T-Mobile US: The other major carriers are shit

It's easy to be a loudmouth.  Sometimes, you're right and other times, you're wrong.

John Legere and company have made T-Mobile better and that's evident in their recent numbers, where they've gained both prepaid and postpaid customers.  It was the best they've done in eight years, if I remember correctly.

At CES, Mr. Legere complained that the other major carriers are basically shit--their plans, their policies, their service.

I don't disagree 100% but there is a huge difference in T-Mobile and the rest--coverage.

When T-Mobile covers as much as any of the others, and they can keep everything as wonderful as they say things are, then I'll believe them.

It's a lot like the Europeans who live in a country the size of one of the states of the U.S.A. who say how easy it is to put everything into place.  Sure, it's easy to cover when you have an area that you can drive in 6 hours north to south or east to west.  Try covering an area that takes three 15 hour days to drive east to west.

I agree that Sprint has been terrible.  It's struggled a lot while having to deal with Nextel issues, and it went from being the number one 3G data provider to number three.  Once again, coverage matters.

I might have been with T-Mobile years ago, but when I asked about the service, I got a "No, we don't have 3G service yet." in response.  They've come a long way, and so has the new AT&T since its Cingular days.  I'm remembering 38 metropolitan areas were covered when Apple was readying its iPhone with 3G data capabilities.  When the first iPhone became available, Cingular had to upgrade their GPRS/EDGE data because it wasn't good enough.

As far as I'm concerned, it will still be 2016 before issues are settled and LTE will be good for the majority of users.  That is a long time and there will be a lot of B.S. and chest-thumping until that time.

By then, there probably won't be any feature phones and data usage will have increased to match the capabilities on the network, and we'll still be complaining.

Update 2014.03.08: RootMetrics put out a report citing their summary for the U.S.A., with a combination of areas they measured.  It's not all-inclusive but it certainly says something about what is real in mobile phone and data services.  It doesn't look as though T-Mobile was on top.

Thinking: iPhone 5(s|c) or LG G2 or HTC One or LG Optimus G

I'm still thinking about a new phone.  Next month, will be the end of my two year contract.  I've been eligible to trade up since July.  One thing that keeps me thinking is service, billing, and support.

When I was looking for a mobile hotspot I tried AT&T, Verizon, and finally, decided on Sprint.  Why?

AT&T billing--they charged me for data when the device was being shipped
Verizon service--they had the worst service where I live now
Sprint--it wasn't as bad as Verizon, and I'd been a customer since 2000

Given that Softbank put a lot of money into Sprint, the LTE rollout should be accelerating, if that's even possible.  Also, decommissioning Nextel's network frees up the lower 800 MHz band, plus the 2.5 GHz band will be freed from WiMAX as they replace WiMAX in areas where it's already running.  WiMAX has worked fine for me, and LTE shows promise.

Sprint has started pre-orders for the LG G2, the successor to the LG Optimus G, a phone I really liked.  At a resolution of 1280x768, it was quite capable of showing video clearly.  Since the G2 has a resolution of 1920x1200 (or is it 1080?), it can show media in full HD resolution, which is awesome in a handheld device.  They've also added the Google Nexus 5 to their pre-orders.  It's based on the G2 but with various differences.  I like that it will have priority and a straight path to system updates.  I just wish that Sprint were selling a 32 GB version.  The 32 GB G2 is US$50 more at US$199.99 with 2 year contract and the 16 GB Nexus 5 is US$149.99.  They're US$100.00 cheaper for new customers.

LG has tried to fix Android to work better for their customers, as has HTC and Samsung and even Motorola made some laughter with their attempt.  Having tried the original Nexus 7 tablet, I'm not sure that Android can be fixed, and that's why I'm hesitant to return, having had 3 Android-based products that really didn't work well for me.

Apple is not without their problems.  They want you to like what they like, as with Mercedes-Benz years ago, but guess what?  Mercedes-Benz changed.  Apple won't.  They know better than we do about what we want.

The best thing about Apple is that I know that an app will work for me.  If I'm on a newer operating system on a device with reasonable RAM, an app will work.  My iPhone 4S, and previously my second generation iPod touch, proves that to me every day.

I've been watching developers struggle with 64-bit apps on the iPhone 5s.  I'd probably avoid it, unless there is a point where the mess is resolved.  However, the supplies are constrained and I probably couldn't find one until the new year.

The iPhone 5c felt great, worked quickly, and was better and faster than my current phone, plus it has LTE capabilities.  Since it's almost completely an iPhone 5, the technology has been worked out.  It would be good to have LTE data speeds (where available, disclaimers apply) although I suspect that LTE will be bogged down by all the people switching at once.

I'm still not sure about the HTC One.  I really like the style and the fact that there are two speakers on the front, but I really dislike the fact that the company might not survive.  Who will provide me with software updates, if the company is gone?  Unfortunately, no matter how many colors they have available, I think people know about a sinking boat and are ready to look somewhere else.

Service, software, and more keep me thinking.  I'll probably let my contract run out, something I've not done since 2002.  I used my Star Tac for a total of 4 years, 2 of which were without contract.  Two years after I replaced it, it still was able to power on.  If I went a couple of days without charging a current phone, I bet it would be completely dead.  Of course, software-wise, my iPhone 4S would be completely dead by 2015.

Update 2013.10.30: I've really been giving the iPhone 5c more thought.  It's priced nicely for what's basically year old hardware with extra LTE bands thrown into it.  Besides that, I don't need to learn all new quirks and foibles, as I would with LG or HTC Android-based phones, which work differently.  That's not to say that I've decided, but it does push me in a certain direction.  The HTC One has a lot going for it and so does the LG G2.

One thing may delay my decision: cases.  I checked four different stores for a Ballistic or Otterbox case for the iPhone 5c and found none.  You can order them through the manufacturers' web sites, and Otterbox has a pick your combination selection, but I need to coordinate that carefully.  No case, no phone.

Update 2014.11.14: One year later or so, the iPhone 5c has been good.  The HTC One M7 has been replaced with the M8, both of which are brilliant.  I've also had a 2013 Nexus 7 tablet from about the same time and I don't regret not having an Android-based phone.  The operating system needs work, even at version 4.4.4, though I find iOS 7 and 8 to be rough also.  It feels as though it will be 30 years before things will be really good.  Of course, if Google and Apple actually tested their operating systems with real people, they'd be surprised at how much they'd find to improve.

LG has changed a lot with the G2 being the basic platform for the Nexus 5.  Overall, they feel like a company that you can trust.  The G3 is quite amazing, but as with Samsung, promoting a device through a power-hungry display seems a problem.

The problem is in your equipment

How many times have we heard that or something similar?  The service providers never ever have a problem with their equipment.

This is mainly about cable TV, satellie TV, and mobile phone providers.

My mum had a problem with Comcast, so she called their number and was told that there wasn't a problem.  Right before see cancelled service with them, she was having a problem where the box would not change the channel for several minutes.  Eventually, she got a Comcast technician (twice) to the house and they replaced all of the equipment and it still happened.  The company still acted like jerks when she went to return their equipment.

I had been trying to get her to sign up for DirecTV and she came close but she learned that she had to have an e-mail address for one of the $5.00 discounts and refused since she didn't have a computer.  Suddenly, she decided to go with Dish Network, for whatever reason.  Someone arrived on the coldest day in that January to install the equipment.

Similarly, there were problems out the wazoo.  (Yes, wazoo is a technical term.)  She lost signal for quite a while.  A couple of months before her death, they were interested in helping her.  It seemed as though they were losing customers and started to care.  For two years when she called, they would give her the run-around and often, they would hang up on her.  The first actual Dish Network employee inspected everything and said that it wasn't a good location for an installation because of the trees.  The dish's position on the back of the house probably didn't help.  The supervisor who was going to double-check the inspection never arrived.  However, it was the first time anyone had ever admitted the problem was somewhere but the television.

I've had minimal problems with DirecTV during downpours and sleet but it's been fairly reliable.  I need to pay the extra for the HD receiver/recorder so I can take advantage of the HD television I have.  Even if certain channels aren't broadcast in HD, it would be good to see the whole display, rather than having some of it off the sides.

My issue is with mobile phone/mobile hotspot providers.

I've been with Sprint since September 2000, and I had a year with Aerial (-->Voicestream->T-Mobile) before that.  Almost 13 years is quite a long time.  Since I've been in a small town, the customer service people have told me that the problem is in my phone, even after I tell them that the problem has existed over 4 phones.  I moved here with the LG Musiq active.  I bought the LG Lotus later, and then, the LG Optimus S, an Android-based phone.  In late 2011, I bought an iPhone 4S, which is still my phone.

In all that time I've had the timeouts and otherwise poor 3G service.  If the problem is in my phone, why do they sell bad phones?  I don't have access to change the phone enough to do anything useful.  It's all their show.  I get that it's a small town, but don't you do your best everywhere?

When I was in Christiana, Delaware last July, I couldn't make a decent phone call--everything was extremely distorted, but the 4G/WiMAX worked beautifully on my mobile hotspot.  When I was in the Orlando, Florida area around Thanksgiving, my mobile hotspot worked brilliantly at the motel, and nothing worked well at my friends' house.  So much for being too successful!

I grew up with "the customer is always right", so what happened with service providers of all kinds?  If cable TV or satellite TV wants my money, shouldn't they provide the best experience?  Equally, if Sprint wants me to remain a customer, shouldn't they improve things where my phone is.  They collect the information so they can see the problems, although I suspect they delete some (or limit collection) of the problem information so that they don't have to deny it legally.

My problem here is that, given the small town, there is no good alternative, other than moving.  I'm also not seeing great changes in other larger cities 50-75 miles away, even with the expansion of LTE placements.

Sprint LTE seems to work

I was in the Indianapolis area today, and as I had checked the Sprint coverage page last night, saw that they had gone live with LTE.  The funny thing about their data maps, unlike their voice maps, is that they don't show relative signal strength.  It's all covered in orange, when in reality, it might not be covered at all.

My current home coverage is like that.  It' shows up as a blanket of 3G goodness when, in fact, I often get unusable service.  The voice coverage shows me on the edge of great voice signal strength.

I took my mobile hotspot (Sierra Wireless Tri-Fi, as they call it), into the pizza place where I went to eat lunch, along with my laptop computer.  It connected slowly, then disconnected, then connected again.  As I was trying to actually use the connection, the hotspot disconnected from the computer.  C-R-A-P.  This is the second device, as the first one was confused about whether it was fully charged or not, and disconnected regularly.

My guess is that the disconnections happen when the towers are overloaded.  Despite their assurances, I think their capacity upgrades only minimized the horror and they needed 6 or 7 more to put things back to where they were before they started selling Apple's iPhone.  They've been selling smart phones like crazy.  Apparently, nearly half of people in the U.S.A. are using smart phones.  I saw almost great speeds on Christmas Day, so it makes sense.

There was a handy Sprint store around the corner, so I stopped to talk.  I casually asked why it wouldn't connect to LTE and the representative told me that the towers were only about 30 % of the buildout.  That seems consistent with Verizon and AT&T boasting LTE coverage when there wasn't much.  Sad, isn't it?  Still, some is better than none, as long as it works.

After I'd finished my regular shopping, I headed to Sam's Club for gasoline and to see if there was anything else I desperately needed.  $3.079 wasn't bad for regular, since I'd seen up to $3.219 on the way there.

I tried the mobile hotspot again, and it showed the 4G symbol.  Since I knew Indianapolis didn't have WiMAX, I was quite pleased to be connected to LTE for the first time with the device.  I'll upload the screenshot but the PING came back as 70 ms, with a download speed of 4.65 Mbps, and an upload speed of 3.81 Mbps.  Considering the technology, it's slow, but if I'd checked my 3G connection, the LTE speed would look wonderful.  I'm hoping to see much better.  I tried Verizon's LTE in West Carrollton, Ohio and the download speed at that time was ~5.8 Mbps but it was a more mature buildout by that time.  I considered it too slow for the money Verizon charged, and considering that I had minimal coverage in my own town at the time, it didn't make sense.  Since then, they added LTE but it's only good if you happen to be where it works.

Now, I'm thinking that Sprint may try to compete with Verizon since the two have this town sewn up.  T-Mobile doesn't even have 3G service here and there is no MetroPCS or Cricket.  AT&T has 3G service but that could collapse at any moment once their customers upgrade to 3G data phones.  It's not likely they'll have LTE here until the end of the century.  I don't even think that they had EDGE here until 2006 or 2007.

If nothing else, the pizza and breadsticks were good.

Update 2013.11.11: It's going on 10 months since I wrote this.  I see Sprint covering more of the state of Indiana, but service in Indianapolis is anything but exemplary.  Downtown, near where they showcased LTE for the SuperBowl, I've seen service as low as 0.75 Mbps and the other day, it was running at 1.0 Mbps down.  I also got 2.88 Mbps in the suburbs where the buildout didn't seem to be finished.  However, service in the mall was better near the Sprint kiosk, and often dropped to 1xRTT elsewhere.

I'm on my third hotspot now, and this one doesn't seem to be better.  Why doesn't the equipment for their towers work well?

I'm interested to see how Verizon is doing.  About a year ago, I went to visit someone in a small town to deliver a few things.  She was showing me her Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III and I noticed that LTE was lit.  She tried to look up something and it paused for over 1 minute, switched to 3G/EVDO, and returned results finally.  So much for more coverage.  Putting LTE on one tower just doesn't do more than stake a claim.  It has to work.

Oh, and I just had pizza and breadsticks there again the other day.

Give me the real 4G!

It seems that people are so starved for data (or merely terribly impatient) that 4G mobile data can't come soon enough.

I consider how few companies had a 3G presence in the U.S.A. in late 2006 when I got my first 3G data-capable phone and things seem much less advanced for 4G than faux G today.

Given that AT&T and T-Mobile hammer home this message that they have 4G everywhere, and that even LTE itself is not truly considered a 4G technology by ITU, the U.S.A. has very little coverage that's not close to old technologies.  HSPA+ can deliver great speeds but supposedly it's inefficient or they wouldn't be trying to replace it.

I remember looking back to the iPhone launch in 2007 and AT&T had little in the way of 3G coverage.  Verizon's more recent advertising ridiculed AT&T's 3G coverage.  When AT&T realized that it looked ridiculous, they stopped naming places where they had 3G and started telling everyone that they were covered for data access.

I used WiMAX the other day, and if you don't know, WiMAX was the initial 3.5G data technology that was used by Sprint/Clear/ClearWire in the U.S.A. and had thriving networks in several other countries before LTE was available.  WiMAX in the U.S.A. was hampered by some really terrible frequency that allowed it to reach a good distance outdoors but not work much indoors at all, unable to penetrate walls with any consistency.

In my experience, I haven't seen much difference between the speed of WiMAX and LTE in this area.  Both hovered around 5 Mbps download speed for me, on Sprint and Verizon, respectively.  Once Verizon completes their rollout of LTE, that will likely change, as they'll have a similar number of towers, plus a faster technology.  Of course, Sprint isn't sitting still and with the boost of Softbank, maybe they'll have some decent LTE coverage by the end of 2013.  Maybe, we'll all have some decent LTE coverage by then.

My mobile hotspot supports WiMAX and LTE, plus 3G, so I'm mostly prepared except that Sprint will add a lower frequency once they decommission the last of Nextel's iDEN network, which operates at 800 MHz.  Unfortunately, the mobile hotspot doesn't cover Sprint's lower 3G frequency either, so when things get rough, the tough have to pack it up and forget the internet.  (I was wondering why my phone had better connections than my dedicated, data-only device.  Now, I know.)

I wonder how 4G coverage will change 2G coverage.  There are still places where I see no 3G coverage but I understand that AT&T are re-purposing their 2G towers for 4G spectrum in metropolitan areas.

This weekend, I'll likely be on the move and I should pass through Atlanta (stuck on I-75 isn't much of a place to test), where Sprint already has LTE active in some state of service.  Whether I'll actually find coverage or not will be interesting.  I'm likely to find WiMAX coverage in the Orlando area (10-13Mbps on I-drive!).  WiMAX was a mixed bag in southeastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, and southern New Jersey.  At my motel in Wilmington/Newark/Christiana Delaware, WiMAX was the only reliable technology.  Voice calls were absolutely horrible but I was getting 4+ Mbps from WiMAX in the same location.

If I look back to my entry into 3G data in the second half of 2006 to now, it took probably 4 years for 3G to be strong enough to be considered everywhere.  Can we wait until 2015 or 2016?

Update 2013.10.26: It's nearly a year later and AT&T is claiming to have the fastest and most reliable LTE network.  Verizon seems to have the most coverage, although putting LTE on 1 tower is not really coverage, is it?  Sprint has started their LTE network and they've changed greatly by being 70 some percent owned by Softbank telecommunications of Japan, and Sprint bought Clearwire, of which they were already a majority shareholder and customer.  T-Mobile has accelerated their network buildout by buying MetroPCS and their LTE network.  Still, it's mostly Verizon and AT&T at this point.

Apple, I'm so not surprised at your iPhone/iPod announcement

Today's announcements were hardly a surprise, despite a company long concerned about secrecy.

As I wrote in an earlier entry, I'm not too concerned with what this announcement brought.  I'm not switching phones after only one year, since any new phone is not going to cook, clean, do the dishes, and pay the bills for me.  Only the most fanatical would pay an early termination fee at this time, yes?

Does anyone remember that there were electronics-related announcements last week?  Probably not.

I'm glad to see the iPod nano get some love.  It hardly looks the right shape or size to be a watch this time.  They went through tall and skinny at the start, and moved to wide and dumpy, then to square, and back to tall and skinny with video playback.  It seems a good choice for a lot of people, especially runners who don't want to be bothered by a phone while they're running.  There was a time when we all left the phone at home and just enjoyed the time away from it.

The iPod touch got a needed upgrade, but is it enough?  It used to be that the iPod touch was more powerful than the iPhone, but that's no longer the case.  It has the longer display without the newer processor, likely making it a poorer performer than with the last generation although it's been behind the times for a while.  Hopefully, it's the A5x processor that the third generation iPad has, instead of the A5 processor that powers the iPhone 4S.  I've found my 4S to be slow graphically in some situations.  Pushing more pixels with the new display, the processor certainly wouldn't be faster.

Everyone I'm sure is ready for a revamped version of iTunes.  They announced version 11 but are they just cosmetic changes or will it be fluid and more versatile?  When I moved from a 1.33 GHz PowerBook to a dual core 2.13 GHz MacBook, I didn't really see much improvement with iTunes and it was still an assemblage of messes.  I know the problem of communicating across the wire and coordinating files, but Apple always assumed that the iTunes user was wrong and they knew better.  They never asked, and never explained anything.

What I'm waiting to see is how the critics on both sides react.  I don't want to see how the fanatics will react because it's a given that they'll be ridiculous.  Will companies with devices based on Android feel the need to change further?

I'm interested to see how LTE-enabled phones work.  I just saw a message that the U.S. bound Sprint and Verizon versions of iPhone can work with LTE networks overseas but the AT&T version will not.  Considering the mess of network deployment and that it's all still a mass of confusion, will anyone win in 2012?

Mobile Hotspots and Me

I've been using a mobile internet connection since late 2006.  I got a new mobile phone, the Samsung SPH-A900 or Blade.  (This was later Lex Luthor's phone on Smallville.  I felt so evil.)  The one feature that intrigued me was the "phone as modem" capability.  I did some checking and got it to work using Sprint's 3G EVDO technology.  It was faster than the 3 Mbps DSL line from BellSouth that I'd been using, except in PING response speed.

Once I had things set, I discontinued my DSL service and never looked back.  Then, I moved again to a rural community (to help with my parents) where Sprint had no 3G service.  Often, their 1.5G speed was worse than dial up.  They were slated for 3G service the month before I arrived, but something wasn't working and the technicians didn't understand what was happening.  In the middle of a freezing, snowy January they figured it out.  I would go from 2 Mbps to dial up speeds about once every 6 weeks, call customer service who told me that there was nothing wrong, but they would send me PRL updates, etc. and the phone would work better for 6 weeks.  There was "nothing wrong with their network" over an LG Musiq, LG Lotus, LG Optimus S, and finally the iPhone 4S.  I didn't draw the same conclusion about their network.

In these last 3 years, it's become slightly more stable, and with an iPhone having EVDO Revision A technology, I'd seen downlink speeds of 3 - 4 Mbps fairly regularly and I'd once or twice seen downloads through Firefox exceed 500 KB/sec.  Someone in the neighbourhood apparently got connected to Sprint recently and my numbers dwindled to unusable--shutting off the phone unusable.  Besides that, Apple's iOS 5.x mobile hotspot is unstable.

Back on June 6th, I decided to do something about the situation.  I ordered a Sierra Wireless Elevate from AT&T.  I'm not very trusting of the company since they were Southwestern Bell + PacBell + AmeriTech + BellSouth and who knows what other baby Bells.  I went against my feelings.

The device arrived on the 8th and it arrived with the SIM card installed and I just needed to tailor it to my needs.  Despite the slick marketing, it wasn't very fast using HSPA/HSPA+.  Granted, it was much better than unusable but for all their hype, it was barely faster than Sprint at best and it rarely achieved the best time, despite a lack of users.  Once they had as many users as Sprint, they'd be in trouble.  Then, they gave me the first bill and I was a bit shocked that they charged me for data usage while it was being shipped to me.  It wasn't that the money was so high, but that I was paying for time when I didn't have access to it.  Several times, it wasn't connected for whatever reason and a power cycle (power off/power on) was necessary.  This was a refurbished unit, so it should have been working much better.  I returned the whole thing and cancelled the contract.  I must pay for the usage but supposedly, I shouldn't have to pay for anything else--supposedly.  The usage was rather high.  In 10 days, I'd used slightly more than 2.5 GB--half my monthly allowance, and overages were $10 per 1 GB.

I went to a corporate Verizon store in the same town and bought a hotspot.  This was made by ZTE.  I was uncomfortable with all the complaints about the latest Novatel Wireless MiFi LTE device.  Verizon has a 10 GB plan for $80, as well as the typical 5 GB plan for $50.  This ZTE device (#890L) has been out about a month, so it might not be so foolproof, and I'm definitely a fool.  By the way, all of these devices support LTE, where you can find it available.  The ZTE device does not keep track of data used, so you're on your own to look for overages.

Unfortunately, I didn't take the computer with me, so I didn't get to experience LTE right away.  However, I wouldn't be returning to a house with LTE available so, did it really matter?  When I returned home, I set it to charge and connected and personalised it.  It worked fine but Verizon's EVDO/3G service is slower than Sprint's and it's just as overloaded as Sprint's.  Oops.

I had a download of over 800 MBs waiting that I wasn't going to ignore and since I was on the last day of the billing cycle (last day to start?), I tried downloading.  It showed 2 hours, 15 hours, 3 hours, 1 day, and levelled off at 6 hours and change.  Whoa!  I went to another location closer to the main road and it was just as bad.  (Since I wrote this in June, Verizon Wireless has implemented LTE service in town. I don't know if it's good or bad, but a friend has a Samsung Galaxy S III and it shows up as having LTE service available.  I guess I should have been more patient.)  I headed back toward the town where I bought the device, where LTE was active, and the download finished the final ~700 MB in 20 minutes.  I tried speedtest.net just after that and it recorded something a bit over 5 Mbps--not blazing speed in my experience, though there was a peak of 25 Mbps for maybe half a second.  That's not exactly what I'd expect from the nation's fastest 4G network but better than what I'd seen from their 3G network, of course.

One problem I've noticed with the ZTE 890L is that connected to EVDO/3G and using battery only, once disconnected it needs a power cycle to be usable again.  It doesn't happen connected to a power outlet.  Another odd thing I've noticed with the Verizon network in town is that they seem to be on EVDO Revision 0 instead of Revision A, even though they claimed years ago that their whole network was faster than Sprint's because they were on Revision A.

My exploration and experimentation is complete.  Sprint had the best speed in town and perhaps after their capacity and data speed upgrades, they'll be faster than Verizon here.  They'll probably be faster than AT&T, if AT&T actually get some customers and therefore, get the congestion.

I ended up returning the Verizon device about a week from when I bought it.  I'm now using another Sierra Wireless device from Sprint with a huge (over double the size) 3700 mAh battery for long life (and long charging) that cost $99.99 after rebate.  They call it "Tri-Fi", as it supports EVDO/3G, WiMAX, and LTE; the latter two being considered casually as 4G technologies.  I like that it keep track of data during the session, as well as overall usage.  I'll see how it works in a WiMAX environment since I'm planning a trip to Philadelphia.

Update 2014.03.02: This ended badly overall, and I've changed again.