Great points from Fred Wilson. And accordingly to Pogue's NYT article, they signed up more new subs in the last quarter than the big 3 combined. But, in light of their service map and much more limited travel, curious if it's enough to make you switch? Trying to figure this out myself...
> <i>Because if all of us move to T-Mobile, the other carriers will have no choice to join them in being customer friendly.</i><p>No, if all people move to T-Mobile, they will just start behaving like the other carriers. The only reasons they're customer friendly is because they have a low market share and try to win customers, not because it's their company culture. Just look at their German parent company, Deutsche Telekom is the German AT&T.
I'm glad that T-Mobile has become a customer focused company in recent months, but let's not forget that just a short while ago, they were just like all of the other major carriers.<p>T-Mobile had a sudden change of heart not because they give a shit about their customers, its because their network wasn't good enough for people to put up with typical carrier bullshit. As a normal carrier, they were losing money and customers so fast that they had to either change or go out of business.<p>I highly doubt they would have made the same philosophical changes if they had been successful doing things the scummy way.
I ended up switching to T-Mobile for their $30 prepaid plan - 5GB of data (not at reduced 2G speeds either, actual data) a month, plus a reasonable amount of voice minutes and the ability to text. Way cheaper than what I'd pay on AT&T or other carriers, really simple to set up.
I love the service I get from T-mobile, as far as the human element goes. I've been with them for a long time and they treat me very well when I need them to.<p>Unfortunately, I can't tolerate the service the network itself provides anymore. It used to be fairly functional inside city limits here (Chicago), but now it works poorly downtown, often shows max signal on HSPA+ but doesn't actually have a data connection, and if I leave city limits to go for a drive, I'm looking at probably 20 minutes outside the city before I'm on a non-data or roaming connection.<p>I just started a new job that provides smartphone service, so I'll probably move my t-mobile account to a minimum amount per month and get a little nokia flip phone for when I'm not doing work related things. - Another big plus for t-mobile is they'll be happy to change my monthly plan without some badgering renewal bit, I've done it twice and they always accommodate me.
When I visit the US from the UK I use T-Mobile pay-as-you-go SIM cards to get data on my iPhone. It works great - you go in to a T-Mobile store, pay for the SIM and $3/day of credit (I normally spend about $25), they set up the phone and profile for you and you walk out within a few minutes with a working iPhone.<p>I used to use AT&T GoPhone for this, until they sold me a "special deal for SXSW" in Austin that would keep my number and data working for multiple trips three years for $100. A few months later they cancelled the data portion of the plan (naturally refusing to refund my $100 since voice still works) and made it impossible to get pay-as-you-go data on an iPhone no matter how much money you give them.<p>They might have fixed that now, but they've lost me to T-Mobile.
I'm really confused when reading articles like this because it sounds like a different company to the one I know which was formed out of "Deutsche Post" during the 90ies and patronizing and shitting on its customers ever since, at least in Germany.<p>The biggest thing with them this year was their 384kbps Speed Throttle[1], where after your family consumed 75GB of data (download and upload) the speed of your DSL (flatrate) will go down to 384kbps for the rest of the month.<p>Ok you could say "this is Deutsche Telekom, the parent company, but T-Mobile is very different!" but sorry, that is not the case.<p>I wanted to buy a Alcatel One Touch Fire with Firefox OS when I was on holidays in Poland this year so I went to a T-Mobile store and well, there was advertising and everything and they even sold them there. But only together with a contract, which I didn't want (because I can't use it in Sweden where I live). They send me to another store so I went there, they told me the same and send me to a third store where they told me that they only sell a couple of them without a contract and only in the main cities.<p>I mean wtf? They have been doing advertisement all over the place that they sell it for 404 zl without a contract, even in those shops, but they wouldn't sell them to me, or they would but only with a two years contract which ended up costing around 1200 zl. So I gave up.<p>At home again I checked their website[2] again, and yep, there they still (and to this day) advertise it for 404 zl.<p>I later found out that if you have a polish ID you can order one for 404 zl from their website which I did with help of my fathers ID.<p>So they were just fucking with me, again, and yeah, this was not the first time. I had big time problems back then when I still lived in Germany and chose a different DSL provider after being very disappointed with T-Online. Basically they didn't send a technician for two months who would fix the tech so the new provider could provide me with internet so I was without internet for two months. That is kind of a big thing if you're working from home.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/technology/deutsche-telekom-data-use-and-net-neutrality.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/technology/deutsche-teleko...</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.t-mobile.pl/pl/indywidualni/telefony/telefon-ze-starterem" rel="nofollow">http://www.t-mobile.pl/pl/indywidualni/telefony/telefon-ze-s...</a>
I just switched to T-Mobile with my iPhone 5S, largely on principle. My monthly bill won't go down much and my service has gotten worse, but I'm <i>so</i> happy to leave AT&T and support what T-Mobile is doing. The new international roaming policy is icing on the cake.
"$2000 a month for a family plan"
How is this possible? I've never heard of such an expensive monthly cost. Perhaps they're paying for several iPhones on contacts?
T-Mobile has to do this because their network is the worst. For a lot of people, that's more important than device availability, customer service, data limits, international roaming and contract terms. I say this as a T-Mo customer.
Yeah, I went to Tmob a few months after their big relaunch/remodeling/whatever that made quite a splash in nearly every blog as the "end of bullshit"<p>The results? well the plans were just as expensive as those from AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, except that Tmobile had by far the worst coverage of all, I didn't get any signal inside my office.<p>The plan mobility was crap as well, with some plans you were stuck and couldn't move, they wanted me to buy a new SIMcard to change plans and I had to get the new one from one of their stores in particular else it wouldn't work. Why do that if not to keep me locked in a crap plan?<p>They said it was the end of carrier trickery but they forced me get a ridiculously expensive plan in order to be able to pay for an additional international calling service, meaning that I had to pay for a bunch of crap I did not need just to be able to qualify for that small extra feature.<p>Overall my experience was pretty bad and Tmob's new strategy can be summed as much ado about nothing with a lot of fine print in the middle.
I'm usually not one to complain about what hits #1 spot on Hacker News, but this boils down to "I like T-Mobile, their customer service is good and I have a good plan with them" but not much else. Would it have been so highly upvoted if it wasn't from the "A VC" blog? I suspect not.
I'm also moving from AT&T back to t-mo. It will save me a little money, but the main reason is to show t-mo that I support how they treat customers.
My experience with tmobile and Att is probably reversed: tmobile found ways to add hidden or mysterious charges that others couldn't (I.e. $10 / month android charge). Most of the customer service reps in recent years got worse and worse.<p>I finally switched to Att about 2 years ago and I have to admit: every time I called, everyone was friendly and helpful. Nothing was hidden: they laid out their charges and I agreed to them. They may have even slightly higher ($10 a month), but I have excellent nationwide coverage and very good internet speeds when I need it.<p>This was just my experience, and it may be different for others.
I just switched off of tmobile to verizon b/c I thought it incredibly unfriendly. They said I'd get 4g in Atlanta. But I didn't on 3 separate devices. I couldn't get service at all at my intown house which seems insane for a major city. When I tried to get out of my contract because they'd said I'd get service and I didn't they pulled up a map of their service area and said I was mistaken. I wrote letters I tweeted etc. They basically told me to fuck off.
I think Fred might be disappointed when he switches back to t-mobile. I was a t-mobile customer for years and I agree they have awesome customer service. The big problem for me was the terrible cell reception in many buildings in NYC.
That said, I hear there are many areas in the US where t-mobile provides decent service. For people considering switching if t-mobile's international data deal isn't that important to you, you may want to check out <a href="http://www.solavei.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.solavei.com</a> first. They are a t-mobile reseller (MVNO) and you may be able to save some money compared to going through t-mobile directly. Their prices are similar to straight talk (mentioned in some of the other comments) and they also allow you to refer customers to reduce your monthly bill.<p>Best cell phone service for the price IMO is <a href="http://www.pagepluscellular.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.pagepluscellular.com/</a> (a verizon reseller). $55 / month (including taxes and fees) for unlimited calling, unlimited texts, and 2 gigs of data. I have been a customer of theirs for a year and a half. Their customer service is pretty good, but more importantly their signal strength (coming from verizon's towers) is the best out of all the carriers in NYC.<p>The one big caveat with the MVNO resellers is that they don't offer LTE data and some don't support LTE phones (ie iphone 5, 5c, 5s, etc).<p>TL;DR - if you're down to use an iPhone 4S or other 3G smartphone you can save some serious money per month going through an MVNO reseller.
This is such an obvious puff piece. Has T-Mobile been paying these people to write these things for them? I'm still awaiting a response from T-Mobiles legal department after I threatened to sue of their refusal to release me from my contract without the $300 fee <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/169303371/Demand-Letter-T-Mobile" rel="nofollow">http://www.scribd.com/doc/169303371/Demand-Letter-T-Mobile</a>
T-Mobile simply doesn't have any data coverage outside of major metropolitan areas. If you're someone that travels outside these areas, you will be unable to use your devices for anything but calls and texts.<p>That's a big caveat that should be mentioned.<p>(If you never leave the Bay Area, for example, then T-Mobile is a logical choice. It works well for me 98% of the time here.)
I recently wrote a piece on how I'm using T-Mobile and TalkaTone on my iPhone 5 and only paying $30 a month for unlimited talk, text, and data. That's why I love T-Mobile.<p><a href="http://thetechblock.com/get-unlimited-talk-text-data-30-iphone" rel="nofollow">http://thetechblock.com/get-unlimited-talk-text-data-30-ipho...</a>
"companies sit around trying to figure out what customer charges they can get away with"
That is so true! I used to work for a US telco and I've read all the stories about the "mystery charges".<p>Also, I must say that telcos, and even banks, in India are to an extent like this. Had one bank put a 1.5$ on my credit card statement for an analysis that they did on my spend the previous month - which indicated that 100% of my card spend was towards airfare. I used the card only once, EVER, and I did not ask for that analysis! I ended up spending 3$ (counting just travel cost) fighting the 1.5$ charge, but I absolutely wasn't going to let them have it!<p>Imagine telcos making an extra 1$ on some random charge on some 10 million customers. Even that is a lot of money!
Ting, Ting, Ting. A thousand times Ting.<p>A customer, not an employee. I won't gush, see ting.com, it's an MVNO on the Sprint network.<p>EDIT: It kind of bothers me that someone downvoted this. It's not like I used an affiliate link or stand to benefit from this. Sorry for sharing :P
I don't understand how they're paying $2000 a month to AT&T. We have 5 iPhones and 1 AT&T iPad on a family plan with unlimited text and very high number of minutes (can't remember exactly) and pay not more than $450.
<i>"I was a T-Mobile customer for more than a decade from the late 90s until a year or two ago."</i><p>Unless he was a T-Mobile customer in Europe, I don't see how this is possible. T-Mobile in the US was formed circa 2001 with the purchase of Voicestream Wireless. I remember because I've been a customer since 2002, and all their equipment was tagged with Voicestream logos.<p>Unless of course he was a Voicestream customer first, who was then rolled into T-Mobile. Who am I to say, I just pay attention to details.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Mobile#United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-Mobile#United_States</a>
I'm wondering if there's a purpose-built, fast FirefoxOS device that works on T-Mobile that could help Fred make the transition.<p>Is there's anybody that knows of something faster than the ZTE-based phones?
It's weird how different the are across the pond. Here in the UK the old TMobile (now EE) was absolutely terrible. I took out a new contract for the iPhone 5 on Preorder. They never delivered it and started harrasing me to pay my contract that was due to start when the phone arrived (which it didn't.)<p>It took me 25+ hours on hold and in the end I ended up tweeting them. Their twitter support team was a billion times better than anyone on the phone and the guy got it resolved for me.
I love T-mobile whenever I am in the US. Coupled with Google Voice and Nexus 4 (LTE works!), I pay way less than an AT&T contract + phone. The only time I was unhappy with their coverage was in my apartment in Mountain View this fall. Apart from that, I've never had to call their customer service. Every time I come back to US, I simply recharge my account online and get going in minutes.<p>I am curious to try out the Walmart plan (refer comments) next time and cut my costs by half.
I moved from T-Mobile from AT&T because AT&T started demanding I buy a data plan if I were to have a smart phone, <i>and automatically signed me up for one and billing me for it</i>.<p>T-Mobile's network is <i>worse</i>. Really, it's worse. I'm considering going back to AT&T despite all the crap because I'm sick of picking up my phone and seeing "no coverage available" in places where I had five bars yesterday.
Completely off topic but I am truly amazed by how good that spoken article was at the bottom of the post. I expected some Microsoft Sam voice, but it was actually a good clever sound with near-perfect emotional context switches in tone use.<p>Is that a plug and play solution or does the author have to do manual fine tuning? In both cases it is amazing how far we are with text-to-speech compared to only a few years ago.
I'll like them more when they offer their pre-paid customers the same benefits they have on their post-paid plans. They got a lot of good will because of their recently announced reduced international roaming charges, but "post paid plan" was peppered on every article about that. Give me a break.
My company uses ATT and Ive switched to using my company phone 100% of the time. However, I still have my TMobile sim pard sitting around and I'm still paying monthly payments even I don't use my TMobile plan at all. Had it been any other carrier, I would have cancelled in a heartbeat.
T-Mobile (should be crushed by) Rocks.<p>Here on the Western slope they have the worst service of the big four. Here, only people shopping strictly on price choose T-Mobile. They want your business, they just don't want to spend any money on the infrastructure to make it even marginally acceptable.
That being said, Speedtest reported Hong Kong 3G speeds on my (recently unlocked) iPhone 4 that are better than any of the reported 4G LTE speeds of any carrier in the US (7-9 mbps download...it was great!)
T-Mobile is the worst operator I've had. Expensive, shitty customer service, dick policies, retarded user plans and contracts.<p>Who knows about what country I'm talking about though...
I think the two thing that matter are reception and price. T-mobile clearly wins on price, but in many areas its reception is not as good as AT&T or Verizon.
and they have IPv6 across their entire network. As someone who does research in this space, and advocates for it as a matter of religion^W principle, this alone makes me want to give them money.
I understand that Fred Wilson is an important voice in the startup / ycombinator world... But is this really the quality of content that really deserves to be on the front page here?