Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[iansltx]

So, T-Mobile on Maui is pretty solid, with a few exceptions that are unsurprising.

They have n71 20x20, n25 20x20, n41 100+40 (though I've only seen 3CA) in the central parts of the island. In Kahului, I found a site pretty close to the airport with better-than-gig backhaul. They also have 15x15 each of B2 and B66.

The catch here is they lose signal a little earlier than AT&T in fringe areas, and in Hana the service is close to unusable (and n71 only for 5G), though in Hana basically everyone is iffy on service quality.

But in areas where they have proper service, in the more populated areas, they have stronger signal and faster speeds by as much as an order of magnitude, thanks to C-Band not being available to VZW/AT&T here. AFAIK both of those two only have 10x10 n5 here for NR.

[dkyeager]

5 hours ago, iansltx said:

So, T-Mobile on Maui is pretty solid, with a few exceptions that are unsurprising.

They have n71 20x20, n25 20x20, n41 100+40 (though I've only seen 3CA) in the central parts of the island. In Kahului, I found a site pretty close to the airport with better-than-gig backhaul. They also have 15x15 each of B2 and B66.

The catch here is they lose signal a little earlier than AT&T in fringe areas, and in Hana the service is close to unusable (and n71 only for 5G), though in Hana basically everyone is iffy on service quality.

But in areas where they have proper service, in the more populated areas, they have stronger signal and faster speeds by as much as an order of magnitude, thanks to C-Band not being available to VZW/AT&T here. AFAIK both of those two only have 10x10 n5 here for NR.

"C-band not being available to VZW/AT&T ". Due to installation or licensing?

[Paynefanbro]

2 hours ago, dkyeager said:

"C-band not being available to VZW/AT&T ". Due to installation or licensing?

Licensing. I don't believe any C-band was made available there or in Alaska.

[radem]

19 hours ago, dkyeager said:

https://www.talkandroid.com/382030-t-mobile-uncarrier-data-breach-glitch/

Reportedly a temporary issue during a system update.

We do not care if they were hacked or just incompetent which they claim they were in this case.  Either way they are very careless and have no comprehension of basic data security with our personal information and are putting us as risk.  

[dkyeager]

20 minutes ago, radem said:

We do not care if they were hacked or just incompetent which they claim they were in this case.  Either way they are very careless and have no comprehension of basic data security with our personal information and are putting us as risk.  

I don't see this as changing until CEOs are held accountable.

My guess is far more people are affected by corporate hacking exposing their information (often with the help of unapplied patches and untested systems) than insecure passwords and insecure personal devices.

[Grabber5.0]

On 9/20/2023 at 8:02 AM, S4GRU said:

Not sure.  They can slow their Capex burn for a little while.  So they are considering what best to do with that money.  Exploring options.

Robert

Paying employees would have been nice 

[RedSpark]

Anybody know what happened to the T-Mobile Subreddit?

https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/

Is it completely gone?

I get a "Community Not Found" error.

[dkyeager]

7 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

Anybody know what happened to the T-Mobile Subreddit?

https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/

Is it completely gone?

I get a "Community Not Found" error.

Exists, but only 678 online, thus may have been down. Edit downdector.com confirms it was down this afternoon. Has tried to come back at least twice.

Edited September 27, 2023 by dkyeager

[PythonFanPA]

Received a text stating I've been 'un-enrolled from your promotional service T-Mobile discount as the account no longer meets promotion eligibility criteria'.   Gives a link of t-Mo.co/activity but after logging in provides no detail as to what is involved.   I've cross-checked via the main T-Mo app and can't find any reference there either....only thing I can think of is maybe the prior govt/work related discount I had under Sprint, but not sure.  My upcoming mid-Oct bill still reflects the same charge as the past few months as well.

[schmidtj]

9 hours ago, PythonFanPA said:

Received a text stating I've been 'un-enrolled from your promotional service T-Mobile discount as the account no longer meets promotion eligibility criteria'.

I converted from Sprint to T-Mobile immediately after the merger. I received a similar message. It was I was loosing the Sprint discount I was receiving based on where I was working. Funny thing was I was already retired for 3 years but Sprint was still giving me the discount. T-Mobile wasn’t so generous. J

[RedSpark]

Just went through a ridiculous “carrier hell” process with post-Merger T-Mobile trying to add a new Apple Watch to another line on our T-Mobile account.

Purchased a new Apple Watch Series 9 Stainless at the Apple Store today for a family member for all the new health and safety features.

Went through the set-up/pairing process on their iPhone for them. Got to the Cellular activation step and the phone said to contact T-Mobile, so I called on the phone to add the watch. Waited 30 mins on hold to speak to someone.

Finally got someone in an overseas call center who said she’d activate the Watch on the line. Asked me for the IMEI which I gave. She confirmed the device was activated so I didn’t think anything of it and continued to set up the rest of the watch settings.

Get to the end of that and go to the Cellular page in the Watch App to confirm the E911 address… and it says to call T-Mobile again. The Watch itself says “No SIM”. Great.

Call T-Mobile, was on hold for 30 mins and got another overseas call center person who can’t figure out why it isn’t provisioning. However, she did tell me that it was important to stay hydrated before being transferred up, which I found flat out bizarre.

Get escalated to a Stateside Senior Tech Person who knew what they were doing. He saw that the device was added as an Android Watch instead of an Apple Watch. He fixed it.

Why can’t this process be Self-Service online or at least available by chat? I hate reading numbers over the phone and not being able to confirm things right in front of me.

Everything about this was “carrier hell”.

Ridiculous.

IIRC, the process was better under Sprint. Heck, I’d rather deal with AI.

T-Mobile has gone full circle back to its carrier roots.

[schmidtj]

17 hours ago, RedSpark said:

 

“IIRC, the process was better under Sprint. Heck, I’d rather deal with AI.”

Sprint had the Apple Watch add/delete totally automated. If you ever want to delete that watch line it will be a nightmare as well. Maybe things have improved but shortly after the merger I moved to TMo  Adding an Apple Watch was done totally on the watch  To delete the line required getting support involved to do it. 

 

[RedSpark]

13 hours ago, schmidtj said:

 

If I’m not mistaken, I think I was able to add the cellular plan to the watch directly in the Watch App on Sprint without going through a s—-show like this.

It’s truly hard to believe how bad this was.

[schmidtj]

6 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

If I’m not mistaken, I think I was able to add the cellular plan to the watch directly in the Watch App on Sprint without going through a s—-show like this.

It’s truly hard to believe how bad this was.

You are correct. Adding and removing lines was done totally on the watch with SPRINT. AND charges were prorated. If you only needed Watch cellular for a short time you’d only pay for the time you used. 

With T-Mobile, watch lines are considered a special DIGITs line. I do not claim to understand DIGIT lines other than Watches are a special case and the only way to remove them are through support and all the issues that involves. 

[RedSpark]

5 hours ago, schmidtj said:

You are correct. Adding and removing lines was done totally on the watch with SPRINT. AND charges were prorated. If you only needed Watch cellular for a short time you’d only pay for the time you used. 

With T-Mobile, watch lines are considered a special DIGITs line. I do not claim to understand DIGIT lines other than Watches are a special case and the only way to remove them are through support and all the issues that involves. 

We all knocked Sprint's pre-historic website and billing system for years, but this DIGITs thing and onboarding process for T-Mobile post-merger is a steaming pile of junk.

Sprint's Apple Watch onboarding process for cellular was so much better than this it's truly hard to believe.

On T-Mobile, the Watch is given a separate phone number for billing/tracking purposes (and shown on the DIGITs page) but the actual number that's used for calls/caller ID made from the Watch is the number for your iPhone line.

[Member21]

On 10/1/2023 at 11:00 PM, RedSpark said:

Just went through a ridiculous “carrier hell” process with post-Merger T-Mobile trying to add a new Apple Watch to another line on our T-Mobile account.

Purchased a new Apple Watch Series 9 Stainless at the Apple Store today for a family member for all the new health and safety features.

Went through the set-up/pairing process on their iPhone for them. Got to the Cellular activation step and the phone said to contact T-Mobile, so I called on the phone to add the watch. Waited 30 mins on hold to speak to someone.

Finally got someone in an overseas call center who said she’d activate the Watch on the line. Asked me for the IMEI which I gave. She confirmed the device was activated so I didn’t think anything of it and continued to set up the rest of the watch settings.

Get to the end of that and go to the Cellular page in the Watch App to confirm the E911 address… and it says to call T-Mobile again. The Watch itself says “No SIM”. Great.

Call T-Mobile, was on hold for 30 mins and got another overseas call center person who can’t figure out why it isn’t provisioning. However, she did tell me that it was important to stay hydrated before being transferred up, which I found flat out bizarre.

Get escalated to a Stateside Senior Tech Person who knew what they were doing. He saw that the device was added as an Android Watch instead of an Apple Watch. He fixed it.

Why can’t this process be Self-Service online or at least available by chat? I hate reading numbers over the phone and not being able to confirm things right in front of me.

Everything about this was “carrier hell”.

Ridiculous.

IIRC, the process was better under Sprint. Heck, I’d rather deal with AI.

T-Mobile has gone full circle back to its carrier roots.

So sorry to hear this!  On my family account, we have 1 Apple watch for our young son who uses it and doesn't have a phone (he's too young).  The watch line is in my name.  I dread the day when he's old enough to have a phone and it's time to:

-Get him an iPhone and transition the watch phone number to his new iPhone.  Assuming this can be done without too much pain, the watch will then no longer have cellular service and will bluetooth to the new iPhone. 

-Also, transition the number that was moved from the watch to his new iPhone from my name to his name.

Although this is a few years away, has anyone done this before, or something similar?

And, of course, we probably won't get promotional pricing on the new iPhone since we won't be "adding a new line". 

 

[schmidtj]

This was announced a while ago but it sounds like it might really be moving forward. First thing that comes to my mind is it probably won't work indoors. Does the the FCC have to sign off on this kind of thing? Have they? I have no inside info but my guess is this will probably be limited to subscribers of T-Mo's top tier plan(s)?

SpaceX’s Starlink To Provide T-Mobile Costumers With Nationwide Coverage

[bill875]

30 minutes ago, schmidtj said:

This was announced a while ago but it sounds like it might really be moving forward. First thing that comes to my mind is it probably won't work indoors. Does the the FCC have to sign off on this kind of thing? Have they? I have no inside info but my guess is this will probably be limited to subscribers of T-Mo's top tier plan(s)?

SpaceX’s Starlink To Provide T-Mobile Costumers With Nationwide Coverage

Since they are using FCC Licensed band, I feel as though the FCC should require T-Mobile to allow all of its customers to connect and use this service with a sufficiently serviceable amount of text/voice/data as a requirement of allowing this band to be used for this purpose and give them an option to opt-in and pay for more if they run out.  Allow the Max and Go5G Plus folks to have a larger allotment of text/voice/data.

[mmark27]

On 10/3/2023 at 11:01 AM, RedSpark said:

We all knocked Sprint's pre-historic website and billing system for years, but this DIGITs thing and onboarding process for T-Mobile post-merger is a steaming pile of junk.

Sprint's Apple Watch onboarding process for cellular was so much better than this it's truly hard to believe.

On T-Mobile, the Watch is given a separate phone number for billing/tracking purposes (and shown on the DIGITs page) but the actual number that's used for calls/caller ID made from the Watch is the number for your iPhone line.

I hope that upgrading watches goes more smoothly. I am waiting for a Galaxy Watch 6 Classic (LTE) to replace my 4 Classic (LTE). However, recently (on my 4 classic) I have not been getting SMS to my watch when on LTE and it won't let me use my phone number to text out. I have to use my watch number. This worked well on Sprint (text from phone number while on LTE). I get data and other messages, just not SMS. Hassle. Hopefully the 6 cures all LTE evils. 

[schmidtj]

T-Mobile Tops J.D. Power 2023 U.S. Business Wireless Satisfaction Study

[RedSpark]

5 hours ago, schmidtj said:

T-Mobile Tops J.D. Power 2023 U.S. Business Wireless Satisfaction Study

They obviously didn't survey me on my experience.

[mikejeep]

My account recently switched over to T-Mobile's system, but I hadn't really checked the website out until this week.. I've never owned an iPhone, but apparently that's what my Pixel 7 is to them..

I did reach out on Twitter and they said on the backend it shows a Pixel 7, but since "it is a non-T-Mobile device" the website does not recognize it.

[PythonFanPA]

https://cordcuttersnews.com/t-mobile-will-reportedly-migrate-customers-onto-newer-more-expensive-plans-unless-they-opt-out/

[S4GRU]

We have to opt out to keep our Lifetime pricing.  Nice.  But at least we get to keep it. For now.

Robert

[PedroDaGr8]

2 hours ago, S4GRU said:

We have to opt out to keep our Lifetime pricing.  Nice.  But at least we get to keep it. For now.

Robert

There sleazy way of raising people's rates while technically not raising people's rates.