As of yesterday I ended my long and somewhat painful relationship with T-Mobile as my mobile carrier. To understand how I got to this point, let me share a bit of history about my experiences with some different carriers along the way. I am probably not unlike many other corporate users, bouncing around to different carriers as the whims of your corporate purchasing group change with that years new and fresh renegotiated contract.
I started early on with a personal contract with Cingular as part of a package I was able to receive with my home land line. A job change and I ended up with the opportunity to move to a company phone, really it was just a method for them to move to predictable costs for this service rather than waiting for the surprise of my monthly expenses. It was beautiful relationship and I was able to enjoy reliable service across the Northeast.
Soon however I was given a temptation that no business person could resist at the time. Move to our new carrier plans and you will get a Blackberry. I had to weigh this decision seriously, downside I was moving to T-Mobile, so what if I didn't have service at my home or on the 11 mile drive to my office, I was getting a Blackberry. So what if T-Mobile's version of WiFi calling didn't work as advertised even after upgrading my Internet connection and wireless routers. So what if I had to go to the center of my town, within 1/4 mile of the tower to make calls, at least I could synchronize my email on my WiFi network (most of the time). At least at my office there was a strong signal, and when I traveled to major metropolitan areas I was rocking. The end of this T-Mobile relationship came to an abrupt end when I moved to back to being home office based and the 30 mile ride to the new office meant no coverage whatsoever.
Given the choice I moved to Verizon. Why Verizon, because I craved the status of corporate american's new best friend, the iPhone. Yes in a moment of weakness and confusion, after a decision to move away from Blackberry, by my company they issued me an iPhone. Woot! I was living large and had coverage at my house. This was a lovely relationship that soured over time when I soon realized the limitations voice calling and data on a CDMA network. It wasn't often that I needed to do a voice call and request data, but when I did it seemed to be at the worst possible times, usually with a customer or my boss. Oh that iPhone was a thing of beauty hobbled by poor wireless technology. Even worse our company was now deep in the throws of a full scale migration to T-Mobile again (great contract) and now Android or Windows phones.
And this is how I ended up back at T-Mobile. OK most would say, go get the Android phone you are a technology company, but no, I could do that I was an advocate for the common man at the office. I wanted to show them the issues that our users would face on a Windows phone using some of newest corporate applications. So I settled into the flagship Windows phone by Nokia on the T-Mobile network. OK so T-Mobile had fixed (somewhat) WiFi calling, my house was now a island of high speed broadband and WiFi (yes I have kids with an Xbox), so I should be able to do my job, at least while at the home office. To my dismay however, dead spots and drops continued to be a nuisance on my trip to the office, in-laws, vacation, etc. OK I will admit the T-Mobile network was good in metropolitan areas, OK great on 4G/LTE, my issue was all other places 2G was still common place. Now this shouldn't have been too much of an issue, but the voice quality for calls was shoddy, I found myself pulling off to the side of the road (hands free calling) to continue calls because I knew exactly where the drops would happen if I didn't, and Smart phones had really gotten smart and you became fairly dependent on them for a number of applications (Ok I love Nav on the phone). I figured that the holes and lack of performance in the T-Mobile network couldn't last long (year 1), some holes did get filled but only at 2G speed (year 2) and well when I got an iPhone 6 (yes I was cool again for my kids) I figured by now (year 3) T-Mobile would be blasting away on 4G networks to satisfy the demand of all the iPhone users. Oh how wrong I was, tweets, board posts and digs at our T-Mobile rep, left me with a lot of "any days now", but still left me with the inability to hold a call or use my smart phone in my town (of 24,000 people). Oddly enough I felt like nothing had changed at all over the years that I had been on T-Mobile, and for a technology company this was shame.
So earlier this week my work finally moved me back to AT&T (nee Cingular) and yes I have service at home, on my way work and even in my town. Still curious how long of a window I have before people realize I do have service, but for the time being I will keep my phone silent and pretend I am on T-Mobile.
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