T-Mobile Offering Three Months of Free Service for Prospective Customers

“Switching is another insane artifact left over from a stupid, broken, arrogant industry … and it’s hard on purpose. As the industry juggernauts in the 3G and 4G era, Verizon and AT&T designed switching to be difficult, keeping their hordes of customers from leaving to protect their billions in revenues,” said Mike Sievert, CEO of T-Mobile. “At the Un-carrier, we’re laser-focused on being the wireless provider you want to stay with, not the one you’re stuck with.

It's comments like these that brought me to T-Mobile. Haven't looked back since.

I’m 3 weeks into my t-mobile test drive. Currently I’m with Verizon, and my partner is with AT&T but we are looking to merge. Just came back from a camping trip in rural California, was testing all three along the way in hopes to find the best one for the two of us and hopefully save some money.

I was very impressed with T-Mobiles 2.5ghz midband 5G. It seems if I had service, it was 5G UC all the way up 5 and various other highways and into the little town before the national park, pushing 100-300 mbps the whole time. It was very fast, although there were a few dead zones of just nothing here and there and once we started climbing mountains it was completely dead in the water, hopefully their partnership with Space X fills in this gap. In the city it works great with no real coverage problems.

Verizon still had the best coverage of the three, although it was mostly LTE, not even “nationwide 5G” but plenty fast, usually around 20-50mbps. I get C-Band in the Bay Area with 300-800mbps down, but once we left and got on the highway I didn’t see it again at all. Maybe that will change this December when they add more spectrum. The main win with Verizon is I didn’t see any dead spots along the way and even in the mountains almost all the way to the campsite maintained at least 1 bar of useable LTE for maps and texting/calling while the other two were dead. This is probably what’s going to keep me on Verizon despite the price, as we were able to find a bar here and there to check in with our cat sitter during the trip while the other two were no signal.

AT&T was the worst by a long shot. I was surprised because I knew my partners service was worse than mine in the city (slow speeds, many dead zones. Doesn’t even get signal on our street), but I expected it to be better than T-Mobile. The most dead spots of the three, both on the high ways and in the mountains. They don’t offer midband 5G at all right now, even in the city. Half the time on 5 it would show one bar of LTE or “5Ge” but would be unusable, couldn’t even load google, while the other two were happy. It did have a couple spots of useable service in the mountains where T-Mobile didn’t, but Verizon was always holding strongest.

All in all I’m very impressed with T-Mobile and how far they’ve come, especially with 5G speeds and surpassing AT&T’s coverage, at least in urban and rural Northern California. But I will be sticking with Verizon for the two of us due to best overall coverage despite the higher costs, but I do hope they can catch up with T-Mobile’s urban and suburban midband which is blazing fast and top of the 5G game right now.

Dumb question, as I've never used the e-sim alongside a regular sim at the same time. How does the phone know which data connection to use? I'm interested in trying this, as Verizon has become painfully slow the past 6 months in my area...

During the setup it will ask if you want to use your primary SIM or the eSIM as a default, with the option to fallback on the secondary when there isn't a good connection on your default.

Afterwards, you can switch between the two in your settings anytime you want.

I was very impressed with T-Mobiles 2.5ghz midband 5G. It seems if I had service, it was 5G UC all the way up 5 and various other highways and into the little town before the national park, pushing 100-300 mbps the whole time. It was very fast, although there were a few dead zones of just nothing here and there and once we started climbing mountains it was completely dead in the water, hopefully their partnership with Space X fills in this gap. In the city it works great with no real coverage problems.

Verizon still had the best coverage of the three, although it was mostly LTE, not even “nationwide 5G” but plenty fast, usually around 20-50mbps. I get C-Band in the Bay Area with 300-800mbps down, but once we left and got on the highway I didn’t see it again at all. Maybe that will change this December when they add more spectrum. The main win with Verizon is I didn’t see any dead spots along the way and even in the mountains almost all the way to the campsite maintained at least 1 bar of useable LTE for maps and texting/calling while the other two were dead. This is probably what’s going to keep me on Verizon despite the price, as we were able to find a bar here and there to check in with our cat sitter during the trip while the other two were no signal.

Even though I really don't need that type of coverage 90% of the time, it's that better overall coverage that has kept me on Verizon all of these years. Even when there's no data, you can almost always at least get a text or call through. We tried T-Mobile for a stint (mind you, this has been 2-3 years now), and my wife got a flat tire in one of those spots where there was literally no service. We've been back with Verizon since then... ;)

I'll also add that Verizon's prices are competitive with T-Mobile's now as well, depending on what you need.

All of that said... still might try this out given how easy it is, and if there's a significant difference, it might be worth trying T-Mobile again.

If only they had better coverage, at *any* bandwidth, in my area :-(

That's ultimately the risk/shortcoming with T-Mobile. Their coverage has improved, and their midband 5G has helped strengthen their weak areas, and made their strong areas excellent. But they still have a lot more square footage where there's simply zero service - not even a call or text could get through. And that's where Verizon still wins. Slower... but everywhere.

Interesting. Looks cool.