T-Mobile "Network Pass" 3 month free trial

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comfortably_numb

comfortably_numb

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Nov 30, 2011
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Kansas City

Checking it out on my iPhone 15 Pro.
Amazing speeds when in 5G UC areas. I don't intend to switch away from Visible, but it's fun to utilitze the dual SIM capabilities of this phone and test out different networks. You also get access to the weekly T-Mobile Tuesday promotions.

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700 Mbps down, not too shabby, but not really amazing. I can easily break 1 Gbps on towers on n41 w/CA in my area. Verizon seems to be better off and more consistent with their n77 c band versus the n41 T-Mobile got from Sprint. And since Verizon actually has the tower density, the higher frequency between the two does not result is as many midband coverage gaps. IIRC, Verizon has 200 MHz of n77 in rural areas, T-Mobile has much less n41. Once again T-Mobile showing what a second rate provider they are.

This speedtest is from Saturday night, in a very busy area of a high class snooty suburb of Rochester, NY. I’ve hit upwards of 2 Gbps down (close to 2, but never broke it) and 200 Mbps up off of this tower the last time I was in the area, about 3 or 4 months ago. I’m on the older One Plus plan from 2017 and get deprio’d after 50 GB, which I hit about 10 days ago. Going to go back after my billing cycle resets

The tower that’s closest to me is rural and I can get around 1100 Mbps off of it while within a three quarter of a mile radius, once I get farther out the speed drops dramatically until I have no service or bounce between having no service and roaming on to AT&T. The vast majority of my 25 mile commute into work I have no T-Mobile service at all.

That’s the problem with T-Mobile, extremely poor rural coverage. If they have a tower in a rural area with n41, speeds are likely very good in the immediate area but taper off dramatically as you move out. I’ve seen this all thoughout Upstate NY, Northeastern PA, central Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee. If you are on or by a major interstate, coverage and speed is great as well.

With T-Mobile and their dick moves with pricing on older plans, I’m seriously considering dropping them. What was once $120 for 2 lines of unlimited everything is now $150. Thanks to price increases and the $5/line fee for not giving them direct access to my checking account for autopay. I think there is a good chance I qualify for FirstNet. While AT&T coverage can be an issue from time to time here, it’s a hell of a lot better than T-Mobile. Two lines with FirstNet would be $90. AT&T lacks in midband 5G, but I can always get a T-Mobile hotspot for n41 for when I travel.

The T-Mobile Tuesdays offers really aren’t that great. Unless you like boring baseball (I detest all sports especially baseball and golf), the MLB TV offer is nice, but other than that, it’s just cheap branded swag and a few dollars off chain fast food items. The eclipse glasses were fine, but didn’t get to use them due to cloud cover, the ‘free’ Whopper from BK is okay, but nothing really to write home about. When they have hats, as long as they’re not slouch fit, I’ll get some to wear outside while doing yard work as not to ruin my good hats.

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Still the same subpar T-Mobile network.

Even though they are wholly owned, these ghetto brands like Metro, Boost and Cricket do nothing for me. While I'm not sure what the QCI is for a Metro account, there has to be a reason why it's so much lower cost then post paid consumer T-Mobile proper. If I do stick with T-Mobile, I am exploring migrating to a business account, as long as a tax ID isn't required. I would rather pay the $160 for Business Unlimited Edge and have the highest network priority offered.

You really can't compare a budget subbrand like Metro to a high priority governament sanctioned network designed for emergency use like AT&Ts FirstNet. The backbone of FirstNet, B14 LTE is not a speed demon by any means, but the coverage and priority would be an inprovement over T-Mobile for when you need it the most. Last I knew with FistNet you couldn't do BYOD. As a work around you get the cheapest phone possable, and then stick the SIM into the phone of your choice. Also, while I'm not a first responder, it seems there is a chance working in IT for a federal agency does qualify you for a personal account, even though I have a GFE phone on Verizon for work. AT&Ts lack of mid band though is what may make this a no go. When I'm traveling and I VPN into my home network to access data on my NAS I need it to be fast and reliable. Since hotels are located right off of interstate exits, T-Mobile's n41 has never failed to give me an above average experience.

T-Mobile seems to only offer the newer Go5G plans for consumer, which include phone upgrades. I DO NOT want a phone from a carrier, I DO NOT want to finance a phone. I want to buy unlocked phones at full retail like I have been going for well over 10 years now.
 
I've had both Metro and T-Mobile and never noticed any difference in performance.

I've used Visble (Verizon) on the Plus plan as my main account for over a year now and haven't ever noticed a difference there either.
 
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The issue with both of those are they (Cricket Visible) are low priority on the network so while good for seeing if you get a good signal, the speeds could and probably will be slower then the real network so not comparing apples to apples.
 
Scott Greczkowski said:
The issue with both of those are they (Cricket Visible) are low priority on the network so while good for seeing if you get a good signal, the speeds could and probably will be slower then the real network so not comparing apples to apples.
Click to expand...

With the Visible+ plan you get 50gb priority data (unlimited on 5G UW) so it's very similar if not identical to Big Red. The unlimited hotspot is nice also, although it's capped at 10mbps up/down. I have never been deprioritized on Visible+

I used to be leery of these MVNO's myself, but Visible is the real deal. My daughter is on it, she's gotten a bunch of her friends to switch also.
 
comfortably_numb said:
With the Visible+ plan you get 50gb priority data (unlimited on 5G UW) so it's very similar if not identical to Big Red. The unlimited hotspot is nice also, although it's capped at 10mbps up/down. I have never been deprioritized on Visible+

I used to be leery of these MVNO's myself, but Visible is the real deal. My daughter is on it, she's gotten a bunch of her friends to switch also.
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I will give it a shot. With the new iPhones coming maybe its time to switch carriers at the same time. :D
 
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Scott Greczkowski said:
I will give it a shot. With the new iPhones coming maybe its time to switch carriers at the same time. :D
Click to expand...

Hope it works for you! Keep in mind that the free trial plan is the Visible Basic plan, which does have deprioritization. If you decide to keep Visible, definitely get the Plus plan. It's $45/month but there are promo codes to make it $35/month for 5 years :)
 
comfortably_numb said:
Hope it works for you! Keep in mind that the free trial plan is the Visible Basic plan, which does have deprioritization. If you decide to keep Visible, definitely get the Plus plan. It's $45/month but there are promo codes to make it $35/month for 5 years :)
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I am only paying $25 for my Tmobile now. (With 4 lines all at $25 each) But if they give me an iPhone Pro Max 16 for close to free I may consider it still.
 
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With our travels to the northlands, it’s Verizon or AT&T or their MVNOs. T-Mobile vanishes out in the Lake and it’s only through cross-carrier agreements that it works in town. It’s the one reason I didn’t switch to T-Mobile’s 55 Plan when it came out.
 
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Foxbat said:
With our travels to the northlands, it’s Verizon or AT&T or their MVNOs
Click to expand...

Same situation where I live currently. Rural Kansas and western Missouri are ruled by Verizon. ATT is a close second. There are many areas where there is one tower and the only provider on that tower is Verizon.

In my town, ATT recently added a cell to the Verizon tower, so I'm finally able to get ATT home internet and get rid of DSL.
 
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I don’t like Verizon as a company hence why they are not my carrier, but as much as I do not like them they have a solid wireless plan, they have the real ‘layer cake’ not T-Mobile. The ‘Nationwide’ low frequency 5G of n5 and n66, n77 c-band in the middle and n260 and n261 for mmWave. I used to roll my eyes and badmouth mmWave, yes it’s cool getting 3.5 – 4 Gbps on your phone, but what good is it when the signal is so fragile that standing underneath an umbrella of a hot dog cart will kill the signal? But I was too shortsighted to see the real purpose. Use mmWave to offload traffic and alleviate congestion in extremely densely populated areas and in areas where there is a lot of users in a small space, like theme parks and sporting venues for a better and more usable experience for all users on the network
comfortably_numb said:
With the Visible+ plan you get 50gb priority data (unlimited on 5G UW) so it's very similar if not identical to Big Red. The unlimited hotspot is nice also, although it's capped at 10mbps up/down. I have never been deprioritized on Visible+

I used to be leery of these MVNO's myself, but Visible is the real deal. My daughter is on it, she's gotten a bunch of her friends to switch also.
Click to expand...

While I guess one could, I really wouldn’t consider Visible an MVNO, they are a fully owned pre-paid brand of Verizon. Not sure why the providers insist on making things so confusing with multiple wholly owned budget oriented prepaid brands instead of just putting them under the prepaid banner of the company that owns the brand.

Although Visible doesn’t have the same images of run down stores with bars on the windows and bulletproof glass in sketchy neighborhoods where the typical customer pulls up in a beater and needs a burner phone and pays with cash a la Metro, Boost & Cricket.

navychop said:
I find TMO coverage much better than a few years ago. All have their weak spots
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Yes, all carriers have their weak spots. But T-Mobile seems to have many more weak spots in the areas I frequent. In 7 years of using T-Mobile, there has been exactly one instance where I had service and a phone near by from AT&T or Verizon did not. This is with having phones that support 700 MHz and 600 MHz.

Last year, for the 5 months I had my Bronco, I had complementary built in data service from AT&T, my personal phone on T-Mobile, my government phone on Verizon. In the nearly 11K miles I put on in those five months and being in portions of 9 different states, there is no debate, T-Mobile was by far the weakest of the three. I'm going to argue about the data speeds, if you are near an n41 site that has good backhaul, T-Mobile is awesome. But 1+ Gbps off an interstate doesn't mean squat when you have no service on a rural back road.
 
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Before I ordered my new iPhone I tested Verizon and AT&T on my old phone which had dial ESIMs.

For my area Verizon was the worst slow speeds and slow coverage.

I found that AT&T Had virtually the same coverage here with three bars in the house.

But for speeds TMobile blew them away. I was getting 500 meg down while only getting 52 on AT&T.

I did like being able to test all three of them before deciding which carrier to get my new iPhone from.

Of course what I saw here may be different in yours area. But this works for me.
 
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