T-Mobile Coverage

[Community Alumni]

What has your experience been with T-Mobile as you travel around? How is the coverage along the highways, semi-rural and rural areas?

We travel extensively and have been very satisfied with Verizon coverage, however, our Verizon plan offers little in terms of data and increasing it is pricey for our overall needs.

T-Mobile offers some decent plans that will allow us to get considerably more data for the same amount of money we currently spend with Verizon.

I don't want to take the plunge and find out when we hit the road I made a big mistake.

Thanks in advance for sharing your experience.

[wa8yxm]

I will give you two answers
In days of old (last year) Going from Davison Mi to St.Clair Township (I-94 and Waddams) I had a few drop outs.. I stream WTWW.US transmitter 2 while driving (My favorite on the road radio) or WRCJFM.ORG (Classical radio) so I notice the drop outs.. Same when moving from Fair Play SC to Seneca or Pendelton. Alas I don't do that any more. Same when moving from MI to SC (Also no longer doing that)

When Traveling to Elkhart I had places where my T-Moble was 0.0 and Sprint was 99 or better (on a scale of 100) in fact the data speed on Sprint broke the speedometer.

Now this year. Sprint and T-mobile have merged.. I no longer drive the Motor home to St. Clair from Davison. but I do drive the car to Port Huron (The very end of I-94/69) and no dropouts.

[Community Alumni]

I had an opportunity to take my T-Mobile phone for a 400 miles "test drive" around AZ, CA and NV. Our drive took us through mostly small towns and hamlets in the desert and the coverage was mostly good. As expected with all carriers, there were a few spots along desolate areas where there was no signal. The phone also worked well in Death Valley, although data was 3G and some pages did take long to load and others did not load. Note: T-Mobile is in a partnership with other operators in some of the areas we traveled. At times, the phone said were were connected to USA Connect.

[wa8yxm]

Over the last 2 days and several years I've made a few observations. This specifically covers I-69 in Michigan between flint and Port Huron (Blue water bridge)

As of as recently as last summer when I'd make that trip every 2 weeks with the motor home there were several "Dead spots" t-mobile wise. (I stream WTWW.US-transmitter 2 when traveling)

last two days, now that they claim they have FULLY merged Sprint towers in, I had to make the trip twice in my car for Medical reasons.. NOT ONE DROP. I did have a couple spots where it seemed to pause for oh. perhaps half a second. but it did not drop (I assume tower hand offs).

So.. Very pleased with the new coverage

[T18skyguy]

I have T mobile for about 6 years now, and the only place I couldn't get a signal was the beach in Oregon. It's been a couple years so it might be better now. The point made above about a flip phone as a back up is a good one. A flip phone needs only one tower when a smartphone needs two to function. My daughters flip phone worked at the beach when my smartphone wouldn't.

[mtofell1]

I've had Tmobile for the last 10+ years and within the last few years things have gotten far better than they used to be. I was regularly the butt of jokes from ATT/Verizon friends in the past but it's pretty much even now. Every carrier seems to have dead spots but I have no more than anyone else. For the money I'm very pleased with Tmobile.

[pconroy328]

gemsworld wrote:
Thanks everyone for your feedback. It appears T-Mobile has better coverage than before, but not to the level of Verizon.

T-Mobile is offering a device similar to a MiFi for a 30-day free trial period that allows you to connect any cell phone to it so you can see how T-Mobile works in your area. They even give you 30 gigs of data.

Mint Mobile is also running on the T-Mobile/Sprint networks. It's on my to-do list to grab an old phone, and try one of their SIM cards. $15 a month seems like the cheapest way to check coverage.

We travel almost exclusively west from here. Wyoming, MT, UT, ID, AZ, NM, CA, NV...

For us, ATT has had the most coverage (Most, not necessarily the best), VZ has been second. We haven't tried T-Mobile, but the general consensus is that their coverage isn't as good as the other two.

I hear if you head East, VZ becomes more of the dominant coverage vendor.

[Community Alumni]

Thanks everyone for your feedback. It appears T-Mobile has better coverage than before, but not to the level of Verizon.

T-Mobile is offering a device similar to a MiFi for a 30-day free trial period that allows you to connect any cell phone to it so you can see how T-Mobile works in your area. They even give you 30 gigs of data.

[Gdetrailer]

I would recommend looking at the tower maps before taking the plunge especially if you are going to be in a rural area..

THIS LINK will take you to a interactive tower map.

You can see where the towers are for Verizon, ATT, Sprint and T-Mobile in relation to where the address you put in.

For my area, I have to drive 20 minutes south west to get close enough to Sprint or T mobile towers and there is only three towers.. We ended up on ATT because ATT has more towers (more coverage) in our area..

From what I have been able to figure out is the best coverage is between Verizon and ATT over all, T-mobile and Sprint coverage is more in large cities than rural..

[bgum]

We had T-Mobile once. Had to go to the back corner of our property to get a signal. Took it back to the store for a full refund. Have been a Verizon customer since.

[wa8yxm]

With the merger of T-mobile with Sprint it's very very good. I still get occasional small dead spots but few and far between compared to the Omnipoint days..

[riah]

We live in upstate NY, in the Capital region, and T-Mobile is fine in the populated areas, but not so great outside of the more populated areas. We also find that to be the case when driving from Ny to Fl, when going through the mountainous and rural regions, there’s no signal or it’s very weak.
We also had a lot of issues when we went to Iowa for a wedding a couple years back. We now have a basic Tracphone flip phone for emergencies as a backup since it tends to have better coverage where the tmobile smartphones don’t seem to have a very usable signal. (As we didn’t have the flip phone in Iowa Im not sure how well it would work there.)
Our T-Mobile plan is a grandfathered plan, so it’s relatively reasonable for us as we don’t usually go above our 4gb quota (but that might change once we start traveling full time since we won’t have tor cable internet service, which I’m sure is significantly higher in data usage, especially since we’ve retired this past Fall.)
We have also been considering an additional AT&T data service for either our truck or another cell phone plan, as a backup for our T-Mobile plan for instance when there’s a dead cell signal and data dead zones once we start full timing.

[time2roll]

Been with T for 10+ years. Coverage seems at least as good as others.
As far as navigation data... as long as you start with coverage it will make the destination.
And yes there are some places without coverage. Same as all carriers.

[Acampingwewillg]

We've had T mobile for a number of years now...there 55+ plan works great although I did opt to get a Verizon account via Visible as long as I can keep at the 25.00 per month. I've been pretty fortunate to keep it at that price which is also unlimited.( As much as any so called unlimited plan is.)

[TurnThePage]

I too have been a Sprint customer for a very long time. Here in the inland northwest it's been great, but it has let me down in out of the way places like around the Salton Sea. I was looking forward to T-Mobile, but am leery. There are some known dead spots around my neck of the woods in the Spokane/Coeur d'Alene area.