At the end of last year, I asked Blaine Fergerstrom, and old friend from my days at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, to write a guest post about his experience switching his family’s mobile phone service from AT&T to T-Mobile. He had mentioned making the switch, and as another longtime AT&T subscriber, I thought his experience would be of interest. Blaine’s a knowledgeable tech guy, so his perspective should be valuable.
Well, Blaine described the changeover in a blog post last month at his own site, zztype.com (“Flipping the switch: After nearly 20 years with AT&T, I switched to T-Mobile”, Posted April 5, 2016).
Blaine writes that he sort of grew up with AT&T, starting way back in the days of Honolulu Cellular, then through several corporate switches that ended up as AT&T, through all the generations of iPhones, fighting for several years to control added costs for data overruns, etc.
In his case, the switch resulted in significant savings (about 40%), and no problems, at least not initially.
He wrote:
So far, I haven’t noticed much difference in the service, except that I am saving $50 per month and getting much, much more data than I ever had with AT&T. Reception in the city is the same. We don’t get out of urban areas that much, anyway. I have heard that country reception is not as good in some areas, but have not been affected by this, yet. We have gone to N?n?kuli High and Intermediate Performing Arts Center (NPAC) for a few plays since the switch and can report that, in the N?n?kuli High School cafeteria where performances are held, T-Mobile gets the same reception we used to get on AT&T: zero bars, no reception! But step outside the cafe and you get two bars, right away.
We have no regrets for making the switch. T-Mobile’s army of minions in pink inhabiting their stores have been eager to help whenever we have needed it. I find them sometimes to be a little inexperienced, but eager to help, often conferring with or handing off more difficult problems to more experienced minions.
Of course, whether you’ll experience comparable savings depends on how how many devices and how you use them. Sometimes it’s better to share all your data from one big pot (as with AT&T), while in other cases, such as Blaine’s, the separate allocation per line worked out to his advantage.
But, in any case, check out Blaine’s experience.
I haven’t followed to T-Mobile, although that just might reflect my conservative bias. In the future? We’ll see.
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I’ve used T-Mobile for so many years that it raises the eyebrows of their salespeople. I’ve only had poor reception in the remote areas of the island, but not recently.
My experiences with early AT&T long distance and internet were NOT pleasant, and after three serious problems I swore I would never ever use them again for anything, and I haven’t. One unique event was that, while we had long distance phone service with them, they let a store employee open an internet account in our company name – free for six months. Then when the months ran out we were billed without our knowledge. After SO MANY calls to them with rude responses, hang-ups etc we finally cancelled all AT&T services for good.
Blaine was with AT&T wireless all those years ago, and he never secured an unlimited data plan for his smartphone? Or worse, he gave it up? Too bad. I still have my unlimited Verizon, and will not ever give it up. Sure, it’s $50 monthly now, but the 4G speed is such that I could actually run my devices from home with that (using my iPhone 6+ as a personal hotspot) and drop Oceanic’s broadband service. T-Mobile and Sprint keep making claims about how fast and reliable their service is, but I have no reason to take a gamble on their hype.
When I go to Kauai T-Mobile is very sketchy. AT&T wins in that case.
I’ve been with all 4 major providers on Oahu and each has its pros and cons. Right now I am with T Mobile since 2014, after switching from Verizon. Despite Verizon’s continued claims of having the best network, sometime around 2014, Verizon stopped working near my office in Kailua. Countless calls to Verizon customer service, excessive hold times, and still no response….so I gave up and tried T Mobile. It’s been great and I save money. The 4G LTE speeds have been way faster than Verizon too. Coverage less consistent on other islands, but we rarely travel and if we do, my husband still has Verizon so we’re covered. T Mobile’s customer service reps also seem to be the most helpful and motivated to help. It is my understanding that T Mobile has been aggressively filling in coverage gaps on mainland with its new 700 mhz Band 12 4G LTE network (in addition to its current Band 4 LTE). Band 12 hasn’t yet come to Hawaii. When/if it does, that should help coverage even more. Lower frequency signal travels farther and is better at penetrating walls.
There are many other options to get service from MVNOs. These are the other cheaper brands like Boost Mobile that use the bigger companies services. For example, Boost uses Sprint. So if Sprint works for you, then you might save by going to Boost. There are other examples for those that do some research.
Had Verizon for 10+ years but left them for T-Mobile last year & haven’t regretted it at all. We now have a significantly lower bill for significantly better benefits including more data, data stash/rollover, the Music Freedom/Binge On offers, and last but not least the ability to use our cell phones internationally without sky-high fees & major limitations. We have the Simple Choice North America plan which allows unlimited, free calls/texts in or to Canada & Mexico and use of your monthly high speed data in those countries. With family in Canada, this has been great & it works well. We’ve also tested the free text & data service in Australia & the UK where it works fine in major cities. As for Verizon’s coverage, in addition to their exorbitant data charges domestically & internationally, we regularly had problems with calls & texts on the US mainland with them, such being unable to send texts while right outside of Boston, MA. Their coverage is not nearly so good or comprehensive as they’d like you to believe.
T-mobile is a great deal when traveling abroad: slow but free data and inexpensive calling.