T-Mobile now has the FEWEST DROPPED CALLS!

That's New England, not "New Angland".

The last time I checked, PA is not part of New England. New England consists of ME, NH, VT, MA, RI and CT.

Based on personal experience, having used Cingular (canceled September 2006 after 10 years), T-Mobile and Verizon, I've experienced the least amount of dropped calls with T-Mobile.

Since having Verizon service (including starting out on prepaid, then postpay), I have had close to 25 dropped calls so far.

In the over two years that I have had T-Mobile service (including starting out on prepaid with them, then switching to postpay), I can count the number of dropped calls on one hand.

Regarding Cingular, when I called to cancel, the rep. tried to talk me out of it, thinking that he can get me on a better plan. I believe he failed to notice in the computer that I was on a monthly plan costing $10.99/month... :loony:

 

wow that was a major spelling mistake..............

i guess New England as well as Pennsylvania and Ohio and Maryland.......you know most of the NE states.....

i prolli got around 1 dropped call every 2-3 months at the most........sometimes i wouldnt get any in that time period.......

 

Coverage in CA/NV is pretty good... I took a trip to Oregon last year and took the Golden State Fwy (I-5) the entire way--no problems except mild echo in the San Joaquin Valley, and a drop-out for about 2mi travelling through the Siskieu Mountains.

One thing I can say has kept me w/ T-Mobile and has nothing to do w/ coverage is their customer serivice--it's based in North America (no "Bob" in New Dehli) so I can understand who I'm talking to, they're very nice, and open 24/7. My friend has Cingular and complains about "Bob" every time he's had to call Cingular.

I objectively tried Sprint PCS a few months ago and although the service/coverage was good in my area, they screwed up on the very first billing and overcharged me A LOT. "Bob" in Sprint Customer Care was so not helpful and insisted I pay the entire balance up-front. I returned both phones and kept my T-Mobile line out of contract. Thank god I didn't port my # over. ::whew::

 

yeah tmobile is the best company but that do have a lot of catching up to do with technology........i heard that they were supposed to announce UMTS plans today because of all the money they spent in the FCC auction....

 

That they did....
http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/06/t-mobile-details-3g-plans/

 

this is a really big dive for Deutsche Telekom to spend that much money on airspace and then plan to spend another 2-3 billion dollars on the buildout.........btw that planned year of completed buildout seems to good to be true......we are on top of 2007 and they think that they can finish a UMTS buildout in 2 years..........maybe im underestimating the workers but i thought that it would take much longer than that.......


then there is the issue of no handsets that work with the frequency thats available to them........thats a pretty big tree in the road.........in fact it could be house depending on the way you looked at it

 

Any good German company employs top notch engineering, I'm sure the network planning is being handled by Deutsche's T, which has a big advantage over the planners for the big 3 here in the states, they have a much much much larger coverage area and more experience. Tower construction and Installation isn't really that big of a deal, there are a multitude of contractors for every region, if they play their cards right, I would say they stand a good chance of meeting their goal.

 

i guess too many people underestimate the power of foreign cellular companies.......after all they did have cellular telecommunications before we did........its good to consider that they do probably have more experience than the other compnaies that are based here in the U.S. are

 

Thing you need to contemplate as well, Deutsche Telekom, has a large network, not only in germany, but over a vast area in Europe. They have done massive deployment before, and the time frame in europe is always smaller than in the states.

 

TM has been working on the UMTS network for almost a year, they aren't just starting now. Also, they have operational UMTS networks in Germany already so they have experience to build on.

 

Exactly, plus remember GSM and UMTS are primarily European and Japanese technologies that T-Mobile was a part of developing at some point, I'm sure this also adds to it.

I must admit I'm very intrigued to see what T-Mobile will do over the next 5 to 10 years with their network, I'm thinking we could be seeing a major threat to the big 3 shortly.

 

exactly wat i wanted to point out...........DT has experience with UMTS over their entire European network......so this should just be the next challenge to build on their mad crazy skills...........

yeah everyone looks at T-Mobile like a little child....there just a late bloomer.......they'll have a growth spurt and no one will see it coming

 

T-Mobile has added a lot of cellsites to DE in the last few years. They probably have the densest network in Wilmington, but Cingular is adding a lot (850 too). However, they are still lacking in more rural areas. If Sprint PCS can cover my house (along with everyone else), then T-Mobile really needs to focus on some roaming in locations or building out more. Of course, T-Mobile covers areas Sprint doesn't too.

 

and from experience in my area i know that call quality is significantly better with T-Mobile than with Sprint and the amount of dropped calls is fewer with T-Mobile as well

 

Is that becuase of the use of strictly the 1900mhz spectrum, or the actual overlay of the network?

 

well you see......companies like Verizon and Cingular have been around long enough that when they were first formed they were able to get liscenses for the 850 band....i dont believe the FCC is giving out any more licenses for this band so most of the companies except for Verizon and Cingular are restricted to 1900 MhZ because that is the only frequency that the FCC is giving licenses for.........

but like I said...recently the FCC had a license auction and T-Mobile received full licinsing for the 1700 and 2100 MhZ bands so they have the freedom to "spread out" data wise and in their caller capacity...........there is only one problem......with all of the experience that Deutsche Telekom has in UMTS.....all the UMTS handsets that are available are tuned to a variation of the frequencies (the ones that UMTS runs on over in Japan and in Europe) that T-Mobile is licensed for..........so they needs to wait for handset manufacturing companies to come out with handsets that work with this specific band

 

Ok thanx for the info that really helps. It shouldn't be too long for them to come out with the phones, no? Then that technically means that the people US will have a quad band (850/1700/1900/2100) phone just to use the umts spectrum. Do you think theyll spread voice onto that or just use it strictly for data?

 

You know to tell you the truth...

Honestly I can't remember ever having a dropped call with my Moto v360 on T-Mobile. I know it's just prepaid...but I honestly have never had that happen. Wow.. I never thought of it until I saw this thread......

Yeah for my T-mobile!

 

UMTS will be for voice and data and yes they probably will make quad band handsets that will cover their frequencies here in america....it wont be internationally UMTS capable because like i said they use similar frequencies for UMTS over in Japan and Europe but they are tuned differently

 

To be fair, T-Mobile has been doing their part to catch up with the rest of the US. Their markets in Germany are amazing. 100% coverage everywhere, and really, THAT is where they have had a lot of focus as that is where they started out.

T-Mobile is revamping their entire network, and will be rolling out several hundred cell sites all over the US, but most in the rural areas so that they can get rid of the use of some of their roaming agreements in certain areas (mostly rural 850 areas) and throw down their 1900 mhz coverage, where, when NEAR a T-Mobile tower is EXCELLENT... significantly degrades as you travel about 3 miles from the tower.

As a Texas resident, I travel a lot and have had almost every provider that has existed here.

The list includes:
Cingular
Former AT&T
Nextel/Boost
Verizon
Sprint
CellularOne of East Texas

Out of all of those carriers, AT&T and T-Mobile were the absolute BEST and I never had calls dropped, even though T-Mobile's coverage is VERY spotty.

So...in all fairness, give T-Mobile a chance. They're becoming more US oriented now than ever and they definitely aim to please.

 

I was actually suprised the other day talking to someone with T-Mobile and they couldn't make a call inside this one building & he said "this is the 1st time I ever had a problem with T-Mobile around NJ"

I guess they are becoming more US oriented since this is where there main bread & butter is coming from compared to their other networks in the world.

 

I disagree about the bread and butter statement, T-mobile I'm willing to bet is making more in europe than anybody is willing to admit. The problem with europe now is market saturation, there really are few new customers to snag, so what's a provider to do, branch out internationally, now that they are tapped in Europe they will focus on improving their customer base here in the states which means more cell sites, better services, and probably very very competitive pricing. I would say T-Mobile is poised to overtake Verizon and Cingular within 10 years if they play their cards right.

 

i have to say that this is really probable........if a lot of providers have 100% coverage in the area that they offer then most people over their will already have phones and there wont be any know customers........theyve maxed it out.....so this is probably a reachout like many have already said......communications companies in the U.S. are always changing and are always becoming more profitable by the month.......this is a booming market....with all of the new technologies coming out......someone wants to upgrade their phone once a year........this is like the pot of gold on the other side of the rainbow for them

 

I, honestly, give T-Mobile little less than two years to get caught back up in these markets. Indeed, Market saturation in Europe has occurred and they are pulling a massive amount of Euro's from said saturation. And where they do have to maintain the towers in the Germany/Russia/England area, they don't have to put up many new cell sites.

SO! That leaves a lot of money to be distributed to the American markets. Coming from one of the CEO's of T-Mobile (from Deutsche Telekomm) they plan on erecting 300 new cell sites this year alone in the US. They aim on patching holes with 1900 mhz that they have in some of the rural 850 mhz areas, and adding towers to areas that are lacking quality as far as coverage goes.

So....I honestly believe they are going to surprise the US tremendously by rolling out a wonderful network faster than ever before.

 

faster than anyone has ever seen.........if they plan to roll out 300 new towers this year and plan to add UMTS capability to their current native footprint.......they'll be just as good as CIngular or better......they still wont have the same amount of customers though when they first complete the upgrades but with the new UMTS rollout.......they will probably attract a lot of business customers.....

 

Here's another proof of saturation in europe:

They are down to nitpicking to pick up customers from other carriers. While in Germany alone they have enough operating capital to probably be a very profitable company for it's investors enough is never enough. I also really hate to be the one to point this out, but europe and japan almost always have better providers in everything than we do, perhaps this will turn that around a bit, at least in the wireless market.

 

There are a few believed reasons for this, besides the countries are smaller in size compared to the US, so it's easier to cover the country better it comes down to another train of thought. Our country has always had a big lead when it comes to landline vs other countries, especially Japan, so wireless was a better option to give the people phones, also I think their goverments are more supportive of fighting the NIMBY'ers on putting up towers to give the coverage needed.

Again, this is from other sources that give the reason's for them having better buildout & coverage over the US, and I also think companies here didn't take wireless as serious as they should have back when it was 1st starting out.

I am sure there are many factors involved & I can see T-Mobile doing a good job of filling in gaps, but it's going to take a while 300 towers isn't a lot when you look at the big picture & the coverage gaps throughout the country & using 1900 Mhz & the lack of 850 for distance coverage, but it's going in the right direction & as long as there isn't a lot of NIMBY'ers fighting towers it will help.

 

It's 3,000, not 300 cell sites per year. T-Mobile has been adding this number every year since about 2004.