T-Mobile Test Drive has been reintroduced, giving potential customers up to 30 days or 30Gb to test the carrier’s coverage and signal quality. After signing up, T-Mobile will ship you a portable hotspot completely free of charge, and yours to keep or give to a friend after the Test Drive completes.
T-Mobile reintroduced their Test Drive program yesterday, and from their website, it looks like they have reused the same page from 2019, as in 2020 T-Mobile now has access to 5G networking and this has been the marketing push. Whilst this oversight is amusing, T-Mobile’s 600MHz “Extended Range LTE” spectrum is a good selling point. The lower the frequency, the further the signal can penetrate through walls and other solid objects, and 600MHz is the lowest frequency commercially-used LTE band in the US.
Both personal and business potential customers are eligible, with T-Mobile restricting Test Drive to one device per household or business address, every six months. Existing customers of T-Mobile, including Metro by T-Mobile, Sprint, and “customers of T-Mobile partners using the T-Mobile network” are ineligible for the Test Drive.
It’s interesting that T-Mobile didn’t announce the Test Drive was making a comeback at their recent Uncarrier event, but the carrier has been doing something like this for six years now. It’s also a great idea – almost all other carriers make customers buy before they try the network, but T-Mobile lets customers try first with a generous allowance. This is very reassuring for customers on several levels. For the carrier, if a customer goes on to buy the T-Mobile service, they should be happy with their coverage – a good start to the relationship. If the customer does not buy coverage, T-Mobile may gain valuable insight into areas where their network could be improved.
Source: T-Mobile
