maxsilver

I'm looking forward to the day "Unlimited" plans disappear, because it's never true. No one actually has an Unlimited plan. The sooner people stop asking for it, the sooner carriers can stop pretending this exists.

Fake "Unlimited" pricing distorts the entire market for large data. The sooner "Unlimited" goes away, the sooner 10GB / 20GB / 40GB plans start getting priced realistically -- and large data users start getting treated fairly on-network.

Ironically, AT&T is sort-of the leader in this, with Cricket's plans. They label their "unlimited" plan honestly ("Pro" as 10GB), just like Sprint/T-Mobile should.

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Here's a simple fix:  Take the 1/3/5/'unlimited' plans, keep the price points all the same, and make the data caps '2/5/10/20gb'. It's transparent, it's fair, there's no secret throttling, everyone's getting something better than they had before, and no one has to worry about 'abuse' of the network or unfairness.

They could even advertise it as "another uncarrier move"...

Justified or not, T-Mobile subscribers will whip themselves into a frenzy, and a certain segment will take action (such as switching to another carrier). 

Meh. I don't think they'll switch in any meaningful number. The network still works fine, and it's not like they really have anywhere to go. Certainly, most of /r/tmobile isn't going to switch to Sprint.

(EDIT: moved comments about unlimited plan to here , since that's seems a more appropriate place to discuss it.

If this holds to be true, will the average consumer see their speeds decrease not unless they are on they 3 and 5gb plans?

Metered plans (1gb/3gb/5gb) do not appear to be effected in any way, at this time.

In fact, if anything, metered plans may get slightly faster in areas of congestion. (Since unlimited users are being slowed down, that would theoretically free more bandwidth for metered users).

Isn't the Nexus 6 compatible with all of Tmo's  LTE bands? 

 

While all the literature says the service will switch between between Tmo and Sprint, just flipping between Sprint, Tmo and Project Fi maps, the Fi map appears that:  1)Sprint LTE is preferred and shown in full 2)Chunks of LTE coverage shown on Tmo's own maps don't show up on the Project Fi map 3)Tmo roaming coverage is available in some places 4)Sprint roaming coverage is not available.   Was the map pieced together market by market? 

 

I'm very eager to hear reviews of the usage experience, especially in fringe areas and roaming.

Yes, Nexus 6 works on all bands across both carriers including all currently-used T-Mobile bands.

And yeah, the map is weird. Sprint LTE is usually shown, and T-Mobile EDGE + AT&T roaming is usually shown. Verizon roaming seems to be 100% absent. But Sprint's own 1x isn't always shown. And T-Mobile's HSPA+/LTE is often missing too. And some markets drop T-Mobile's AT&T roaming  (even when T-Mobile Postpaid allows it) seemingly at random.

I'm also seeing pieces of service that don't appear to belong to anyone. (Areas marked "3G" that don't show up on Sprint *or* T-Mobile's map) and areas that are just blank (even though both carriers offer LTE there for 1+ years now).

I'm wondering if Google just slapped something together by pulling from carrier maps at random. There doesn't seem to be any consistent logic to this map so far, that can't be dis-proven by that same map in some other area, unless Google is literally picking and choosing network priority/preference on a tower-by-tower basis.

And I'm hoping Google's map is simply wrong, because otherwise devices will be ignoring usable and present Sprint/T-Mobile service in number of areas...

Is there any market that tmo has significantly better coverage than sprint?

I suppose it depends on how you define "market", but there are areas where T-Mobile's native footprint is larger than Sprints. Most of the ones I know of are out West. Parts of Northern California, Eastern Oregon and Idaho (Pendleton, La Grande, Baker City, Twin Falls, Idaho Falls, etc), rural Arizona (near Flagstaff). Parts of rural California / Nevada (Susanville, Patton Village, etc).

In most areas, Sprint's footprint is larger. Sometime's ridiculously larger (Sprint's probably more than double T-Mobile's footprint in Michigan and Wisconsin, as an example.).

But if you want to, you can find a list of small towns or highways where T-Mobile's native coverage is larger than Sprint's.

Signed up for an invite, can't wait to try it out. Does anybody know how voice works? Is it VOIP? If so it won't work on 2G networks which the coverage map shows...? If I make a call on Tmobile's network will it hand off to Sprint's if I run out of TMO's coverage and vise versa.. Wouldn't that require 4G and VOIP?

It's not known what the're doing for certain yet, but I suspect it's probably involves ringback handoffs. (Similar to how Republic Wireless hands off a phone call from VoIP to Sprint 1x). That solves the 2G problem -- it's not as 'nice' as IMS / VoLTE-WiFI / etc, but it works on any network type/carrier.

That's just an assumption on my part though. Can't know for sure until someone actually has it to investigate.

So, it's live at fi.google.com

The coverage map is live too at https://fi.google.com/coverage 

This is a huge assumption, but based on the map, I'm guessing  Google's doing something like :

#1 - T-Mobile LTE, HSPA+ (if it exists with strong signal?)

#2 - Sprint LTE, EVDO (if it exists with strong signal?)

#3 - AT&T roaming (if T-Mobile allows it in that area, and #1 and #2 don't exist)

(No Verizon roaming of any kind?)

That statement mostly matches large parts of Michigan. The upper penninsula is listed as "2G" from Google, that certainly has to be AT&T GSM service, presumably through roaming via T-Mobile. Some parts of the map are labeled "3G", that are clearly Sprint EVDO service. 

But it's super odd -- and the above assumption doesn't always fit. It looks like it's sometimes taking the best of both networks, but sometimes taking the worst of both, for no particularly obvious reason.

For instance, South Haven, MI has LTE (from Sprint and T-Mobile) and has had it for quite a while now,  but only shows as "3G" on Google's map. It "mostly" is the best of both, but there's lots of weird outliers like that just don't fit any obvious pattern one way or the other.

I'm not sure what to make of this -- and it's a stretch to assume this much from a marketing coverage map. But this is super interesting to look through.

You guys are awesome. So can I use my s4gru account or do I have to create a new one?

You'll need to make a new one, although you could probably use the same screenname if you wanted.

You should tweet back that your now GSM 1900 signal on your HTC Sensation 4G is not great -- and definitely not "4G."

Your right, everyone knows your only allowed to break service for 4+yr old devices on November 6, 2015. Any earlier than that is just not ok.

AWS Hspa shutdown in Indy is confirmed

I don't doubt that's accurate -- but I wouldn't use @TmobileHelp as "confirmation" of anything. (They have often "confirmed" wrong information previously).

How about they are both improving?

You can't bring that kind of objective thinking in here. It destroys the narrative.

That about sums it up

I think the the biggest one might not be on the list yet (for non-business folks)

• T-Mobile promises to never raise the price of any existing customers rate plan

NYC is still a trouble spot though. http://www.rootmetrics.com/us/rsr/new-york-city-and-tri-state-area/2015/1H

 

I thought the data speeds would have been better for NYC, I know they are moving as fast as they can...but it's not enough yet.

Same for Seattle - http://www.rootmetrics.com/us/rsr/seattle-wa

Speeds aren't bad by any means (they clocked a much faster median score there, than they pull here). But I was hoping they'd be past AT&T by now.

Interesting indeed.  I don't really mind their current logo but I'll be interested to see the final result.

I interpreted new logo acquisition meaning they are buying someone out.  In the past I have seen the term Logo Acquisition to mean a new asset purchase.  I have never seen someone working on a new corporate logo refer to New Logo Acquisition, especially when referring to it in a sales job.  Although, it could be.  Just trying to wrap my mind around it.  It could be in reference to the purchase of Radio Shack stores though.

It could just mean that they're finally winding down the iPCS aquisition.

Since, for whatever reason, that branding and corporate structure is still in use at corporate stores in Grand Rapids.

The question is how does it work in the real world today? Streaming music is one thing, since it pre-caches, but what about a VoLTE call?

I'd call it "almost perfect". It's seamless enough that I can't tell it's switched unless I'm watching SignalCheck as it happens. I've never dropped a call when switching between LTE on any band (PCS/AWS/700)

VoLTE is pretty nice. If your on a good LTE network with proper coverage / density in the area, I think it offers a phenomenal user experience.

He should fire his broker, then - the stock was much lower weeks ago.

I get that this is probably a joke

But realistically, Marcelo might not have much control over that. I am not an expert by any means, but there are some seriously strict and scary rules around insider information when trading.

And since he's the CEO of the company, he's probably the most at-risk of breaking (or being accused of breaking) those rules, even if only by accident.

He might have been required to buy at a certain time to help reduce his liability on the chance there were problems around that. Even if that means he gets a worse deal on the price.

I have no idea why would anyone begin to think that a Tier 1 wireless operator like T-Mobile would even consider removing their rural sites

Because they do! Using the lie of "overlapping coverage", these "Tier 1 operators" remove sites all the time. In my market over the last three years alone :

• Sprint killed over 50% of the entire states coverage when they bought and killed Nextel
• T-Mobile killed a handful of (badly needed) sites when they bought and merged MetroPCS. GR metro area lost ~10% of it's AWS LTE coverage in that move
• Sprint is currently in the process of killing 20-or-so Clearwire sites.

knowing that the overwhelming majority of their subscriber base don't have L700 or VoLTE capable terminals. It would simply result in degradation of service and coverage gaps on GSM1900 and L2100 layers.

Sprint didn't care when customers lost Voice/Text coverage (Nextel), or data service (WiMax). T-Mobile didn't care when MetroPCS customers lost their LTE. Why should I assume anyone cares about service degradation today, when they consistently haven't previously?

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I know now that the new TMO map is scoped to Band 12, and doesn't represent combined coverage. I understand that it doesn't imply site removal, and I'm glad that is the case. I get it. And my initial question is fully answered.

But it's not like this is some unreasonable fear -- carriers kill sites all the time.  I'd love to live in some imaginary land where "Tier 1 wireless operators never consider removing sites". But since I live in the real world, and personally see sites disappear all the time, I don't think it's unreasonable to question that when I see them appear to be unaccounted for.

At Deutsche Telekom's 2015 Capital Markets Day event, T-Mobile detailed the full scope of the coverage expansion that is expected to finish this year in the presentation PDF

I'm glad about the expanded coverage (and the map for Michigan looks perfect.  Its not Verizon-level coverage by any means, but it's close enough that 98% of people here will have zero problems).

But Page 23 is concerning. Based on the Dallas example provided, it looks like they're planning to increase "coverage" using low-band, but do so by removing rural sites, and un-densifying the network.  (In the photo TMO provided, 35 / 35-W / 35-E from Hillsboro heading north. "Mid-band only" shows 7 cell sites. "LTE + Low band" shows only 4. Similar patterns are visible on all the freeways heading into the city).

I really hope that's just an artifact of band scoping (all 7 sites will remain, but not all necessarily run low-band) or just mid-network upgrade weirdness in the photo.

But if it's not -- if the removal of sites shown in their photo is an accurate reflection of their strategy -- that's a huge mistake.

Nothing still. What the heck!?

For what it's worth, I only just got the alert on my phone two minutes ago.

Might just have to wait a bit.

I do see Verizon getting faster and T-Mobile getting slower slightly on a national level. Verizon supposedly has this awful cell density from 850 CDMA yet they are faster over all on NetIndex.

That "awful 850 CDMA" density used to be true for Verizon. I don't think it is any longer.

At least, in Michigan they've gone on a huge spending spree. Verizon has split sites like crazy -- even where they don't need it. They have small cells all over the place now, even in suburban areas. They have slightly passed AT&T and T-Mobile and are now the most densely-spaced carrier in Grand Rapids metro.

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I think this density issue holds true for many markets. Except for areas where AT&T or T-Mobile have weirdness or lacking in their spectrum holdings -- cell site density almost directly correlates to data speed/reliability/performance in most markets. (It's telling that the markets where Spark is working well so far are the markets that Sprint historically already had decent site density. And many of the markets where Spark isn't helping also happen to be markets of poor-to-terrible site density.).

In my opinion, fixing the density problem is far more important than deploying new 2600 LTE. Obviously both are helpful -- but If I had to pick just one -- I'd much rather see brand new cell sites in urban/suburban areas, than new 2600 LTE on existing ones.

Which areas?

Grand Rapids Charter Township (NE suburbs), Gull Lake, Williamston are the standouts.

It's not a huge problem by any means. But in West Michigan, there's something like 4 to 10 MetroPCS sites in suburban / rural areas that T-Mobile really needs to use as full macro builds, but has (so far) only downgraded, from working AWS LTE to either 'no service/ no roaming' or EDGE only.

One of them on the list appears to have finally gotten converted a couple of weeks ago (West Rivertown, Grandville). But the others have been in this downgraded/decommissioned state now for roughly 12-18 months now.

didnt metro pcs have service in areas that t mobile didnt cover

Yes. TMO integrated those.

Most of the areas were integrated. A few were simply shut down, and are now no coverage / blocked roaming areas (so far).

Do T-Mobile calls hand over to different WiFi access points? I know they can do WiFi to LTE, but haven't seen WiFi to WiFi mentioned.

 

Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

Typically, no.

However, I think you could go WiFi to VoLTE and then back to a (different) WiFi network.

All in Grand Rapids?

Yes, all of the 700mhz sites I've seen so far have been in Grand Rapids.

I haven't been to Muskegon / Holland / Kalamazoo / Lansing for about 8 weeks now, so it's possible some of those have started on upgrades as well -- I can't speak to that just yet.

Is it a noticeable improvement over their existing LTE bands?  In other words, is it optimized in your market?

T-Mobile's 700mhz LTE here appears to get similar coverage / prorogation to Verizon / AT&T's 700mhz -- there's no noticeable difference in prorogation that I've observed. It's not like 800mhz LTE.

It's hard to tell if 700mhz is an improvement over their existing LTE in everyday use -- because all of the sites / areas they've picked to upgrade so far don't really have existing dead zones or coverage holes from their regular AWS network. (I'm almost never on 700mhz LTE, unless I force my Note 4 onto it).

But they've only converted probably 20% of the sites here, and they're all very urban. I'm waiting for them to upgrade some sites in areas where they have coverage gaps, to see if the lower band helps with that. (Particular on the NE side of town -- where they currently don't offer service at all)