T-Mobile Chicago

[tcdrake]

Looking to change service providers from ATT (too costly). How is T-Mobile in downtown Chicago and the greater Chicago land area?

Thanks.

[gsm1121]

service in downtown chicago is great for t-mobile, but dont get the motorola t193

[tcdrake]

Thanks for the info....Have you used the service any where else besides downtown?

[blueaura]

My roommate has T-Mobile and has been getting good coverage. It works well in our neighborhood (Wrigleyville), which has historically not been the best area for wireless coverage. He's only had problems in his building at work (in Evanston).

[ljh]

The only dead spot I've found is in Highland Park.

[bobt]

I live in Evanston and work there too (on the Northwestern University campus). I find that T-Mobile coverage here is excellent. I lose my signal when I am in the very center of big buildings on campus (e.g. the Library). But that's due to the building infrastructure---I actually get a slightly better signal in these buildings now with t-Mobile than I did with my previous carrier (Cingular).

[BMW5]

Really good coverage all over pretty much. I have actually had a better experience with T-Mobile in the Chicago area than with Verizon...and I was comparing the T720 from Verizon directly with the T720i from T-Mobile. I had both at the same time and in places where Verizon had NO signal at all, the T-Mobile phone would often have 5 bars! I am now able to use the phone in my Wrigleyville/Lakeview apartment, the house in the suburbs, and all over the Loyola Campus whereas I could not often with Verizon.

[cryogenic]

Just out of curiosity... Was chicago launched as an Aerial, Omnipoint, or Voicestream market? Voicestream, before they became T-mobile, bought up quite a few GSM systems around the nation and re-branded them Voicestream. Ones I know of right off hand: Omnipoint, Aerial, Sprint Spectrum (Washington DC), Powertel, DigiPH, and one in middle PA that I can't remember the name of right off-hand. Anyway, my point is that some markets were actually originally launched as Voicestream... others were launched by the other companies and subsequently absorbed into VS (later T-mobile).

[Matt]

Chicago was a VS market. The central PA market was PCSOne, which Omnipoint (later VS) always owned 50%; they acquired the other 50% last year.

[cryogenic]

Matt, from your experience, which markets do you think have the best rep for being well built-out? Markets that were formerly launched as Powertel, Omnipoint, Aerial, or Voicestream? Also, Cincinnati seems to have awesome coverage... was that a former Aerial market? and what about Houston, TX? Coverage looks to be quite good there, too. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

[med1]

T-Mobile sound and signal are much much better then Sprint around Chicago, has more GSM coverage then AT&T and sounds better then TDMA AT&T.

I use it mostly in thewest suburbs and downtown.

[kmahesh]

I am in the process of moving to NorhtWestern Suburbs in Chicago and T-mobile has been on my mind for a long time. I was worried about the coverage as their site is very poor on the coverage map for Illinois. It is not detail enough.

Thanks for all the input.

I am considering buying Treo 180 or 270. 270 is really expensive. If color is the only thing I will be missing in 180, I guess 180 will do most of the things as 270, right? Any comments on these phones?

Thanks

[u340860]

i am from phoenix and last october i visited my former roommate in the chicago area. at the time i was with sprint and my signal kept cutting out. all the calls i made from atop the sears tower were dropped! but my roommate, who is with t-mobile, always had a strong signal. not only downtown but also in the western suburbs like schaumburg and west dundee.

[Helix]

kmahesh

I don't know too much about the Treo, but the Palm OS is great. I recentlyjust bought the new T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition and couldn't be happier to have both my phone and PDA finally combined.[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

[Binker]

I'm new to this forum, so I'm not sure I've picked the right place to post/reply. My apologies if I've chosen the wrong place to ask this question. I will be switching to a new carrier soon, since my current carrier offers only local service. I live in Kalamazoo, MI (yes, there really is a Kalamazoo) and want to move to nationwide/international carrier. I do a fair amount of taveling, with about 40% of that travel in rural areas, 45% metro, and 15% to Asia. So far I have seen that T-Mobile is mainly localized to larger cities, near interstates. I'm hearing more about Alltel, and see from their maps that they appear to have substantial U.S. coverage. Of course, I also hear a lot about Verizon, both from the TV ads as well as some colleagues. Then there's Nextel which has proliferated my area. All that said, I want to ask the age-old cellular question- which provider would best meet my needs regarding coverage, service, phone quality?

Bink

[Shizam76]

Maybe the north/west burbs of Chicago are good for T-Mobile, but EVERYWHERE else is not. Be cautious. If you plan to travel to the south suburbs, or anywhere else for that matter, expect "No Service". Take a look at the map: T-Mobile Chicago

South of Joliet, be on the highway or else. Someone's phone I saw in Wilmington, IL said "No Service"
That's right, they were not even roaming......Just No service. That is scary. This tells me that this is not a dependable company

[aiwapro]

Originally posted by: shizam76 Maybe the north/west burbs of Chicago are good for T-Mobile, but EVERYWHERE else is not. Be cautious. If you plan to travel to the south suburbs, or anywhere else for that matter, expect "No Service". Take a look at the map: T-Mobile Chicago South of Joliet, be on the highway or else. Someone's phone I saw in Wilmington, IL said "No Service" That's right, they were not even roaming......Just No service. That is scary. This tells me that this is not a dependable company

Don't post if you don't know what the h*ll you're talking about. If you knew the GSM technology, then you would understand the roaming, but obviously you don't; That has nothing to do with the depndability of the company.

[med1]

<FONT face=Arial>
It must be a miracle that I get service in the west and south suburbs or is that tower that T-Mobile installed on my cars trunk. T-Mobile has good service all around the ChicagoLand area and not just in the north. Stop saying things that are just not true.</FONT>

[Shizam76]

"No Service" is not roaming to me, I don't know what it means to you, but I do know you can't make any calls while you have No Service(Ooops.....I mean while you are roaming)

I'm just telling you what I saw, that's all.

[med1]

You have to understand that pure GSM has no such thing as analog backup, secondly T-Mobile or any other GSM carrier has virtually no GSM roaming agreements in the Chicago area. T-Mobile does roam on Einstein in Wis and thats about all the T-Mobile roaming that I know off.

Cingular and AT&T with GAIT will fall back on analog and TDMA for now in the Chicago area (Cingular has not officially gone GSM here yet, but is selling GAIT phones).

Yes T-Mobile does have a analog/roaming problem but it's not like you can not make a phone call in Chicago, hell it's still better then Sprint and it's analog roaming at zillion $'s a minute around and sometimes in Chicago City proper.

[cocoagirl]

Hello all, I am new to this site. I am searching for a new wireless carrier in Chi, I'm currently with Sprint which is absolutely horrible and I am totally turned off by them. Anywho, it sounds like people have been having success with T-mobile on this thread. Looking on t-mobile's web site, they have several phones that you can get for free if you sign up. I did some searches on these phones namely the Nokia 3390 and the Motoral C332 and have read mixed reviews but both 80% negative. I really do not want to spend money on a phone (call me cheap) but don't mind perhaps spending up to $50 if I have too. My question is, for those of you who have t-mob...what phone are you using and how is it working for you? I hope I am posting this question in the correct area. I currently have an SHC 3500 Samsung and I can't begin to tell you the heartache I have had with it, I am trying to avoid going through that again!!!

t-i-a

[med1]

I had Sprint and the SCH 3500, the phone and the service was garbage. I got AT&T GSM and T68, the phone was so so and GSM had launched a week before I got it so the coverage was spotty and lot of dropped calls (maybe due to the newness of AT&T's GSM service). I paid for both the SCH3500 and T68. I then got a chance to cancel my AT&T contract without penalty because the night time changed from 8pm to 9pm. I also was able to cancel my Sprint contract without penalty after the I complained to the FCC.

I then got T-Mobile and 2 free 3390's on the Family plan.

I LOVE IT

[Facci]

I am a Sprint user and have used ATT, Voicestream, US Cellular, Nextel, and Cingular. I have had as many problems with Sprint as I had with any of the other carriers. I have the same number of dropped calls with Sprint as all the others, Get real people, it's CELLULAR! If you don't want dropped calls than get a landline phone. I have a buddy with Tmobile and travel around the Chicagoland area with him and a lot of the time he doesn't have a signal or gets a very weak signal so he has to use my terrible Sprint phone. He is seriously considering switching to Sprint also. Actually with the unlimited Vision with Sprint(which is included with my monthly fee) and my Treo 300 I have convinced many people to switch to Sprint. You know for as much as people biatch about Sprint I'm sure I can find as many people that biatch about Tmobile and all the other carriers, not to mention the number of people that praise Sprint.

[cocoagirl]

Originally posted by: med1 I paid for both the SCH3500 and T68. I then got a chance to cancel my AT&T contract without penalty because the night time changed from 8pm to 9pm. I also was able to cancel my Sprint contract without penalty after the I complained to the FCC. I then got T-Mobile and 2 free 3390's on the Family plan. I LOVE IT

@med- Thx for the reply. Do tell, how did you go about complaining to the FCC, via letter, phone call? and what was the basis of your complaint? Same with AT&T, did they not tell you that the night time minutes changed? If it worked for you then I might give it a try, cuz $175 is a lot to cancel the b-s service and phone that I have!

[med1]

AT&T was simple, they sent a letter stating the terms of my contract were changing (9PM nights instead of 8PM) and I had 30 days to not accept the new terms and cancel without any penalties.

Sprint I had to complain, and complain to Sprint. After two phone swaps I went to FCC's web site and complained. (FCC.GOV) This prompted a surprise call FROM Sprint. They gave me 2 months of free service while they sorted out the network issue they supposidly had in Chicago and the option to cancel afterwards without any penalty.

I had documented every call time, visit to Sprint stores, highlighted dropped calls (where the call would start-end and then start again for the same number i had called to begin with). In my case documenting dropped calls was easy since they happened all the time.

All I asked the FCC to do was get me out of the contract and I would eat the cost of the phone, which I did recover because of the two free months. Actually some of it because the service was still bad and kept getting dropped calls, roaming in the middle of downtown Chicago, etc.

PS: They also gave me 50 free roaming minutes because I kept roaming in Chicago proper.

[Facci]

med1, I was wondering when you had this trouble with Sprint? I am no tech but it could have been the phone. I got a phone for my nanny from US Cellular and she was having the same problem with the phone roaming all the time, when I called up US Cellular they said the phone was programmed wrong and walked me thru re-programming the phone and bingo, it works fine now. Like I said for the past 7 months my wife and I haven't had but a couple dropped calls with Sprint.

[med1]

This was last year and Sprint did swap the phone twice.

[100thMonkey]

go with Cingular SuperHome plans. Cingular is going to use GSM 850 here in the future. When GSM 850 goes live, get the Sony Ericsson T616. Sounds cool right, GSM phones are the best.

check it out, Cingular GSM preferred nation plans roam on T-Mo in Chicago
link to coverage map

[aiwapro]

That's alot of work to do, and then to ask someone to buy another phone, that's even more work.

The person should just get T-Mobile, who Cingular roams off of anyways, and even when/if Cingular does launch 850, T-Mobile's 1900MHz coverage will still be just ask thick as Cingular's 850 MHz.

[Kenster]

Yes there is truth to that. A well built 1900Mhz network will do just as well as 1900/850Mhz mix. There are some places with ATT that have the GSM 1900 overlay and it just doesn't have "thick" coverage because the original area was mapped out with TDMA 1900 + 800. If you perform only a GSM 1900 overlay then your network coverage will be like swiss cheese - because of the greater distances that TDMA 800 could provide. On the other hand, if you build and design your network solely from 1900Mhz in mind, you can do just as well as a 1900/800 combo.

However, the 800/850Mhz GSM is an advantage to ATT/Cingular because this is what is being used way out in cow country.

My question is this -- Tmobile is roaming on Cingular in CA, NC and SC? Is Cingular purely 1900Mhz everywhere in these 3 states? What if they have stretches of 850Mhz coverage that T-mobile users can utilize?