Re: T-Mobile Sprint Merger: Say goodbye to scam calls

On Mon, 3 Aug 2020 20:18:55 +0000 (UTC), badgolferman wrote:

> I have two phones, a personal iPhone 7 with T-mobile, and a work iPhone
> SE with Verizon.  I also have a work MiFi hotspot device with Verizon.
> I live in SE Virginia.

Hi badgolferman,

Yours is a reasonable and logically sensible view on things.

To your point, I have many relatives back on the east coast who, like you,
are long-time Verizon (and AT&T) customers.

> There is no doubt the Verizon coverage and signal strength is superior
> to T-Mobile from my experience.  

When T-Mobile gave out the free 200MB/month SIM for tablets, I shilled that
deal to all my friends and relatives, some of whom took T-Mobile up on the
offer, even in the east cost (about where you live, but further north).

The AT&T customers were delighted but the Verizon customers weren't, so,
rest assured, I'm not saying T-Mobile beats out Verizon everywhere as I
wouldn't know that - what I do know is I've had all three (now four)
sequentially - and I had not noticed any coverage difference at the times I
switched.

One Verizon customer in the boonies of the northeast borrowed the T-Mobile
phone and found its coverage lacking, so they remained on Verizon for their
mobile phone carrier, for example.

More importantly to counter Steve's claim, here, in the Silicon Valley,
I've been in many vehicles and buildings with others, and NONE of us have
any claim over the other of better (or worse) service, AFAICT.

Long ago we provided the detailed factual data in long threads with Steve
Sharf (sms); but he's immune to facts (e.g., he _still_ believes the
Qualcomm royalties went down for Christs sake!). 

So please ignore what Steve says about coverage in the Silicon Valley, as
Steve is a Type II apologist (not malicious, per se, but immune to facts).

> This is also true in areas away from
> my home whenever I have traveled.  I used to complain to VZW several
> years ago that I got terrible signal in my house so they gave me a
> minitower which hooked up to the router. 

Yes. That's a femtocell. I have one also. For T-Mobile. Everyone out here
has either the Femtocell or the Cellular Repeater (they usually give you
only one but they gave me two because I have a big house).

For your Android phones, you can put diagnostic freeware that will tell you
EXACTLY the tower ID you're connecting to, where you can tell exactly when
it switches from the T-Mobile cellular tower miles away, or the repeater
(which repeats the tower but if it's in a different window, it's a
different tower), or the femtocell.

In my case, in most of the house, it's the femtocell tower ID I see.
(Unfortunately, for iOS phones, I don't think you have this functionality.)

> When I switched to T-Mobile
> they gave me a free minitower right out the door when I told them I
> have trouble getting cellular service with VZW.

This is good to know, which proves my point that the carriers hand out that
femtocell freely. If you think about it, other than the cost of the
equipment, you're doing them a favor since you're getting your phone over
your own Internet, instead of their towers.

I wonder if they charged you a "deposit"? They said they normally charge
$400 for each (femtocell and repeater), which would be $800 out of my
pocket, but they waived the fee.

Did you have to give them a deposit?

> Sitting in my den right now I see the VZW phone has three bars and the
> TMO phone has one bar, sometimes zero bars.  When I was going to the
> office I had the same problems and that's why I chose the VZW service
> for my work phone.

I don't know how to put this gently, but if you had Android, you could see
a graph, in real time, of decibels, of your cellular signal and the exact
unique tower ID.

To be clear, since you're not an apologist so you're not playing silly
games with the facts, iOS used to have a very primitive feature where you
could check the unique tower id of your femtocell and the decibels, but
that feature came and went with various iOS releases, (which is where Jolly
Roger and nospam play silly games with ancient screenshots on the net).

Suffice to say you're doomed with respect to diagnostics unless you can
borrow an Android phone. Even then, the phone has to have a SIM card of the
carrier whose signal you want to test.

In summary, "bars" aren't all that useful; decibels are, and the unique
tower number is (e.g., femtocells won't be found on the net with
opensignal).
 
> Having said all that it's not worth it for me to switch my personal
> service to VZW.  The overall cost of ownership for the service and free
> Netlix make TMO a better choice for my family.

I called T-mobile this morning when you said you had Netflix, and they
confirmed my plan does NOT have Netflix. No big deal as I'm still angry at
Netflix for doubling the prices, but I was just curious as T-mobile keeps
changing the plan (they give me more and more data over the years).

>  I've had VZW before and
> do not like their customer service. 

What I didn't like was that the Kyocera broke and they replaced it free,
but they added two years to my contract. Even though the company paid for
the phone and the service and for the replacement plan, I dropped them the
instant those two years were up and went to AT&T. 

I was pleasantly surprised that AT&T was slightly cheaper, and the service
was about the same. Then, when AT&T refused to allow me to have a
smartphone without a data plan, I dropped them at the end of the contract
and moved to T-Mobile.

As with the move from Verizon to AT&T, I was pleasantly surprised the cost
was lower (slightly) and I could use any phone (which was a big deal), and
the service was about the same.

In my humblest of opinions, despite the incessant shilling Steve does for
Verizon out here in Silicon Valley, the service between the three is "about
the same". (Besides, T-Mobile has free roaming, but I never have the need
to turn it on.)

>  I also used to be a Verizon FiOS
> network technician and know what happens in the background when
> something breaks.  Granted VZW is not the same as FiOS, but it's the
> same company and I don't want to give them my money.

It's the principle. I agree with your stand on principle. 
-- 
Kudos to you for standing on principle.