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Anyone Use T-Mobile?

cygrads

cygrads

Well-Known Member
Jul 27, 2007
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Altoona, IA
We are thinking of switching from Verizon to T-Mobile and were wondering how coverage was in central Iowa and also throughout the U.S. T-Mobile has a 55 and over plan that will provide more service for much less money - roughly $30 less per month. It looks like their coverage is good but want to see if anyone could provide real life experience. TIA!
 
We just switched to T-Mobile, literally cut family bill in half. Started out a little rocky, our first day was the day of their well-publicized national outage, but has been good since. I recently drove from Colorado Springs to Cedar Rapids. I lost coverage on some of the side roads when I was jutting up to I-80 from I-70 in rural Kansas and Nebraska. But other than that it's been really solid and I'm glad we switched.
 
cygrads said:
We are thinking of switching from Verizon to T-Mobile and were wondering how coverage was in central Iowa and also throughout the U.S. T-Mobile has a 55 and over plan that will provide more service for much less money - roughly $30 less per month. It looks like their coverage is good but want to see if anyone could provide real life experience. TIA!
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Tmobile is spotty in ankeny and down town des moines, overall decent in the metro. Anywhere outside of the metro, it gets sketchy.

I'd wait another year until tmobile gets sprint fully integrated and the 600hz band in iowa fully up and running - should be fantastic when that happens.
 
I went to T-Mobile.

Very few issues. Even worked in the middle of absolute no man's land. Had to detour and it didn't let me down in the Southwest

It doesn't work very well in my office, but I wonder if they're slowing it down on me
 
I use the prepaid plan, Metro by T-Mobile, which I assume uses the same towers as the other T-Mobile packages. I've used it mostly in east-central Iowa, along Highway 30 to Ames, driven to Texas and back, and flown to NY with it and not had any issues or large dead spots that I can recall.
 
Generally no issue here in the Twin Cities except for couple of weeks ago when they had nationwide problems.
 
I've been on sprint for several years now so I guess now that means I have T-Mobile? Never really had any issue on the Sprint side unless you're in the middle of nowhere.
 
mramseyISU said:
I've been on sprint for several years now so I guess now that means I have T-Mobile? Never really had any issue on the Sprint side unless you're in the middle of nowhere.
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Also, if you attend the Big 12 Tournament in Kansas City you will now be attending it at the T-Mobile Center.
 
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T-Mobile? You mean T-Maybe. As in maybe going to have service. I got T-Mobile because I was going to be in Europe for an extended period of time and it was great to have as I was jumping around countries. I always had enough service to use WhatsApp or get directions but once I got back to the states I couldn't stand the lack of internet speed. Had to make the jump back to Verizon.
 
T-Mobile is great. Have been on it forever and have no issues with it in Iowa or anywhere else. The best part is going overseas and booting up and getting instant access like you are at home without extra fees / charges. I have used it easily in South Africa, Australia, Ireland, Scotland and Quebec! Oh, the 55 and over plan is the bomb diggity too!
 
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If you are looking for the best value in wireless, switch to Total Wireless which is a prepaid MVNO for Verizon. We pay $60 per month for 2 lines, unlimited talk and text, and 30 gig of high speed LTE data per month (switches to 2G speed for the rest of month after that but we barely use half the 30 gigs per month). We have been on it for 3 years now and haven't looked back. The coverage in Iowa is excellent even in rural parts and the national coverage is way better than I was getting for the postpaid US Cellular service we had before and almost half the price. The only thing is there are no subsidized phones but if you have your current carrier unlock your phone and it is CDMA capable (all Verizon phones for example) then it is compatible with Total Wireless. PM me if you have any questions.
 
will be interested to see how this merger goes... previously have heard "ok" things about T-mobile... and experience with sprint was it sucks everywhere... currently have US cellular and pay about $147 a month for 2 lines, but it's the best service around so far from my experience across the US.
 
CysRage said:
If you are looking for the best value in wireless, switch to Total Wireless which is a prepaid MVNO for Verizon. We pay $60 per month for 2 lines, unlimited talk and text, and 30 gig of high speed LTE data per month (switches to 2G speed for the rest of month after that but we barely use half the 30 gigs per month). We have been on it for 3 years now and haven't looked back. The coverage in Iowa is excellent even in rural parts and the national coverage is way better than I was getting for the postpaid US Cellular service we had before and almost half the price. The only thing is there are no subsidized phones but if you have your current carrier unlock your phone and it is CDMA capable (all Verizon phones for example) then it is compatible with Total Wireless. PM me if you have any questions.
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my experience with verizon is it is very spotty, especially NE and southern Iowa.. our provided work phones on verizon have sat basically dead in our desks for the last few months because of how worthless they are up here. I would really like to save costs on cell phones but have yet to actually find anything better for service.
 
motorcy90 said:
my experience with verizon is it is very spotty, especially NE and southern Iowa.. our provided work phones on verizon have sat basically dead in our desks for the last few months because of how worthless they are up here. I would really like to save costs on cell phones but have yet to actually find anything better for service.
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I can't speak for southern or far NE rural Iowa but everywhere else I have been we have not lost service (Eastern Iowa from Davenport and Dubuque down to Cedar Rapids, central Iowa, northern Iowa from Mason City to Fort Dodge, and western Iowa Sioux City and all areas in between have all been good). You are right, US Cellular is king in Iowa but when we had them as soon as you leave the Midwest we had poor data speeds even in large metropolitan such as Orlando and San Antonio. In my opinion, US Cellular is a great regional carrier in Iowa who charges national prices for subpar service nearly everywhere outside of Iowa.
 
T mobile has been solid for me in DSM and Ames, but you might want to try the T mobile free 30 day hotspot trial before switching over.

https://www.t-mobile.com/offers/free-trial

Also, Visible resells verizon network at much better prices. It's seems kinda sketchy at first, but you can get $25/mo if you sign up on a "party plan" with four total people. Every person has their own account so you're not responsible for the other people. Their site has this explanation: "Don’t know three other people? You can even find some Internet randos who’d love to save some cash with you."

https://www.visible.com/plan
 
If you travel in the top tier of counties in Iowa or into Southern Minnesota, you would have more success with two cups and a string than T mobile. Even their towers seem to be bad. Been within a hundred yards of a couple and they still dropped my calls. I left them.
 
We just switched about a month ago and so far no issues here in NW Arkansas other than their techs made a couple of screw-ups in making the switch but that's taken care of now.

Coverage so far seems to be good, no issues, and the money we saved by dropping AT&T and going with T-mobile was insane. We cut our monthly bill by more than half. Also as others have mentioned, we went with them because of their international plan since we go to the Philippines often.

So far it seems to be the smart move for us in several aspects, no regrets at all.
 
We had cricket wireless for the wife’s personal phone for awhile until we decided to get gizmos for the kids, then we flipped to Verizon. Cricket seemed to work really well for what we needed and at the time was the cheapest option (not to mention if we added phones the plan wasn’t that much more). Once we flip the kids to have phones instead of gizmos we’ll probably look at all of our options.
 
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