Difference in coverage between prepaid & contract?

For native network coverage there is no difference. The only difference is that billed service has more places that you can roam. T-Mobile prepaid will not always roam when there is no native T-Mobile network though it does sometimes.

 

I realize I'm replying to an old thread. Where T-Mobile now has daily and monthly no-contract postpaid and prepaid plans, would any roaming coverage change based on the plan?

I could see the prepaid PAYG plan not having much domestic roaming, but if someone is on one of the no-contract plans, I could see domestic roaming being comparable to monthly contract plans.

 

T-Mobile is playing games with names. They call their prepaid service the no contract service now, but it's still prepaid, Easy Talk or T-Mobile To Go under the hood.

 

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In my opinion, no contract sounds more professional.

Going back a few years, there was a city in Maine where the maps indicated roaming coverage at the outskirts of their airport. Since then, they have built out and the area has native coverage now. Somewhat east of there, there is roaming coverage and both the regular and prepaid coverage maps display that exact same roaming coverage.

 

In my opinion it's all that stuff that comes out of the rear end of a bull. Prepaid has a stigma attached to it of deadbeats and ne'er do wells. That's why carriers use silly names.

 

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I probably would not call it a stigma. More recently, it seems that the carriers are reporting more new prepaid customers each quarter, than contract customers.

 

The fact is though that wireless operators make lots less money on prepaid than they do on billed service generally though now that there are lots of prepaid "monthly" plans it can be a wash.