Earlier today T-Mobile launched Data Stash at their Un-Carrier 8 event and briefly touched on some of the improvements they have made to their data network during the past year. As a follow-up to that presentation, T-Mobile's Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray took to the company's official blog to share some additional details about how the carrier grew during 2014 and what to look forward to in 2015.
Neville notes that is was only a year ago that T-Mobile was trailing Verizon and AT&T in LTE network speed. The companies engineers were challenged to change that and to expand T-Mobile's coverage during 2014. The target for T-Mobile was coverage that blanketed 250 million people in the U.S. and with a reach of 260 million today, the goal was achieved.
In addition to the newly extended reach of the LTE network, T-Mobile has optimized the network so it routinely tests faster than competitors. The carrier also began working on their Wideband LTE technology to speed things up even beyond traditional 4G LTE speeds. That service now covers 121 metro areas, including the recently lit up New York metro area. T-Mobile also made use of 700 MHz spectrum acquired last spring to launch low-band LTE in Cleveland, Colorado Springs, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C.
Ray says that during 2015, T-Mobile's LTE coverage should reach 280 million people by mid-year and 300 million by the end of the year. The company is also working with device manufacturers to ensure all new devices added to the portfolio during 2015 are Band-12 capable so they can tap into the expanding low-band LTE coverage.
In addition to improvements to the network coverage and speed, T-Mobile also introduced some new features to help customers. The company's Voice over LTE (VoLTE) service, Wi-Fi calling and in-flight texting were launched during 2014.
Ray notes that T-Mobile customers use an average of 3.5 GB of data per month, far surpassing other carriers. He says this is a sign of strength for the carrier as customers make use of the services available to them.
Anyone out there thinking about making the switch to T-Mobile during 2015?
source: T-Mobile
T-Horrible has been talking big expansion for years and have yet to expand their sorry 2G network. They just keep upgrading the same few big cities over and over. I had them three years ago and from my medium size city I could drive in any direction for 2 1/2 hours before I found anything but 2G. Back then they talked a big game of expanding to 4G. Then they talked about expanding big into LTE and now it’s LoLTE. Regardless, they have exactly the same footprint of coverage they had three years ago, which is very small with very limited 4G/LTE coverage. There’s so much bullshite coming out of corporate headquarters that I bet flies are swarming all over it.
Your information is outdated… check your facts.
I have. I checked their coverage map before I posted and it looks exactly like it did three years ago when I was with them.
I’m not sure where you live, but it seems that T-Mobile is really only a great deal if you live in and/or travel around large metro areas. I literally just joined them about a month ago just to save some money since I don’t use my cell much anymore. And given that I live near the LA area in Southern California, I find it difficult NOT to be covered by LTE using T-Mobile…which is great!
Also, for a two month overlap, I carried two phones with me (one being on T-Mobile and the other on AT&T) for testing. My girlfriend and I drove up north to Monterey for Christmas and she had her Verizon phone with her. With these three phones, we got a great snapshot of the top 3 carriers outside of major cities. While AT&T and Verizon naturally got service in more remote and rural areas, T-Mobile routinely killed them both with faster speeds. This applied whether the devices were on LTE, HSPA+, HSPA, EDGE or GPRS and I can assure you, all devices were constantly switching between higher and lower speeds on our drive. T-Mobile only had zero service in a few areas which mostly lied in-between small mountains or areas where there weren’t even gas stations. However, when T-Mobile was out, AT&T and Verizon weren’t much better while sitting on EDGE or GPRS most of the time with maybe one service bar. There were also a couple spots where T-Mobile had service and the other two didn’t. It’s a crap shoot for sure. :(
Point being, all cell services will suffer in remote areas and hardly any of them will have sufficient speed to do any real web browsing or heavy texting like sending pictures or whatnot. And while T-Mobile does suffer quite a bit more in terms of remote service, they can’t be beat with their pricing.
All in all, for maintaining SOME level of service in remote areas, I’d rate the top three as: 1. Verizon, 2. AT&T, 3. T-Mobile
For average speed (when all three had service), 1. T-Mobile, 2. Verizon, 3. AT&T
For pricing: 1. T-Mobile, 2. AT&T, 3. Verizon