Making switch to T-Mobile from AT&T
A week ago, I walked away from a 20-year relationship with AT&T and switched our wireless carrier to T-Mobile. I would be lying if I said it was not an easy decision to make, particularly once I discovered how well T-Mobile treats customers who are older.
I also would be lying if I said it was smooth and simple. There have been enough annoying glitches in the process, but so far nothing that has made me regret saving about $85 dollars a month for faster speeds with unlimited data service.
My family has had wireless service with AT&T since the mid-1990s. We started with PrimeCo, which got swallowed by Cingular, which then became part of AT&T. At one point, our account had five lines with AT&T, but we’re empty-nesters now.
Our two lines and a 16-gigabyte data allowance each month cost us about $175. That included unlimited calls, texts and no roaming charges for voice and data in North America. It was $150 a month until late last year, when we added two LTE-capable Apple Watches to our plan at $10 each a month.
Under the helm of CEO John Legere, and with an aggressive pro-consumer approach, T-Mobile has branded itself as “the Uncarrier” and smoothed out a lot of the aggravations that came with wireless service in the U.S. T-Mobile has dragged its competitors, most notably AT&T and Verizon, kicking and screaming into better ways of doing business.
Do you once again have unlimited data service, after carriers
killed it off for new customers years ago? Thank T-Mobile. Do you no longer pay roaming charges in Canada and Mexico? That’s T-Mobile, too. Are you able to upgrade to a new phone without waiting two years for your contract to expire? Yep, T-Mobile. The list goes on.
T-Mobile also typically undercuts AT&T and Verizon (and sometimes Sprint, which with it announced a merger agreement on Sunday) on price. But in the past, when I’d looked at my options, TMobile wasn’t quite a good enough bargain given my family’s needs.
I also was wary of T-Mobile’s signal quality. In the past, I’ve known customers whose T-Mobile signal couldn’t reach inside some buildings, including the Houston Chronicle’s old downtown location. And the company had a reputation for not providing good coverage in rural areas.
Then I discovered T-Mobile’s Unlimited 55+ plan, which is aimed at people 55 and older. I passed that age 6 years ago, as did my wife, so we definitely qualify. It costs $70 a month for two lines ($80 if you’re not using autopay) and it gives you unlimited everything.
Yes, as is usually the case with “unlimited” data plans in 2018, there is a limit, but it’s a generous one. Customers who go over 50 GB in a monthly billing period may get slower data speeds when they connect to congested towers. For other carriers, that limit is typically 20 GB.
In addition, we pay another $10 a month ($15 without autopay) for each smartwatch. That brings our total to $90 a month. TMobile bundles in taxes and regulatory fees, which AT&T tacks on.
After doing some research about the signal quality issues, and asking my Twitter followers who are on T-Mobile about their experiences, I determined that my other objections may no longer be valid. T-Mobile has added spectrum, or radio wave frequencies, that can better penetrate buildings. Its LTE coverage has expanded to cover more rural areas, though it can still be spotty in some places.
We decided to make the leap.
When I asked on Twitter about switching, Legere responded to me, and asked one of his minions to help me out. I thanked him but politely demurred, saying I wanted to be treated like anyone else. I’ve seen him do the same for others considering switching, but I wanted to see what the process was like.
I did not get a similar Twitter response from AT&T. You’d think that a company would have someone monitoring social media looking for people talking about switching and offering to address concerns. But the first time I heard from AT&T was while my wife and I were walking to our neighborhood T-Mobile store to make the switch. A local sales manager texted me, but it was too late.
AT&T’s seniors plan doesn’t kick in until age 65 and it sounds like something out of the cellphone dark ages — no data are available, with only 200 anytime voice minutes and unlimited mobile-to-mobile calls. And it apparently doesn’t work with smartphones, much less smartwatches.
At the store, the basic process of switching took about 30 minutes, but there were complications that made it drag on.
My wife’s smartphone came online with the TMobile network flawlessly, but mine did not. I could get calls and texts but not data.
The store reps were patient and persistent, checking for errors in the system and calling T-Mobile tech support for help. Eventually, they swapped out the SIM card and, after a restart, I was online.
In terms of the service itself, we’re pretty happy. Download speeds are much faster than the ones I had with the same phone on AT&T in many of our regular locations. For example, we often were hardpressed to get any signal from AT&T in the Kroger on West Gray near our home, but a test on my wife’s iPhone X had a download speed of of 94 megabits a second. In the living room of our Montrose apartment, I got more than 100 Mbps. There, AT&T typically got around 15 to 20 Mbps.
Speed tests in other parts of town were sometimes better, sometimes worse.
I have yet to head out of town and try T-Mobile on the road; an upcoming trip to San Antonio will be a test.
But I will be happiest when autopay yanks the first payment out of our checking account, leaving behind $85 more than when we were using AT&T. That’s as significant a savings as when we dropped cable television in favor of streaming TV online.
The day after we switched, T-Mobile and Sprint announced their $26.5 billion merger plan. If the feds approve it, the combined companies will have about 100 million branded subscribers, and 126 million if you count subscribers of cellular providers who resell the companies’ service. Legere has vowed that the new T-Mobile will be as aggressive an “Uncarrier” as it was before, with more punch behind it.
That’s not been the history of what happens in America when there are fewer competitors. But then, there’s been no cellular carrier like T-Mobile before, either.