How does T-Mobile's National Coverage stack up?

Well your coverage will definitely not be as strong as Verizon, but T-Mobile is solid in the metropolitan areas across the country. Their best areas are the NE corridor (along I-95) and parts of the West Coast where they piggyback on Cingular GSM towers. T-Mobile did what Sprint did: build the metro areas first and then connect the highways between the cities while branching out into suburbs. This means that you shouldn't expect much out of your phone if you go into more rural areas, or areas spread out between cities.

Also, there is no analog roaming with their phones. You either get GSM or nothing with them.

 

You'll probably get a mixed bag of responses as everyone's experience can vary. The general conception however is that in urban areas T-Mobile does well, but for rural areas Verizon does better.

 

If your company's travel is mostly major cities, major suburbs and major roads you will be fine. I had Tmobile for a year and traveled extensively with no problems whatsoever (except the phone clock not being set by the network, darn time zones)

 

If you like the coverage map on T-Mobile's website go with it. Their map is very accurate. If you need coverage, you'll have to go with an 800MHz provider like Cingular or Verizon.

 

Have Verizon at work......rural is not good in RI area. Many drop outs, loss of signal. T-Mobile is my personal phone and signal is strong with no drop outs yet.
Bluz

 

I don;t know what part of Rhode Island you live in Bluzjamer, But I totally disagree with your opinion on T- mobiles coverage compared to Verizons. I have both providers and I live in the southern part of R.I. and I commute daily throughout the state. All the travelling I do, no one and I repeat (no ones coverage) comes close to Verizons. T - Mobiles works great on the highways, but in the rural areas ! forget it ! Theres no way I would give up my coverage with Verizon and settle with just T- mobile, (maybe in a few years when their coverage gets better.)

 

I had a bad experience with them. I was given a deactivated Ericsson CF768 GSM phone from a friend that originally came from Omnipoint. Since I was going down to Tennessee for Thanksgiving, I decided I'd rather get a SIM card for that phone than pay 15 cents a minute plus daily roaming charges from Verizon (it cost me $4 to make one two-minute call just south of my home area).

I paid $53 for a SIM card and activated it with a 734 area code so a friend of mine could call me without incurring long distance fees. T-Mobile said it would work anywhere on their coverage map. I got down to Cincinnati and tried to call Knoxville to tell the family I'd be running late. As it turned out, my service was restricted. Lovely.

After spending ten minutes on hold to speak with someone who could barely speak English, I was politely told that there was no prepaid roaming until "sometime December". "When in December?", I asked. "I cannot tell you that, sir. All we know is prepaid roaming sometime December". Great. I just paid $53 non-refundable dollars for a SIM card that's useless for what I need it to do.

"Is there anything else I can help you with today, sir?"
"Well, ya haven't really helped me at all, so I guess not."

Long story longer, I got back to the place I bought the SIM card from prepared to bludgeon the guy senseless with my original 1991 Motorola Pulsar brick phone. It seems that since the Ericsson CF768 was such an old phone, it couldn't deal with the GSM equivalent of preferred roaming lists, whose acronym escapes me at the moment. I guess if you're concerned with the east coast and Texas, you'd better make sure the phones you get will actually work anywhere the maps show coverage outside of your home area. I was all sorts of not happy with them, but I guess most of the problem was probably my old equipment. Oh well.

As far as coverage with T-Mobile versus Verizon, I tended to have better signal strength with Verizon. There just seemed to be many more holes in T-Mobile's network when I compared the Ericsson phone with my old Samsung SCH-411, especially in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. This was also true along I-94, I-96, I-75, US-23, and US-127, though there were a few areas where the reverse was true. HTH.

 

Hey Buzz, who is your local Telco?

 

IRDB. International Roaming Database.

 

A lot of coverage issues can be the phone and not the service provider. Try using Verizon with a Kyocera 2035 and you would get terrable coverage. With an LG VX10: great coverage.

 

For TDMA = IRDB (Intelligent Roaming Database)
For GSM = NSDB (Network Selection Database)
For CDMA = PRL (Preferred Roaming List)

Three different names for the same thing