T-Mobile vs. Sprint (for data) in Mid-TN?

[Mark J. Bailey]

Hi,

 

I have had Verizon for years and am getting fed up with the ever rising costs.

 

I was wondering if any of you here with T-Mobile and/or Sprint (ie, NOT AT&T) can comment on real-life experiences regarding a) coverage (regardless of what the coverage sites “claim”), b) data access/speed, and c) tethering with wifi? Would be interested in knowing what smartphones you might recommend and/or warn me about too. I’m pretty much and Android kind of guy, but am always open to switching. I’ve spoken with the corporate brick-n-mortar reps, etc., but really would like some direct from the field opinions. Too bad I can’t just take a phone from each for a day and go around doing my normal stuff and see how each does. But that would be applying logic and sense to it.

 

Thanks!

 

Mark

 

[Kevin Eldridge]

My Wife has Sprint and loves her Samsung Galaxy S3 cell phone. She has very fast internet, very good coverage, but I cannot speak to the tethering aspect. She can get cell coverage throughout Nashville without issue.

Kevin Eldridge

p.s. I am on AT&T using a Motorola Atrix and am pretty p.o.'ed that Motorola will not make ice cream sandwich available for my phone and I get to stick with 2.3 or 2.4, or whatever the heck version I have that is not the latest.

Time to load it on my phone myself

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[Kent Perrier]

Sprint is supposed to turn on their LTE network here in Nashville before the end of the year. That will change what sprint offers. I don't know how far from nashville the LTE network will cover. If you go this route, the Evo 4G LTE is the way to go. I don't know if any other sprint phones will work on their new LTE network.

--

[Tim O'Guin]

On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 10:21 AM, Mark J. Bailey <m...@jobsoft.com> wrote:

I have the G2 phone with T-Mobile. My current plan is their $50 prepaid plan, which throttles data to 2G speeds after 100MB have been used. The next plan up starts throttling at 2GB, I believe.

The G2 has wifi and USB tethering built in. They both work like a charm, even though T-Mobile doesn't officially support it's tethering capabilities.

I've lived in Lebanon, Hendersonville, and currently Madison. I have no problems with my service in the areas I live and work, but if I go out to really rural areas like Norene/Watertown, T-Mobile can't compete with Verizon.

[Sabuj Pattanayek]

anyone used virgin mobile's $35/$45/$55 "unlimited data" plans? Looks
like they start throttling after 2.5GB/month . Any ideas about how
good their coverage is?

[Mark J. Bailey]

I had wondered about that myself. While not a Big Four, I had read several
posts that suggested VM had some good value plans. But the coverage, I
suspected, was more like T-Mobile and/or Cricket. I had also read T-Mobile
could voice/data roam on AT&T now, but if coverage in areas like Watertown
is poor to non-existent, perhaps this was "proposed" when the
T-Mobile/AT&T merger deal was still a possibility.

[Tim Jackson]

Virgin was a Sprint MVNO, now wholly owned by Sprint.

So Sprint Coverage == Virgin Coverage..

--
Tim

[Sabuj Pattanayek]

On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 10:41 AM, Tim Jackson <jacks...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Virgin was a Sprint MVNO, now wholly owned by Sprint.
>
> So Sprint Coverage == Virgin Coverage..

Great! For everywhere except in my office, but that could just be my
aging cell phone.

[Chris McQuistion]

For what it's worth, I've got AT&T and just got an iPhone 5 that supports LTE.  I've seen LTE coverage everywhere I've gone around the middle Tennessee area and I've seen speeds as high as 47 Mbps down and 24 Mbps up over LTE!  The average speed I'm seeing over AT&T's LTE is around 18 Mbps!

Chris 

--

[Tim Jackson]

It's also somethign to mention that if you don't care about LTE, etc (which is non-existent on Sprint now anyway) you can always get a Femtocell from Sprint to enhance coverage at home/work.. Usually for free..

[Greg Donald]

On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 10:41 AM, Tim Jackson <jacks...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Virgin was a Sprint MVNO, now wholly owned by Sprint.
>
> So Sprint Coverage == Virgin Coverage..

Everyone shares towers. If you get a good signal from one provider in
a particular part of town it's likely other providers will work just
as well. As a mobile developer I have accounts with AT&T, Sprint, and
Verizon. They all use the same tower up by the interstate near my
house.

If your signal strength is low you can call your provider and they
will send you a mobile access point which will get you 5 bars of 3G
signal throughout your house. Sprint will provide this for example:
http://now.sprint.com/airave/?ECID=vanity:airaveaccesspoint


--
Greg Donald

[David R. Wilson]

Any cell provider is likely to have coverage problems. In general the
higher the bandwidth, the worse the penetration for the buildings.
Foliage and hills will also block the signal.

I have Sprint, it works fairly well in most areas of Smyrna, but then I
am cheating at the house. My place is on the far side of a hill and
shadowed from the local cell site. It is only 2 miles to the local cell
site, but there is no chance the signal will be very strong, unless the
phone is about 10 ft above ground level. I do have cell coverage from
ground level, but it is often rather poor, unless I go outside and find
a decent spot. I am using an Airave box inside the house to boost the
cell coverage inside the house. That tunnels the audio and data through
an Internet connection. It works pretty well most of the time. The
only down side is it does require a GPS puck to be in a decent spot to
pick up the GPS satellites for a timing reference. Since I didn't
bother to put the GPS antenna in a good spot, it sometimes drops the GPS
reference and the cell relay capability disappears for a few minutes.
If I improved the location of the GPS module it would certainly work
better. The Airave box is only for up to 3G speeds.


I have 4 phones on my plan (not all local or being used). Two of them
get used a lot. It is not cheap, but it does generally work pretty
well. In a previous job I was in areas with very poor to non existent
coverage from time to time. Since I was able to roam on other systems
for the 5% of the time I was outside of Sprint service I was pretty
happy with the coverage. For what I do the bandwidth is fine.

Dave

[John F. Eldredge]

"Mark J. Bailey" <m...@jobsoft.com> wrote:

T-Mobile used to have a reputation for very spotty coverage here in Nashville, but I don't know how much that has been improved. Back in 2000, I had service from T-Mobile. At that time, you had to either be downtown, or on the top of a hill, to connect to a T-Mobile tower. I switched to Verizon as soon as my contract ran out.


--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria

[Justin W Elam]

The Real issue is the type of 'tower' you are connecting to.
I.e. LTE, CDMA, TDMA, GSM, AMPS, NMT-450, TACS, iDEN, HDSPA+ , etc..

so for example if you were roaming in an area that only had AMPS
(analog towers) and you were using a iDEN or CDMA or GSM or TDMA or
HSPA phone you would not connect. Of course some phones had
'backward compatibility' and others did not.

But that was as the size of the mobile telephone was decreasing in
size from fixed to mobile / portable size. In other words you could
actually start moving your mobile telephone from car to car 'easier'
than having to de-install it. All you had to do was unplug it from
the cigarette lighter adapter.

Then came the reduction from bag phone size to hand held Nokia styles
in the late 1990's .... to the new tablets / slabs / wrist phones of
today. But of course the issue is cost, and the amount of time one
wants to put in.

If you require communication, you typically always had to have
multiple phones to connect to the various towers and satellites.
Furthermore it is still true today, but instead of 'voice'
communications, everything is moving towards 'data' thus TELCO's are
changing the price plans and features to maximise revenue.

This of course is much different than the old plans where one had to
purchase at full price a device or depending on your carrier one could
get a 'no cost' device for a five year contract.

Then one had to pay a monthly fee for costs and fees relating to taxes
and backhaul typically 19.99 or 29.99
as well as blocks of air time on their networks and a per minute
roaming connection fee by the backhaul network if you left their
networks ... their fee was 29 cents or 59 cents or 99 cents depending
on your home LATA .... and the roaming fees depending on how many
networks you roamed to .. from $ 1 per day plus $ 1 per minute up to $
10 per day plus $ 5 per minute or charge to your card if you wanted to
... and it could get rather expensive .... of course Sat time was even
more expensive back then think multiply by 10 or 100 ....

this is still true for most satellite telephone and data networks.
Today, the big four are : Iridium, Immarsat , Thuraya , GlobalStar ;
and if you need to get one, Outfitter Satellite here in Donelson,
http://outfittersatellite.com is a reputable shop to purchase or rent
one. Their phone and address is as follows :::

Outfitter Satellite
2911 Elm Hill Pike
Nashville, TN 37214

Phone +1-615-889-8833
Fax +1-615-902-0028

So it really just depends on how much you want to spend ....
With Verizon/ AT+T you are going to spend around 50 to 100 to get
voice, SMS, and data plus their roaming networks plus others that can
allow Verizon / ATT to roam on. .. typically for 'free'

or go with Virtual Carrier that can roam on Verizon/ATT networks
typically Sprint /CDMA/TDMA can roam on Verizon
and T-Mobile /GSM can roam on ATT

MetroPCS/ Cellular South -CSPIRE had 'both' and depending on your
phone' you could roam on one or the other but not both...
we will have to see what happens with the T-Mobile purchase of MetroPCS

but with the new LTE ... supposedly this is supposed to 'dis-appear'

but then a new 'network' will appear and your 'phone' won't work on
that 'new' network.

of course your mileage may vary
good luck on your choice.

cheers from J =)

Justin W Elam
E-mail ::: - justin...@gmail.com
###

BT
$$

[Justin W Elam]

Inmarsat EXPLORER 727 Vehicular BGAN
Your Price: $18,995.00

http://shop.outfittersatellite.com/Terminals_c_38.html

[Cale Mooth]

On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 10:21 AM, Mark J. Bailey <m...@jobsoft.com> wrote:
>
> I was wondering if any of you here with T-Mobile and/or Sprint (ie, NOT
> AT&T) can comment on real-life experiences regarding a) coverage (regardless
> of what the coverage sites “claim”), b) data access/speed, and c) tethering
> with wifi?

I've used T-Mobile for the last two years and had excellent coverage
within the Mid-TN area. I had a simple Sony Ericsson 3G flip phone
that I would regularly tether to my laptop and that was always a good
experience. Decent speeds and rarely a disconnect, even on the
highway. There's no hacking to get it to work, either. T-Mobile just
lets you do it.

I would also drop the sim card into an old iPhone 3G and had good
results with that. One of the best benefits of T-Mobile is still
having access to data service when in a concentrated crowd of a few
thousand people. When I had AT&T, data and text service would be
non-existant at a music or sporting event with a lot of people.
T-Mobile always fared well.


--
Cale Mooth
------------------------------------------------------
http://www.midnightcheese.com/
@calem

[Alex Smith (K4RNT)]

Has anyone tried the Android-based phone sized tablets, such as the
Samsung Galaxy Player?

I have a CLEAR 4G mobile wifi hotspot with unlimited data, and I
recently saw those on Newegg and/or Amazon and I'm intrigued. It looks
like it's an exact copy of the Samsung Galaxy S, but without cellular
functionality.

I want to get more into using Android, and I think I've reached the
limitations of my personal cell, an LG Optimus V on Virgin Mobile,
since it's internal memory is so small, I can't add as many apps as
I'd like, even though I have a 16GB card installed in it.

Thanks in advance! :)

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" ' With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech
censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied,
chains us all irrevocably.' Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron
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trodden on we’re all damaged." - Jean-Luc Picard, quoting Judge Aaron
Satie, Star Trek: TNG episode "The Drumhead"
- Alex Smith (K4RNT)
- Dulles Technology Corridor (Chantilly/Ashburn/Dulles), Virginia USA

[Greg]

Not exactly, I have two sprint phones And a virgin mobile hotspot. It seems like virgin used an older iteration of 3g as I can use the phones for data where the hotspot is several miles out of coverage. The coverage locator on their site seems to be fairly accurate.

[Steven S. Critchfield]

The version of 3g is less likely to be your problem, but antenna design might be.

Not to mention tower congestion can be an issue. On Cell phones, I have seen no service cured by going into airplane mode and back out. Not certain how much is the login process, and how much is the rebooting of the radio.

I wonder if some towers will deprioritize your hotspot for phone usage.
--
Steven Critchfield cri...@basesys.com

[Kent Perrier]

I believe that this is it. IIRC, the Virgin devices are subject to QoS on the Sprint network.

Kent

[Jack Coats]

Anyone know where to get (or instructions to build) a good EXTERNAL
antenna for use with something like the Sprint wireless hotspot? I am
in the 'edge' of their service area and need something to help.