mobile, but no matter what happens, DT wants out, so T-Mobile is on its way out. Out of the options, I didn't want to see T-Mobile a part of AT&T and I don't want to see T-Mobile a part of Dish. I feel that Softbank/Sprint would be the most humane resting place for T-Mobile. With Softbank, I can see many of the "uncarrier" swag started with T-Mobile to continue. I am pretty sure this thought haunts AT&T and the rest of the industry. T-Mobile's new image and momentum paired with Softbank's pockets and Sprint's Network Vision pushed out nationwide would lead to an unstoppable force of change in the entire country.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think you just answered your own question.  Most of the US population lives in higher density populated areas.  Perceptions are based on everyone's individual reality.  

 

I didn't ask any questions ;)

 

If you live in the middle of a dense metro area and rarely travel and do not want an MVNO T-Mobile IMHO is clearly the best -- if you are extreme rural -- one of the duopolies are likely best... everything in the middle likely would be best under Sprint (many more variables than this of course).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just looking back, ALL OF THIS - its just gimmicks.. Tmo the "uncarrier" Its a way to make people believe, I like what they are doing but in reality- The bill doesnt change.. Same is said with Sprint.. plans have slowly gone up, they offer a discount and you pay monthly for the phone...

The amount of money you spend is basically the same  whether on jump or one up give or take a few.

 

Before we had to pay say $200 for a smart (subsidy) and a contract for 2 yrs BUT you could upgrade every year ..=$16 bucks a month plus whatever they made off the plan... now its on avg 20 a month for a smartphone =240 for 1 yr but you give the phone back.. 

 

For arguments sake, all they carriers are selling us a dream. Contract??? what contract? if I disconnect after 3 months and owe the balance of the phone whats the difference between putting $200 down and paying a 350 etf? Its seems  that the carrier wins by making you pay off a full price phone.

- Remember how much we griped when etfs went to 350 from 200/250?  In some ways its more of a contract than before!

I could cancel pay $200-350... ok Now you might get a final bill of min $500 depending where you are with the phone!

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is nice to see AT&T worried about the little guys at the bottom. I don't dislike T-Mobile, but no matter what happens, DT wants out, so T-Mobile is on its way out. Out of the options, I didn't want to see T-Mobile a part of AT&T and I don't want to see T-Mobile a part of Dish. I feel that Softbank/Sprint would be the most humane resting place for T-Mobile. With Softbank, I can see many of the "uncarrier" swag started with T-Mobile to continue. I am pretty sure this thought haunts AT&T and the rest of the industry. T-Mobile's new image and momentum paired with Softbank's pockets and Sprint's Network Vision pushed out nationwide would lead to an unstoppable force of change in the entire country.

 

 

 

Sprint should have a great network, however the growing pains of waiting and the end result are not meeting peoples expectations. Yes I know they say 6-8 but when other carriers are getting much better speeds on avg..and now vzw is stepping up again where does that leave sprint when its done?? Still behind? I know its not just about speeds but that what people see.

I believe thats why so many tmo customers have that "swagger" in their step.. Its like "sprint was supposed to be better than us and look how fast we got ours and how fast our lte is..." 

Tmo is on that ride like verizon was with "can you hear me? 

Sprint RELLY, REALLY, REALLY needs new marketing in specific markets (for now) that attract the younger social media heads of today. 

I think they might hold back until after the deal with tmo goes/fails

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Randall Stephenson has to grow a pair and hit TMo on their real weakness, lack of rural coverage.

 

Does he need to? Isn't that like attacking the Pope for being catholic? I guess what I mean is its a given that tmo generally has poor rural coverage, most people considering tmo either don't have the money for anything else or they don't care about rural coverage. If they want to attract folks who are going to tmo attract them on something tmo thinks is its strength but you can do better. Why boast about rural coverage when pretty much nobody is buying tmo for rural coverage? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does he need to? Isn't that like attacking the Pope for being catholic? I guess what I mean is its a given that tmo generally has poor rural coverage, most people considering tmo either don't have the money for anything else or they don't care about rural coverage. If they want to attract folks who are going to tmo attract them on something tmo thinks is its strength but you can do better. Why boast about rural coverage when pretty much nobody is buying tmo for rural coverage?

You would as a defensive tactic to keep subs from leaving. As far as AT&T's rural coverage, it's better than it's ever been. They still have to catch up with Verizon (and Sprint if you count Sprint's widespread CDMA roaming agreements). It's far beyond what T-Mobile offers, however.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You would as a defensive tactic to keep subs from leaving. As far as AT&T's rural coverage, it's better than it's ever been. They still have to catch up with Verizon (and Sprint if you count Sprint's widespread CDMA roaming agreements). It's far beyond what T-Mobile offers, however.

 

I totally agree at&t has significantly better rural coverage, I believe they got it in a trade with satan for their soul and the firstborns of their subscribers. I guess I am just a little shocked that anyone who would need rural coverage would leave at&t for tmo, you would have to be howling at the moon crazy.

 

It would be fun to market, they could offer a tmo refugee credit, anyone who leaves and comes back within the cooling off period gets an additional $100 bucks or something like that. Tmo has come up with some interesting concepts with the whole uncarrier thing. Maybe at&t can try some innovation of their own, at which point it may be wise to pick up some shares in pig parachutes.    

Link to comment
Share on other sites

T-Mobile has more rural coverage than they are given credit for.  It may not be LTE or 4G but they have lots of ground covered with 2G.  

 

Who has more native rural coverage sans roaming?  Sprint or T-Mobile?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I totally agree at&t has significantly better rural coverage, I believe they got it in a trade with satan for their soul and the firstborns of their subscribers. I guess I am just a little shocked that anyone who would need rural coverage would leave at&t for tmo, you would have to be howling at the moon crazy.

 

It would be fun to market, they could offer a tmo refugee credit, anyone who leaves and comes back within the cooling off period gets an additional $100 bucks or something like that. Tmo has come up with some interesting concepts with the whole uncarrier thing. Maybe at&t can try some innovation of their own, at which point it may be wise to pick up some shares in pig parachutes.    

 

AT&T has excellent rural coverage in much of rural Southern California.  I did notice however that backhaul is lacking along the long stretch of 15 FWY that connects Las Vegas to the populated areas of SoCal.  Full bars HSPA+ but pokey speeds in some areas. 

 

On the same long rural stretch of HWY surprisingly Metro PCS has LTE but speeds appear limited to 5 Mbps down.  I assume this long rural route will become part of T-Mobile's LTE network in 2014.

 

Even my beloved Verizon, with all that red painted so pretty across the nation hides an ugly fact that much of those areas particularly around the Rocky Mountain west have very little backhaul.  It's just "coverage."

 

Right now only Verizon and Metro PCS have LTE between Vegas and SoCal along Route 15.  T-Mobile only has LTE in certain patches along the same stretch so it would do them well to integrate Metro's network as soon as possible to improve the customer experience.  

Edited by GinaDee
Link to comment
Share on other sites

If I were at&t I would do the following (and I realize it would probably cause some financial chaos for them)

 

- Significantly increase the amount of data at each price point, double should do for a start, using 10GB should not cost a fortune.

- Once you hit your data limit rather than just paying extra you should be allowed to continue at a reduced speed like 500Kbps for free. There is real consumer value in avoiding bill shock. 

- More deployed LTE spectrum. After the iphone data usage network swamping they should stay well ahead of the usage curve. 

- Reduce pricing once  the contract is paid off \ the 2 years is up.

 

That might start to make them more attractive, to me at least, but even with all that I have issues with their ethics or lack thereof.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Companies want to charge stupid rates for overages.. Why not just bump you to the next data plan? Be friendly to your beloved customers.. so you went over your data ... Ok no for the month you pay for the 6gb plan instead of the 4 you were on.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

T-Mobile has more rural coverage than they are given credit for.  It may not be LTE or 4G but they have lots of ground covered with 2G.  

 

Who has more native rural coverage sans roaming?  Sprint or T-Mobile?

I would think that it would actually be T-Mobile. I cannot count the number times T-Mobile has been forced to build out coverage after AT&T or Verizon bought out a roaming partner... 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

T-Mobile has more rural coverage than they are given credit for. It may not be LTE or 4G but they have lots of ground covered with 2G.

 

Who has more native rural coverage sans roaming? Sprint or T-Mobile?

For me its hit or miss because the 2G network is widely unmaintained. I can find a signal in areas no other carrier covers but (sometimes) when I try to use it no data transfers, texts don't go through and I can't make a call. Other times I can make a call (after a 30 second to 1minute delay) and nothing else works. I have yet to find a rural edge site in my entire state that transfers ANY data. The only sites that transfer data are GPRS which they do at 10kbps or less.

 

Sometimes there are areas where coverage is advertised but I get no service at all. I have walked up to their site and seen no service. When I call these in they dispatch crews and bring them back online with the same EDGE signal that transfers zero data.

 

There is a difference between prioritizing urban areas and ignoring a massive part of their network entirely. As many failed sites (no service) as I am able to find, that is likely the case. If they want to change their image to a premium carrier then they must make these areas usable. Its an open secret that this is their problem. If it weren't one many would switch.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I won't even give Tmo kudos for excellent urban coverage. Unless I'm within 1/2 mile of a WCDMA site, I get no indoor coverage. There are so many places going indoors where I grab my four devices, and only Tmo has no coverage. It's not just a rural thing.

 

Tmo has the weakest coverage of all four carriers everywhere I go. The only thing Tmo does have going for it is if you do have a good Tmo signal, it will perform equal or better than its competitors.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I won't even give Tmo kudos for excellent urban coverage. Unless I'm within 1/2 mile of a WCDMA site, I get no indoor coverage. There are so many places going indoors where I grab my four devices, and only Tmo has no coverage. It's not just a rural thing.

 

Tmo has the weakest coverage of all four carriers everywhere I go. The only thing Tmo does have going for it is if you do have a good Tmo signal, it will perform equal or better than its competitors.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

 

Summed up nicely. TMO was making a fuss over mimo lte, this may make a little difference. The screenshot below is sensorly test results on tmo lte.

Screenshot_Normar_App_Image.png

The bottom one tells the story. Swamped LTE. Still not bad speeds but how much more swamped will it be in a years time as peoples usage evolves and they add more subs? The top two are tmo on form, the bottom one is just a reality of running an unlimited offer without the spectrum to back it up. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I won't even give Tmo kudos for excellent urban coverage. Unless I'm within 1/2 mile of a WCDMA site, I get no indoor coverage. There are so many places going indoors where I grab my four devices, and only Tmo has no coverage. It's not just a rural thing.

 

Tmo has the weakest coverage of all four carriers everywhere I go. The only thing Tmo does have going for it is if you do have a good Tmo signal, it will perform equal or better than its competitors.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

 

 

Urban as in:  "somewhere in South Dakota?"

 

Regionally I live in an area that is night and day from you.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Summed up nicely. TMO was making a fuss over mimo lte, this may make a little difference. The screenshot below is sensorly test results on tmo lte.

Screenshot_Normar_App_Image.png

The bottom one tells the story. Swamped LTE. Still not bad speeds but how much more swamped will it be in a years time as peoples usage evolves and they add more subs? The top two are tmo on form, the bottom one is just a reality of running an unlimited offer without the spectrum to back it up.

 

That screen shot at the bottom still better than what I'm getting here in Chicago with Sprint. Time will tell, but my patients is wearing thin so a move might have to be made.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I lived in Palm Beach and barely got T-Mobile signal in any building I was in and lived in St Augustine and got only fringe or Emergency Only. I would consider Palm Beach as a high class, high value urban area and St Augustine is a really big tourist attraction for many internationally and is home to two colleges and close to Jacksonville, the largest city in the United States. Plus, forget relying on T-Mobile for an emergency while driving from one end of Florida to the other. I guess it isn't a very good option for the elderly population that makes up 60% of the state.

 

It's 2014, the time when a cell phone was a buggy and niche market is over. A cell phone must be capable of delivering a consistent and reliable service to its subscribers. T-Mobile definitely falls short in this department. That's just the reality of it. That's why so many are with AT&T and Verizon. It's not because they are caring and customer friendly. It's because you can be in Sturgis and still make a phone call. That is why Sprint is a good third provider, they have a vast roaming network that supplements their own network.

  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Urban as in: "somewhere in South Dakota?"

 

Regionally I live in an area that is night and day from you.

Don't cheapen your arguments by being stupid. You know I just recently moved to South Dakota in the Fall. My Tmo usage has been in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas and Wyoming.

 

In my travels, indoor coverage with Tmo has been awful. Rarely can I get WCDMA or LTE inside hotels, movie theaters, stores, shopping malls. I either fall back to EDGE or get Emergency Calls Only.

 

I can be fair in my observations though. I will say Tmo has a pretty dense network in Denver. I would definitely lose LTE when I went indoors, but it almost always would fall back to WCDMA. Except at IKEA. And Dual Carrier HSPA+ works very well there.

 

But in Phoenix, Colorado Springs, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Wichita Falls, Amarillo, Lubbock, Wichita, Springfield, NW Arkansas, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Flagstaff, Pueblo, Cheyenne, Fort Collins, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Las Cruces, El Paso, Waco, I had really consistently unusable Tmo service indoors. Places where I would get service on other carriers. And then in between those cities I was on 2G.

 

Did I go to places in the past 16 months that just happen to be bad for the Tmo network? Possibly. Are there other markets as good as Denver out there? I'm sure there are.

 

But here is the kicker. This isn't a thread about Tmo competing with Sprint. This a thread about Tmo competing with AT&T. And in these places I'm discussing above, AT&T service was solid. Tmo really is at a significant disadvantage without lower frequency spectrum. It makes rural deployment difficult, expensive and infeasible. It also makes all these little urban gaps difficult to fill and indoor coverage almost impossible to handle at a fair cost with AWS spectrum.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

  • Like 10
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That screen shot at the bottom still better than what I'm getting here in Chicago with Sprint. Time will tell, but my patients is wearing thin so a move might have to be made.

That's off topic. This is a Tmo versus AT&T thread.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It also makes all these little urban gaps difficult to fill and indoor coverage almost impossible to handle at a fair cost with AWS spectrum.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

In the IBEZ, won't Sprint be in same position since it can't use ANY of 800mhz?

That's the only sub ghz it has

Or did sprint take this into account for its site spacing?

Edited by Blututh567
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In the IBEZ, won't Sprint be in same position since it can't use ANY of 800mhz?That's the only sub ghz it hasOr did sprint take this into account for its site spacing?

First off, that's off topic. We aren't discussing Tmo versus Sprint in this thread. We are discussing Tmo versus AT&T. Your question doesn't help Tmo fight back against AT&T.

 

Second, to address your off topic point, it is true that Sprint has some low frequency wideband deployment problems along the international border. Especially Canada. However, Sprint has committed to densifying their networks in Top 100 markets taking Band 41 LTE even denser than the already dense WiMax network. Tmo may some day densify their network, or even may me able to get some low frequency spectrum. So this is a fair comparison to what Sprint has already started to do versus what Tmo may some day do.

 

I'm not a Tmo naysayer. However, I will keep their faults fairly portrayed, especially in a Sprint forum in a thread about ATT. Tmo does some things very well, but they still have some significant pitfalls. And they are not in a position to compete with AT&T head on yet.

 

For as many Sprint customers that went to Tmo that may be happy, there are as many ATT customers who went to Tmo who are unhappy. Because urban coverage has spotty indoor coverage, and usable data ends at the city limit sign.

 

Let's get back on topic. This is an AT&T versus Tmo thread. Trying to compare Tmo to Sprint here is just not related and makes an argument look weak.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.

  • large.unreadcontent.png.6ef00db54e758d06

  • gallery_1_23_9202.png

  • Posts

  • Recently Browsing

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...