T-Mobile wnw

[herulach]

Are tmobile 3G yet? I cant find anything that specifically says so, but i assume they are, dont want to go shelling out for web & walk if it would be quicker to walk home and go on the net there.

[Howard]

Yes they're 3.5G AFAIK, my workmate gets insane speeds on his Vario II

[JPreston]

Course they are! If it's not in all the marketing this is because coverage is not ubiquitous, and they would have people from the orkney islands and other outlying areas complaining that they cannot get 3G coverage.

[Aaron]

Yup, I've been getting a pretty strong HSDPA (3.5G) signal in London.

They've had 3G for a couple of years now.

[monkeyville]

Bit off topic but i hear t-mobile are a bit of a rank outsider when it comes to phone networks and coverage and i was wondering if people would share their experiences. My own experiance has been been with o2 and recently three who i have been more than happy with

[JPreston]

Historically T-Mobile had the best (2G) coverage in London and less so in other areas. But, now there is nothing at all to choose between any of the operators except for 3, which is significantly worse. These are the results of extensive drive testing following hundreds of millions of pounds of investment by all the operators, who are all bound by the same government regulation and principles of diminshing returns which mean that once they reach 99%+ population coverage (which they have) then they start spending on something else instead. Any statements along the lines of 'I had no O2 coverage in my house but I do have Vodafone, therefore nationally O2 is rubbish and Vodafone are good' are utter bunk.

The reasons for 3 being worse are that obviously they are latecomers so have fewer cells and because they foisted flaky early 3G handsets on all its customers since launch even though they had hardly any 3G cells, and handover from 3G to 2G would often result in dropped calls. But 3 priced themselves crazily cheap and may still be the best choice for some, 3G handsets are more stable now, and they are rolling out cells very quickly.

For 3G, Vodafone have the most cells but even for them coverage is nowhere near ubiquitous, and customers should not make decisions along the lines of (making up an illustration) 'Vodafone have 70% more 3G cells in London and Birmingham than O2 do, therefore I will have better 3G coverage on Vodafone even though I live in Leicester'.

The networks have online coverage checkers on their sites, and should coverage adversely affect your experience you have statutory 14 days to retun your phone for a full refund (IIRC, and some networks offer 30 days) so it's not worth worrying about coverage when choosing a network. It's really best to just sign up to whatever contract gives you the handset you want and the most appropriate call allowance for your needs, at the best price.

[ps3ud0]

Originally Posted by herulach

Are tmobile 3G yet? I cant find anything that specifically says so, but i assume they are, dont want to go shelling out for web & walk if it would be quicker to walk home and go on the net there.

ROLF - get 1mbit here on my Vario 2 - Tmobile probably provide the most affordable data service out by a mile...

ps3ud0

[monkeyville]

Thanks for the comments guys. I guess if i have been fine with three then i'm not going to suffer with t-mobile.

[Pdog]

On the T-mobile website they have a coverage map of what services are available in your area.

[Rhyth]

The networks have online coverage checkers on their sites, and should coverage adversely affect your experience you have statutory 14 days to retun your phone for a full refund

Apart from T-mobile, they do not offer a 14 day return on retail contracts. T-mobile perform a coverage check on your post code before connecting and inform you of any poor coverage in the specified area. If the actual coverage you experiance conflicts with the online coverage map they provide then a full mpv check is carried out and then most of the time an investigation ensues involving many phone calls and some letter writing inorder to get the contract cancelled.

[Neo_VR]

T-mobile... good for data.. carp for voice....

Im involved with running the company mobiles for my company... we have 415 of them out in the field... and i rekon about a 3rd of them have complained about coverage with T-mobile... seems to be especially bad down in the bristol/gloucester and surrounding areas..

T-mobile are trying to say to us its because we are using "old" phones.. (std issue is a nokia 3120) and they reccomend the 6230i... so basically they want us to replace 400-odd mobiles with hi-spec camera phones that cost twice as much for our monkey-sales force.. and it may or may not solve the problem

We have some WnW datacards too... theyre good with a strong signal, but the communication centre tends to lie about signal strenght.. anything below 4 bars and its uselss