Do you have a reference for that? I only remember Verizon being offered the iPhone in the USA. AT&T was their obvious second choice. Given T-Mobile welcoming Google/Android with open arms, if this is true, I guess they quickly, but too late, learned their lesson.
When I ran the numbers for our T-Mobile shared plan (5 phones, 750 minutes, unlimited text, 2 with unlimited data) if our smartphones cost no more than $250, and regular phones no more than $100 (which they did by purchasing on the internet), we were saving money within 14 months. Now if I had purchased the phones in-store to avail myself of the 20 month interest free financing where unsubsidized phones are hideously overpriced (no more than other provider's stores though), I wouldn't have been saving any money over 24 months. But honestly we generally get at least 3 years out of phones anyway.
They were called Even More Plus plans. They were postpaid and they quit offering them to new customers several months ago. But they are grandfathered for old customers, I'm on one. You could get them in a slightly different format by doing them prepaid (FlexPay), but they stopped that a couple days ago. Now they are history, along with T-Mobile it seems.
They may have a guesstimate based on informal replies to questions in their customer retention department, but they can't know. No one can know because T-Mobile never got or never availed themselves the opportunity of carrying the iPhone. They may have only lost a few ten thousands of subscribers to AT&T due to the iPhone, and the rest left for other reasons such as the smaller network in some areas of the country or cheaper plans like Metro/Virgin/Boost.
Personally T-Mobile was my sweet spot of decent national coverage, great local coverage, good prices, and great customer service. They'll be sorely missed.
Not exactly, but tangentially. T-Mobile's 3G and "4G" network is on 1700/2100, which no iPhone in the USA can use. So it won't give AT&T iPhone customers an immediate benefit. Future AT&T phones will get what is technically 4G (but in practice about the same speed as T-Mobile's fake 4G) from a recommissioned 1700/2100 LTE band. AT&T may be able to squeeze some 3G onto T-Mobile's 850/1900 network that is currently only servicing voice and 2G. On AT&T they got 3G in that band too. Not sure why T-Mobile couldn't. Perhaps there just wasn't enough available nationwide and they didn't want to put 3G on 4 bands instead of only 2.
There's nothing that says they couldn't merge, it would just be much more technically complex. Sprint could use T-Mobile's 1700/2100 3G spectrum to finish off their LTE network, much like AT&T is planning to do. That would degrade data service on T-Mobile's current handsets to 2G, exactly as AT&T plans, unless they were able to get 3G on T-Mobile's 850/1900 network like AT&T did with theirs. That might also require a T-Mobile handset refresh for continuing 3G service if they can't reprogram them remotely to get 3G data off their 850/1900 network instead. Then Sprint's future 4G handsets could be programmed to run on Sprint's network for voice and slow data, and on T-Mobile's 1700/2100 LTE network for fast data, until they were ready to push even voice data onto LTE, and then they could potentially vacate and sell their CDMA frequencies, and possibly even the overlapping T-Mobile 850/1900 frequencies.
The spectrum auction did nothing to enhance iPhone service on T-Mobile USA. They bought the UTMS 1700/2100 spectrum in that auction to provide 3G service. No US iPhone, and possibly none in the world, can utilize T-Mobile USA's 3G network. They only get EDGE service on T-Mobile that wasn't part of the spectrum auction.
I doubt they'd be forced to give up any of T-Mobile's 3G 1700/2100 spectrum that they are committing to use for LTE. In areas where the only other cell provider is AT&T on 850/1900 Voice/EDGE/3G, they might be forced to give up T-Mobile's 850/1900 Voice/EDGE spectrum. But since there are no other national GSM networks, the spectrum would be worthless to all but some startup regional cell company. That might be nice for that local area, but does nothing for the national market.
Maybe in your neck of the woods. But I've never had a problem with their coverage anywhere in TX and within about 30 miles of more than a few major airports in the USA.
http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk-plans.jsp Yeah, he said it was unlimited text, unlimited data, and 300 voice minutes. If you are using an Android phone and using Google Navigation, you don't have to have any special navigation plan. It runs off your data connection to Google's servers. Technically if you always connect to Wifi, plan your route, then leave and never reroute, you wouldn't even need a cellular data plan because it caches your route.
Virgin Mobile definitely runs on Sprint's network. And I think there was a misunderstanding that he didn't take the same phone from AT&T to Virgin. I bet he sold the AT&T one and got a similar one on Virgin.
You weren't able to use the same phone on Virgin as you were on AT&T right? I think Virgin/Sprint is CDMA, and won't work with AT&T GSM phones. When AT&T inevitably screws with my T-Mobile Even More Plus plan, I plan on going to Virgin. I just hope I can find a reasonably priced Sprint Android phone to use on Virgin from eBay/Craigslist that is supported by CyanogenMod, like an Evo Shift for under $250 by then...
I don't think AT&T wants T-Mobile's 3G 1700/2100 service. I think they're planning on decommissioning those, and recommissioning as 1700/2100 LTE. Will they need to relicense T-Mobile's towers if they only switch the protocol? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110321/ap_on_hi_te/us_at_t_t_mobile_usa_phones
That's a good example of how I disagree with CU/CR's rankings.
I don't think the phone customer service from T-Mobile is any different no matter what part of the country you call from. I've always had excellent service over the phone, and that's really all I care about. I am on the old non-contract postpaid plan where I don't have subsidized phone purchase, so I don't buy the hideously overpriced phones in their store. I purchase them unlocked over the internet.
I don't need in person service, and most cell phone sales people, at all the companies, are pretty poor. With T-Mobile while assisting my girlfriend or parents, I've come across excellent knowledgeable sales people, and completely uninformed but nice and I guess well meaning sales people. So regionally, there may be a difference in their in-store service.
T-Mobile has excellent coverage in Texas. They have always had satisfactory coverage for me in every major city in the US. I don't travel far out of major cities in states other than Texas for their weaker coverage to be a problem. I also loved that I was able to use my phone while traveling in Europe, even if it was a little expensive.
Verizon on the otherhand shows complete disregard for their customers, and think they're selling a BMW rather than a Honda. They're expensive for the service provide. They lock features down on their phone tight as a drum unless you pay more for them. They turned away the iPhone. How stupid was that? They were gambling on the fact no other cellphone company would agree to Apple's terms. But it only took one company to agree and they should have known that it would be run away popular. Even if I disagree with Apple's tactics, I know their products are very good quality and their customers are mostly rabid fans. I doubt Google even offered them Android initially because of their reputation.
T-Mobile and AT&T (by proxy through Apple) changed the industry for the better. Verizon thought their poop smelled like roses, and now they're playing catch up.
Yes. I don't think CU intends to deceive, but I frequently disagree with their weightings of factors when rating companies and products. I would like to read their full ratings of cell companies. As one example, Consumer's Reports ratings of cars (with the exception of the reliability survey) are especially terrible unless you are a family with 2.3 children, live in the suburbs, and have milquetoast tastes.
J.D. Power is no more financed by the telecom industry than they are financed by the auto industry or banking industry, meaning they pay the company for access to their market research relating to their competitors. But I haven't seen evidence that the amount a company pays for unrelated services affects their rank in J.D. Power surveys.
I take both organizations with a grain of salt. The J.D. Power example was to show that T-Mobile isn't universally known for bad service. As a counterexample, J.D Power rates the top 3 credit card companies as AMEX, Discover, and U.S.Bank. I've had crappy service from AMEX, but satisfactory service from the other two. There's variability in every person's experience with a company. And we don't all rate the same problem as seriously or not.
There are currently 4 major independent networks in the USA that operate on 2 technologies, and a combination of 5 or more frequencies. AT&T and T-Mobile have their own networks using GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications). Some of their frequencies overlap, but not all because T-Mobile wasn't able to buy all the necessary frequency blocks from the FCC.
Sprint and Verizon have separate networks that operate on the CDMA2000 (code division multiple access) technology. Here is a list of network operators http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators_of_the_Americas#United_States . Sprint is migrating their network to LTE/3GPP (Long Term Evolution). AT&T and Verizon have both announced plans to do the same. Some believe AT&T is buying T-Mobile to get their frequencies because they don't have enough to build out their LTE network.
Some cell companies resell the network of another company. Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile both resell Sprint's network.
T-Mobile has really good reception in Texas. And though I don't travel far away from the major airports in the USA, I've never been disappointed in coverage. The only time I was significantly without signal was rural New Mexico many years ago. We have a dropped call maybe once a month, if that.
My mother texted one of those stupid "Vote for your favorite American Idol" contest and inadvertently signed up for some service that cost $20/month. I called T-Mobile, fessed up to what happened, and they immediately credited back both months that we were billed.
I always take CU rankings with a grain of salt. I've had awesome customer service from T-Mobile. And they regularly win (or tie with Sprint) in J.D.Power's customer service rankings.
I'm ardently pro-nuclear, and I'll concede your point. Western nuclear engineers could have made safer designs. I'm not familiar with all the considerations and compromises based on current technology they had to make back then
But I don't think Chernobyl belongs in here. The people who were there (the operators) caused the accident by operating an unsafely designed (at the time) reactor outside of its design limits, then embarking on an unapproved test to see if a new procedure would reduce the risk of one of its design flaws. It probably wouldn't have been near as serious if the "operators" just walked away from the reactor.
Because that would add a lot of weight, and wiring to maintain to airworthiness standards. Instead, why doesn't the WiFi unit in the plane have a self test feature like many avionics, that can tell when it is broadcasting out of spec and shut it down?
And my simple solution to defeat that bogus safety consideration is to stuff a gas cap in the pump handle lever, no matter what those silly warning signs might say. Why not start a public education campaign to train people to touch their car before touching the pump handle, and also to stand to the side of the fill tube trajectory, never directly in front of it?
And Trumpet Winsock was one part of a communication system that for the first time allowed lay people to cheaply share knowledge about "where to put it".
I know I wouldn't be nearly as handy today with a wrench if it wasn't for the internet.
(1) You're not doing it right. You don't need to type 50 emails. You start 1 new message, and manually add the 50 recipients if you want to do it the hard way. Or create an email group of the 50 recipients and add only that group. Many email clients allow you to expand the group and delete individual recipients after that.
(2) Depends on how the email client handles threading. From experience, some will, some won't. Gmail will even occasionally start a new thread when nothing has been changed and it should have been part of a previous thread.
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Do you have a reference for that? I only remember Verizon being offered the iPhone in the USA. AT&T was their obvious second choice. Given T-Mobile welcoming Google/Android with open arms, if this is true, I guess they quickly, but too late, learned their lesson.
When I ran the numbers for our T-Mobile shared plan (5 phones, 750 minutes, unlimited text, 2 with unlimited data) if our smartphones cost no more than $250, and regular phones no more than $100 (which they did by purchasing on the internet), we were saving money within 14 months. Now if I had purchased the phones in-store to avail myself of the 20 month interest free financing where unsubsidized phones are hideously overpriced (no more than other provider's stores though), I wouldn't have been saving any money over 24 months. But honestly we generally get at least 3 years out of phones anyway.
The one drawback is iPhones couldn't get fast 3G data on T-Mobile. You were restricted to 2G slow data due to spectrum incompatibilities.
They were called Even More Plus plans. They were postpaid and they quit offering them to new customers several months ago. But they are grandfathered for old customers, I'm on one. You could get them in a slightly different format by doing them prepaid (FlexPay), but they stopped that a couple days ago. Now they are history, along with T-Mobile it seems.
They may have a guesstimate based on informal replies to questions in their customer retention department, but they can't know. No one can know because T-Mobile never got or never availed themselves the opportunity of carrying the iPhone. They may have only lost a few ten thousands of subscribers to AT&T due to the iPhone, and the rest left for other reasons such as the smaller network in some areas of the country or cheaper plans like Metro/Virgin/Boost.
Personally T-Mobile was my sweet spot of decent national coverage, great local coverage, good prices, and great customer service. They'll be sorely missed.
Not exactly, but tangentially. T-Mobile's 3G and "4G" network is on 1700/2100, which no iPhone in the USA can use. So it won't give AT&T iPhone customers an immediate benefit. Future AT&T phones will get what is technically 4G (but in practice about the same speed as T-Mobile's fake 4G) from a recommissioned 1700/2100 LTE band. AT&T may be able to squeeze some 3G onto T-Mobile's 850/1900 network that is currently only servicing voice and 2G. On AT&T they got 3G in that band too. Not sure why T-Mobile couldn't. Perhaps there just wasn't enough available nationwide and they didn't want to put 3G on 4 bands instead of only 2.
There's nothing that says they couldn't merge, it would just be much more technically complex. Sprint could use T-Mobile's 1700/2100 3G spectrum to finish off their LTE network, much like AT&T is planning to do. That would degrade data service on T-Mobile's current handsets to 2G, exactly as AT&T plans, unless they were able to get 3G on T-Mobile's 850/1900 network like AT&T did with theirs. That might also require a T-Mobile handset refresh for continuing 3G service if they can't reprogram them remotely to get 3G data off their 850/1900 network instead. Then Sprint's future 4G handsets could be programmed to run on Sprint's network for voice and slow data, and on T-Mobile's 1700/2100 LTE network for fast data, until they were ready to push even voice data onto LTE, and then they could potentially vacate and sell their CDMA frequencies, and possibly even the overlapping T-Mobile 850/1900 frequencies.
The spectrum auction did nothing to enhance iPhone service on T-Mobile USA. They bought the UTMS 1700/2100 spectrum in that auction to provide 3G service. No US iPhone, and possibly none in the world, can utilize T-Mobile USA's 3G network. They only get EDGE service on T-Mobile that wasn't part of the spectrum auction.
I doubt they'd be forced to give up any of T-Mobile's 3G 1700/2100 spectrum that they are committing to use for LTE. In areas where the only other cell provider is AT&T on 850/1900 Voice/EDGE/3G, they might be forced to give up T-Mobile's 850/1900 Voice/EDGE spectrum. But since there are no other national GSM networks, the spectrum would be worthless to all but some startup regional cell company. That might be nice for that local area, but does nothing for the national market.
Maybe in your neck of the woods. But I've never had a problem with their coverage anywhere in TX and within about 30 miles of more than a few major airports in the USA.
http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk-plans.jsp Yeah, he said it was unlimited text, unlimited data, and 300 voice minutes. If you are using an Android phone and using Google Navigation, you don't have to have any special navigation plan. It runs off your data connection to Google's servers. Technically if you always connect to Wifi, plan your route, then leave and never reroute, you wouldn't even need a cellular data plan because it caches your route.
Virgin Mobile definitely runs on Sprint's network. And I think there was a misunderstanding that he didn't take the same phone from AT&T to Virgin. I bet he sold the AT&T one and got a similar one on Virgin.
You weren't able to use the same phone on Virgin as you were on AT&T right? I think Virgin/Sprint is CDMA, and won't work with AT&T GSM phones. When AT&T inevitably screws with my T-Mobile Even More Plus plan, I plan on going to Virgin. I just hope I can find a reasonably priced Sprint Android phone to use on Virgin from eBay/Craigslist that is supported by CyanogenMod, like an Evo Shift for under $250 by then...
I don't think AT&T wants T-Mobile's 3G 1700/2100 service. I think they're planning on decommissioning those, and recommissioning as 1700/2100 LTE. Will they need to relicense T-Mobile's towers if they only switch the protocol? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110321/ap_on_hi_te/us_at_t_t_mobile_usa_phones
That's a good example of how I disagree with CU/CR's rankings.
I don't think the phone customer service from T-Mobile is any different no matter what part of the country you call from. I've always had excellent service over the phone, and that's really all I care about. I am on the old non-contract postpaid plan where I don't have subsidized phone purchase, so I don't buy the hideously overpriced phones in their store. I purchase them unlocked over the internet.
I don't need in person service, and most cell phone sales people, at all the companies, are pretty poor. With T-Mobile while assisting my girlfriend or parents, I've come across excellent knowledgeable sales people, and completely uninformed but nice and I guess well meaning sales people. So regionally, there may be a difference in their in-store service.
T-Mobile has excellent coverage in Texas. They have always had satisfactory coverage for me in every major city in the US. I don't travel far out of major cities in states other than Texas for their weaker coverage to be a problem. I also loved that I was able to use my phone while traveling in Europe, even if it was a little expensive.
Verizon on the otherhand shows complete disregard for their customers, and think they're selling a BMW rather than a Honda. They're expensive for the service provide. They lock features down on their phone tight as a drum unless you pay more for them. They turned away the iPhone. How stupid was that? They were gambling on the fact no other cellphone company would agree to Apple's terms. But it only took one company to agree and they should have known that it would be run away popular. Even if I disagree with Apple's tactics, I know their products are very good quality and their customers are mostly rabid fans. I doubt Google even offered them Android initially because of their reputation.
T-Mobile and AT&T (by proxy through Apple) changed the industry for the better. Verizon thought their poop smelled like roses, and now they're playing catch up.
Yes. I don't think CU intends to deceive, but I frequently disagree with their weightings of factors when rating companies and products. I would like to read their full ratings of cell companies. As one example, Consumer's Reports ratings of cars (with the exception of the reliability survey) are especially terrible unless you are a family with 2.3 children, live in the suburbs, and have milquetoast tastes.
J.D. Power is no more financed by the telecom industry than they are financed by the auto industry or banking industry, meaning they pay the company for access to their market research relating to their competitors. But I haven't seen evidence that the amount a company pays for unrelated services affects their rank in J.D. Power surveys.
I take both organizations with a grain of salt. The J.D. Power example was to show that T-Mobile isn't universally known for bad service. As a counterexample, J.D Power rates the top 3 credit card companies as AMEX, Discover, and U.S.Bank. I've had crappy service from AMEX, but satisfactory service from the other two. There's variability in every person's experience with a company. And we don't all rate the same problem as seriously or not.
There are currently 4 major independent networks in the USA that operate on 2 technologies, and a combination of 5 or more frequencies. AT&T and T-Mobile have their own networks using GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications). Some of their frequencies overlap, but not all because T-Mobile wasn't able to buy all the necessary frequency blocks from the FCC.
Sprint and Verizon have separate networks that operate on the CDMA2000 (code division multiple access) technology. Here is a list of network operators http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators_of_the_Americas#United_States . Sprint is migrating their network to LTE/3GPP (Long Term Evolution). AT&T and Verizon have both announced plans to do the same. Some believe AT&T is buying T-Mobile to get their frequencies because they don't have enough to build out their LTE network.
Some cell companies resell the network of another company. Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile both resell Sprint's network.
T-Mobile has really good reception in Texas. And though I don't travel far away from the major airports in the USA, I've never been disappointed in coverage. The only time I was significantly without signal was rural New Mexico many years ago. We have a dropped call maybe once a month, if that.
My mother texted one of those stupid "Vote for your favorite American Idol" contest and inadvertently signed up for some service that cost $20/month. I called T-Mobile, fessed up to what happened, and they immediately credited back both months that we were billed.
I always take CU rankings with a grain of salt. I've had awesome customer service from T-Mobile. And they regularly win (or tie with Sprint) in J.D.Power's customer service rankings.
And because they had good JD Power rating for customer service
I'm ardently pro-nuclear, and I'll concede your point. Western nuclear engineers could have made safer designs. I'm not familiar with all the considerations and compromises based on current technology they had to make back then
But I don't think Chernobyl belongs in here. The people who were there (the operators) caused the accident by operating an unsafely designed (at the time) reactor outside of its design limits, then embarking on an unapproved test to see if a new procedure would reduce the risk of one of its design flaws. It probably wouldn't have been near as serious if the "operators" just walked away from the reactor.
Because that would add a lot of weight, and wiring to maintain to airworthiness standards. Instead, why doesn't the WiFi unit in the plane have a self test feature like many avionics, that can tell when it is broadcasting out of spec and shut it down?
And my simple solution to defeat that bogus safety consideration is to stuff a gas cap in the pump handle lever, no matter what those silly warning signs might say. Why not start a public education campaign to train people to touch their car before touching the pump handle, and also to stand to the side of the fill tube trajectory, never directly in front of it?
And Trumpet Winsock was one part of a communication system that for the first time allowed lay people to cheaply share knowledge about "where to put it".
I know I wouldn't be nearly as handy today with a wrench if it wasn't for the internet.
(1) You're not doing it right. You don't need to type 50 emails. You start 1 new message, and manually add the 50 recipients if you want to do it the hard way. Or create an email group of the 50 recipients and add only that group. Many email clients allow you to expand the group and delete individual recipients after that.
(2) Depends on how the email client handles threading. From experience, some will, some won't. Gmail will even occasionally start a new thread when nothing has been changed and it should have been part of a previous thread.