T-Mobile with its uncarrier approach has kind of positioned itself as the people's carrier. With a variety of uncarrier moves, the carrier has gained quite a lot of customers and garnered a lot of attention. Today, the company is tackling something, perhaps, minor, but something we see constantly: carrier maps.
You know, those maps Verizon and AT&T show us in their constant commercials? Well, according to T-Mobile, those maps that we see are produced by carriers based on “predictive coverage estimations.” As such, you're just getting the carrier's best guess at their coverage. So T-Mobile decided to do something about it and today it's introducing maps that are “based on the actual experience of real customers, like you and your family.”
The maps are said to reflect near real-time customer experiences on the network, based on 200 million actual customer usage data points. The kicker is, it's not done one a year, once a quarter, once a month or even once a week, but rather, once a day. To further bolster the mapping, the uncarrier isn't just relying on its own data, but is also pulling usage stats from trusted third-party sources including Inrix, among others.
Features include:
- Customer-verified coverage based on actual customer usage, resulting in a vastly more transparent and accurate map, showing, for example, exactly where you can expect 4G LTE, 4G, 3G or other levels of coverage.
- A Verified Coverage icon indicating where the majority of data is provided by T-Mobile customers reporting their actual network experience, providing an added layer of confidence.
- Data that’s updated twice monthly − compared to data presented on the carriers’ maps, which is already dated by the time it’s printed and published and may be months or even years old.
- Speed test data from trusted third party apps showing average download speeds from customer speed tests over the last 90 days.
Those interested in checking it out can head here and take a look. T-Mobile says it will continue to push 4G LTE service to over 300 million Americans this year, and the Next-Gen coverage map will continue to evolve based on billions of data points. So if you're using T-Mobile or are thinking about switching to the uncarrier, you can sleep easy knowing the coverage you're getting is based on real-time usage rather than a best estimate practice.
source: T-Mobile
Interesting. I usually only get 3 bars, seldom five. I have dropped calls and poor reception. I was told there was a problem with the towers. People always complain they can’t hear me when they call, so I have to have them call back on a landline. It took me 3 days of visiting the store, spending 3+ hours each time to get my phones switched and upgraded, and I had to come back because the phone I received was not as good as the one I gave up, even though I was told it was better. I never had these type of problems with Sprint service. So far, I am not very happy with T-Moble but I have a contract – for now.
I like TMo, I won’t leave TMo, but the map is grossly inaccurate. Says I should have 4g lte at my home, never once have I had that.