Who has T-Mobile? How is your cell service?

[GrnMtnMan]

I'm surprised nobody has mention WiFi calling. Basically, if you're on wifi everything (including calls an texts) goes through wifi instead of cell towers. So if the primary concern is service at home, and you have regular internet service, wifi will have you covered.

And to answer your question: I've had T-Mobile for years, and I'm happy with it. In some places I seem to lose coverage compared to Verizon, but I don't get gouged for international data or overages. We've used the free international roaming in Europe and the Bahamas, and it works well. Not fast enough to stream, but steady service for email and texting.

 

[scrapquitler]

I have been with AT&T since the original unlimited data plan. My kids have service with Tracfone and are using our old iPhones.

My iPhone 6 is 3 years old and my kids iPhones are even older than that. They all work just fine, but my 13-year old wants a newer phone and wants more data. I was looking at the AT&T plans and they are expensive. I pay about $80/month for my line after all taxes and fees.

T-Mobile has some attractive deals, particularly because we travel a lot. We travel internationally anywhere from 1 to 3 weeks every year, and that is included in texting and 2G data.

When I enter my address in the coverage map, it says coverage is "good," and makes it sound like outside is OK, but inside there may be some issues. Well, that's no good. So, if you have T-Mobile, how is your service? And does it work indoors? Seems silly to have a phone that may not work inside...

You might want to consider Straight Talk for the kids. My daughter uses Straight Talk and for $45/month she gets unlimited everything, and it uses the AT&T towers (you can buy a different sim card or a different phone if you want to use a different set of towers). If she goes over 10GB, they throttle the speed. I think they have something extra or instead that you can buy for international, but I'm not sure because it's not something that we have had to deal with.

 

[kydisneyfans]

Add me to the depends on area of coverage to determine whether it's worthwhile. Similar to the Louisville to Southern IN poster, they have massive dead spots along I64 between Louisville and Lexington, and forget about a signal in the rest of KY once you get about 25 miles east of Lexington on both I64 or the Mountain Parkway. We found dead areas off I75 outside of the metro areas also. We switched back to Verizon within a few weeks of leaving-no sense on paying half price for a phone that works 10% of the time in your travel area.

 

[ArielSparrow]

I have T-Mobile and rarely have issues. Once when power went out in the neighborhood and once when I was on a mountain. In both cases, it seemed that some other services had some signal. I love it.

 

[Buttercup teacup]

Terrible. I’m sitting on my back porch right now with one bar. Looking at the coverage map, I should have all the bars I’d ever want. I live outside of Atl, and rarely have great coverage, even in the middle of the city. I also get a lot of dropped calls. Never had any of these issues when we were with Verizon.

 

[arminnie]

I have no experience with T-Mobile as I've had AT&T since my first iphone almost 15 years ago. And Sprint before that. My coverage during travel in rural Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana has been great. If I have no coverage it literally is for 5-10 miles only. I also had great coverage living in the Silicon Valley area of Northern California from San Francisco to San Jose.

Last year DH and I made a driving trip from Arkansas to Maine with stops in Gatlingburg,Tn; Hershey,Pa; Newport, RI; Portland, ME; Gettysburg, PA, West Chester, PA, Wellesley, MA; Richmond, VA; Charlottesville, VA which took us thru major cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia and DC. I was shocked that I had ZERO coverage in some of the major metropolitan areas.

How does AT&T not have coverage in the Boston metropolitan area or in other major cities? I would say that I had no coverage for most of the trip after I reached eastern Pennsylvania. I realize that coverage can disappear if one leaves "civilization" for the boonies, but did not expect it in densely populated areas. Coverage in that part of the country was just not acceptable with At&T.

So it's all local.