thinking of moving from Verizon to T-mobile

[randy]

For 4 years I have had a family plan with Verizon, primarily because my son was in the marine corp, and we found verizon to have the best coverage on the bases Ryan was stationed at.

 

Ryan has now moved permanently to Fort Collins, CO and T-mobile is huge in that market. Plus Ryan really likes the idea of buying phones and being able to activate them with a SIM card.

 

However I live down in Atlanta, GA, and ride all around TN, NC, WV, SC and GA. So for those that have T-mobile and have riddend to BRR events and in these area's how has your reception been?

 

I would like to stay with Ryan (95% of my calls are with him) but not at the risk of losing a major amount of reception in my favorite riding area's.

[Richard_D]

You're breaking up, what did you say ?

[steve.foote]

What Richard said. T-mobile is almost useless outside of the metro areas.

[beemerboy]

I live about 90 miles south of Ft. Collins and had T-Mobile for about seven years before switching to Verizon. I got tired of dropped calls, dead zones, and bizarre signal issues. I'm quite pleased with Verizon and would never go back to T-Mobile.

[Mike]

I've got T-Mobile on my office Blackberry. It's actually reasonably good wherever I travel in the Midwest, but the coverage is not as extensive as Verizon's.

[ghaverkamp]

I think it's fair, based on what I've seen, that where T-Mobile is good, they're pretty good. It's just that they're not good in many places.

 

My sister just went T-Mobile because they're the only carrier with strong signal at her office. I had nothing on Verizon. Meanwhile, in the Bay Area, T-Mobile is even worse than AT&T, which I didn't think was possible. (Meanwhile, around my folks in the Kansas City area, my AT&T signal was always stronger than my Verizon signal.)

[Twisties]

I think it's fair, based on what I've seen, that where T-Mobile is good, they're pretty good.

 

I was thinking the opposite. Coming off of t-mobile, although we had a strong signal at the house, and excellent regional coverage, I was really tired of dropped calls and poor sound quality.

 

ATT, for all that it is maligned, has maybe dropped one call on me in 4 months. T-Mobile dropped nearly every call over ten minutes. My poor dad who has a moderately hard time hearing could never understand me on T-Mobile and has no problem at all with ATT.

 

Most likely it depends a lot where you are.

[ghaverkamp]

Most likely it depends a lot where you are.

 

I think that's pretty much what I said, in fact.

[Twisties]

Most likely it depends a lot where you are.

 

I think that's pretty much what I said, in fact.

 

Yes, that's two touchés in two days now. Next thing I know they'll find out about my cheese and call me French.

[Joel]

I'll admit I don't know jack about SIM cards, but I do know that my Verizon service in northern Colorado has been rock-solid for more that 4 years, and I get signal in plenty of places that Sprint, AT&T and Tmo can't. I give that a much higher priority than any phone hardware (although I admit I covet the iPhone and reallyreallyreally want Verizon to get it, like yesterday already).

[RevRay]

I admit I covet the iPhone and reallyreallyreally want Verizon to get it, like yesterday already).

 

+1

[randy]

that is one of the features of T-mobile, just buy an I-phone and you can use it on t-mobile. Most of the young (read recently graduated) kids in my office are on t-mobile and all use I-phones.

 

Yea I am having a hard time convincing Ryan that the call quality and dependability of verizon far outweighs the occassional phone hardware issues.

 

however recently, Ryan had a phone go bad, and so did his best friend. Ryan was not eligible for a new phone upgrade so phone cost was around 299.00. His friend went on craigslist for fort collins, bought a 20.00 flip phone, used it for 2 months until he was eligible for upgrade and then upgraded. That has now happend twice to Ryan in the last year. Ryan had one phone for all 3 years of his Marine Corp tour. Never a problem. Since then his last two Verizon phones have died in around 10 months. Ryan just feels like verizon no longer has the dependable hardware. So that is driving this change. I really do not want to change, but cannot find a smartphone, offered by Verizon, that seems to get good reviews for standing up to hard use. Were as the T-mobile HTC-G2 phone is metal and get's (generally) very good reviews for being rugged.

 

thanks for all the feedback.

[randy]

also one other very big issue, I forgot to mention is, I want a smartphone (in the old day PDA style) to synch to outlook on my pc. I do not want a data plan. Even if I buy a used phone, Verizon requires that you buy a data plan to add a smartphone to your account. T-mobile, if you have a phone, you can add it, with no data plan. That saves me around 250.00 per year. so that was a big reason I was looking at T-mobile.