... just a few years back, T-Mobile's Bay Area presence was simply piggybacked on Cingular's existing network. I'm not certain, but it may still be this way in some areas. I had always imagined that because of this, T-Mobile and Cingular service coverage and signal strength should be more or less the same. Boy was I wrong. T-Mobile was just plain awful. That's why I switched to Cingular. Sounds like things haven't improved much.

I am happy to report that Cingular's coverage has been very good for me. Only in remote rural areas do I have trouble getting a signal.

If you make trips to LA you'll find the T-Mobile coverage isn't much better here. Although I will say it seemed to be much better when I was using a Motorola Razor instead of the Sidekick 3.

I've been a Cingular customer religiously since 2004, through 2 contracts. I'm currently running with an 8125 and coverage everywhere has been excellent. I sometimes find myself with coverage in "low/no coverage" areas, but rarely without coverage in covered areas.

I hated T-Mobile the entire time I was on it. Same issues: sucky coverage and their customer service bites.

If it's not low-coverage, it's hostile billing (Sprint), frivalous patent enforcement (Verizon), high-latency data service (Cingular), or some other insufferable short-coming.

Welcome to Silicon Valley, where technology is number @(#*@)#$*@#(RU@#(J@#(RJ$TNO CARRIER

Have to say that over here in the UK, T-mobile are one of the best providers going. I always have a signal and they are one of the cheapest networks going.
Sorry to hear that there US cover sucks so much!!

Wow I was this close to purchasing new TMobile service but then I decided to go to the company websites and check what their own coverage maps indicate. The Cingular and Verizon maps indicate great connectivity throughout Santa Cruz, but the TMobile map barely has a few pockets of strong coverage and most of the area is lucky to register two or 1 connectivity bar. Guess I'll be sticking with Cingular.

They Really Suck if you have a Sidekick 3 This piece of shit has been replaced 3 times in 7 months. IT DOESNT WORK. They're family plan is totally unreliable. Half the time when I call my husband it rolls to voicemail...and he's not even on the friggin phone. The battery only holds a charge for 10 hours IN MY PURSE..on standby. Now I have signed on for a 2 year contract with two phones that don't work and a service that can't be relied on. This isn't dips in coverage area..it's to the same two locations and sometimes it works and other times it doesn't. My husband has to email me at work (not on my sidekick of course) to ask why I didnt pick up the phone. I've missed appts. because the phone with calendar is dead. And don't try to find a pay phone in San Francisco...There aren't any downtown. You're really stuck when you have a smart phone and you're whole life is in a shitty device...DONT BUY A SIDEKICK!

For the last 4 days and after having spent hours with t-mobile tech support both upper and higher tiers, I still am unable to get incoming calls. Tried changing phone, changed SIM card, rebooted many times. No luck! I am about to switch to another carrier.

Not a fan of t-mobile right now. 4.5 years of no issues. With in the last 6 months they have been horrible. The email support is a joke...as they have a 72 hour response time. Since my phone was dead, I tried it. 72 hours later I get a response....the response? "Send us your password." So, I did and got another 72 hour response time. Nice work!!!

Customer care is worse...they just don't care. If they did then they would make some sort of effort to make customers happy.

tmobile = WORST SUPPORT EVER!

I have had little to no service from T-Mobile in four months and they refuse to fix the problem. Their response when I advised that I had to contact them via email (with a 72 hour wait if they return the message at all and the admonishment that my once-weekly e-mails are burdening their queue) because my phone does not make outgoing phone calls: "Call us from a pay phone." Their most recent offer is to provide me a two-year-old refurbished phone when I purchased a new model under warranty.

I live in Lancaster, PA. I've had t-mobile for a couple of years... service at my house is so spastic. Sometimes I'll have up to 3 bars, and the next second, I have no service whatsoever. It's so unpredictable. Now, if someone calls me and I have service, and the call goes through, then my service goes to all 5 bars, and stays that way for most of the call, but sometimes I'll still get disconnected. Also, as soon as I hang up, the service drops completely and I have no bars for a few minutes. Some places I get good service... but like, even on the tourist-drenched route 30 with tons of stores and restaurants, an Amusement park, other tourist attractions... I still can hardly get a bar! The only place I get good service is on like, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the NJ transit from trenton to NYC, and then in NYC. Everywhere I've been is crappy service. I can't wait to switch to Cingular (now ATT), but I've got slightly less than a year left.

I live in the Dallas area and my coverage is spotty at best. I can't get 1 bar most of the time at my house and when I do, I usually have to go outside. If I do manage to get a call off, it is a struggle to hear anything. I work 20 miles away and the coverage is better but I still drop calls indoors inside a simple one floor building. I just bought a brand-new Blackberry 7105 and am now on my 3rd phone since having this problem. It's definitely NOT the phone. My contract is expired and AT&T and the iPhone are starting to look pretty attractive.

Don't go with T-mobile. Thier definately the worst. They have the worst coverage and the most dropped calls. They also LIE about where the coverage extends to. Where they said they have a stong signal, I got NO service in side the house and lots of dropped calls outside of the house. I live in Tucson, AZ where the population is approx. 1 million.

I called them up tonight and told them I don't have a signal inside the house. They gave me two options: one, get a hotspot wifi phone which cost $100+ or cancel my service earlier (cost $200). Also, they told me to read the contract again because they mentioned that it does not guarantee that I will have 100% coverage. What kind of stupid company is that!

I'm in a rural area north of Houston and T-Mobile service is great! There is a tower a mile from my house and another within 5 miles. Unless you have T-mobile in this area, you don't have any cell coverage at all, to the frustration of delivery and utility workers in the area. I've also gotten pretty good customer service, a lot better than I had when I was with Cingular. Then, I couldn't get anyone on the phone (in customer service) and when I called to drop my service I couldn't get them OFF the phone and the rep proceeded to psycho-analyze me in a very patronizing way. I've used T-mobile in England, where it is very popular and has great coverage, and on a recent trip from Texas to Wyoming I received a very important call from an attorney when we were out in the flat lands of the Texas panhandle and miles from anywhere, no cell tower even in sight, and with no roaming charge, on my V3 Razr. My whole family has T-Mobile, and I'll NEVER switch.

I live in NYC, Battery park city and I have had little or no service the last year I have been living here, The customer service is Horrible, THEY REALLY DO NOT CARE AND CANNOT FIX THE PROBLEM! tried to switch to a new phon(which they made me pay for, LOL) PLEASE DO NOT GO WITH T-MOBILE IN NYC, THIS IS HORRENDOUS SERVICE AND RECEPTION.

I live in NYC, Battery park city and I have had little or no service the last year I have been living here, The customer service is Horrible, THEY REALLY DO NOT CARE AND CANNOT FIX THE PROBLEM! tried to switch to a new phon(which they made me pay for, LOL) PLEASE DO NOT GO WITH T-MOBILE IN NYC, THIS IS HORRENDOUS SERVICE AND RECEPTION.

i have t-mobile for over 3 years. i have had service everywhere. when i had a samsung i had spotty service but when i switched to nokia phone my service is great. when i travled to iowa i had service all the way there 5 bars for 1600 miles. tmobiles samsung phones suck u need to get a nokia or something else. first instance when me and my friends wnet fishing in the middle of nowhere he had verizon and no service and behold tmobile had service in boondocks lol. it all depends on the phone u have and how much of an outwatt it has for signal samsung sacrifices output power for battery life. so nokia will last 3 hrs on talk and samsung like 5.

T-mobile sucks. I live in Battery Park City, NY and I have no coverage for months. We suddenly lost coverage here one day and were told it will be atleast 4 mos before the service would be reinstated. It is 4 mos and still no signal and T-mobile just doesn't give a damn!

Even after switching phones. Fortunately, T-Mobile let me out of my contract (I was a week over my initial grace period) and I switched to Verizon and now have 4-5 bars INSIDE my house, which is amazing. True, Verizon is more expensive, but having 4-5 bars in my house is well worth it.

No ONe ever go to TMOBILE THEY ARE THE WORST SERVICE and I have had SPrint and Verizon. THE COVERAGE Is Horrible they will say there is coverage and there not. THE customer Service is horrible Youll Just get mad talking to them. THe plans are okay but half the time you miss calls.

I carry a personal T-Mobile phone and a company Verizon phone around San Francisco, Oakland, and Sacramento. Verizon always has signal and never drops calls. T-Mobile drops calls but mostly just fails to connect. It’s been getting worse in last 3 years. I can dial my wife’s T-Mobile phone from mine while we’re in the same room, both showing two or three bars, but my call rolls to voicemail while hers never rings. Verizon may be unethical (unless you LIKE the government spying on citizens), but at least their system works. I count the days until the T-mobile contract expires.

I’m in the middle of my second 2yr contract… and I just signed up for Verizon and if I have to, will gladly pay their fg penalty to get out. Their service in NYC used to be a lot better, but recently I get ZERO FG reception on most street corners / can’t make calls even when all bars are showing. Basically I’m sick and tired of having such bad reception – I would advise anyone to avoid T-mobile.

Anytime, anywhere – doesn’t matter where in the US… when I attempt a call (with usually 2-3 bars showing), the coverage bars drop off, and no connection can be made. Tmobile sucks, and I’m switching to ATT.

As the 3G iPhone’s release is imminent, I can’t WAIT to finally get rid of t-mobile once and for all. I’ve had so many problems, especially extremely shoddy, spotty coverage in the middle of NYC (I’ve lived both in Tribeca and Harlem, and in both places, I had a constantly intermittent signal and dropped calls) for the past 3-4 years.. and so prudently I purchased my last t-mobile phone BEFORE my contract was up for renewal and paid the extra $100 bucks (full price for the phone, a Sidekick LX) so that I could let my contract lapse, which was last November. I can’t WAIT until that new iPhone is out and I can switch to AT&T- receive at least 2/3rds of my calls, make it thru an entire 5 min conversation, and can leave t-mobile ONCE and FOR ALL!!!!!!

I travel to NYC at least once a month and j hate tmobile up there it sucks. Not in Florida though always have full bars iPhone network speeds up to 190kbs up/down, when I ran the speedtest in NYC 40 Kbps

After 9 years I finally concluded my service with Tmobile. Like others here have suggested, the service is terrible. I have the same issues in New York City, of all places you would think the coverage would be stellar. But no such luck. I have numerous dropped calls uptown, midtown and all over the boroughs. The multimedia functions are a joke and simply do not work most of the time. Tmobile has made little if any attempts to resolve their numerous holes in coverage. I could not even drive for more than ten minutes without the call dropping.

Oh I know how the lack of coverage feels my man. It’s rediculous, it comes to the point that I have bars but then it says no signal with a slash through the phone symbol!

That defies all logic!

Even in my own home signals just randomly disappear, but in the middle of nowhere it decides to acquire a signal. Switch services, T-Mobile isn’t worth the time or money.

I just got out of my T-mobile contract WITHOUT the 200 dollar insane service fee. Which they told me before was impossible. But now they are saying if you are only getting 1 bar where you live, you can legally get out of the contract and cancel immediately. I lived in Harrisburg, PA where my signal was constantly dropped inside my own house. In May I moved to Hummelstown, PA which is pretty populated only 3 miles from Hershey Park, cell phone towers are within walking distance of my new house.

Yet I could not get calls, and my signal would jump from 1 bar to 4 bars, to no signal at all depending on the wind.

On top of that I was only on the 29.99 basic plan, 3 months out of this year I got my bill to see it anywhere from 79-100 dollars for one month! Phone calls were on my bill I never made, did not even know the people yet my cell phone was always in my pocket at those times.

This month I had over 30 text messages starting at the same exact time each day at 8am when I am still sleeping, over 15 dollars in messages I did not make, and the best thing yet, the phone number the messages went to was a land line, that just so happened to be the first person in my contact list on my phone (this also happened to two other family members)

So I finally got out of the contract from Hell, but they are demanding I pay this months past due bill of 101 dollars when I only owe them 29 plus taxes. They also claimed I was over my minutes when I have my bill and usage right in front of me showing only 200 out 300 used.

I said you believe me that I cant receive or make calls and have no signal but yet at same time claiming I have made over 400 minutes in calls lol People in my house who know me know I do not even talk on the phone much at all, at the most 10 minutes a week.

T-Mobile not only has terrible coverage, they are theives, period.

I have paid almost 500 dollars this year in overcharges that were not done by me. Faulty phone and sim cards, a terrible company to deal with, when they know the prices of gas are already hurting our pockets. Cmon now.

T-mobile needs a mass lawsuit. I want my money back.

had great service in 2003 – 2004 with T-mobile company…NOT anymore for last 2 years i had lost girls, friends and one job because of my T-mobile service + phone where not receiving calls… The bitaround the bush every time i called, tons of tips advices i got from customer service, i had 4 different phones past 9 month none would solve the problem…NOT I feel used and ripped off for money… Tmobile sucks big time

Promised free upgrade (after having 3 phones, all NOKIAS that they pitch) because my current NOKIA works like crap. I call yesterday and come to find out that they (T-mobile) has no record of this. Had confirmation number, date, time…etc, but it’s not in their system. I therefore have to pay for another phone. That would of been number 4. I’m canceling, eating the fee and going with Verizon.

TMOBILE COVERGE SUCKS IN GEORGIA
I live and work in downtown atlanta and their covergae just sucks…I get no service in DOWNTOWN or near any building. My co-workers have ATT and verizon and all of then get service. I feel so ashamed when they talk on their phones freely and I get no service. Tmobile is like $5-10 cheap than verizon or ATT BUT IT IS NOT WORTH THE MONEY. I paid the early termination and switched to ATT. I GET COVERAGE EVERYWHERE…I’VE HAD ATT FOR like 2 months and there has not been a single place where it says NO SERVICE. ATT HAS GREAT SERVICE..

t-mobile describes different coverage areas for pre-paid vs. postpaid (contract) customers, but I think this difference relates to their roaming agreements (pre-paid doesn’t roam.) last winter I used a flexpay sim (supposed to be like postpaid but goes month to month). during the winter I could edge/gprs data. the data rates I experienced in santa cruz – california were horrible (like 10kbps) and when in stamford connecticut and manhattan (UWS) new york I barely managed 40kbps. these speeds were measured with the dslreports mobile web site using an ipaq pda/phone. I didn’t have access to an AT&T sim for comparison.

This company is awful. I have complained to them many, many times. They keep telling me that their “coverage map” shows full bars in the zone where my office is. There are NO BARS. I have told them this multiple times. Their response is that they “will send someone out to verify the signal.” They’ve done that 3 times and I still have no signal. They say I have one and its just my phone. Funny; my secretary has the same service AND HER PHONE HAS NO SIGNAL EITHER! They keep saying that if I want to get out of the contract we have to pay a 200.00 early termination fee. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? T Mobile is AWFUL. This is a business line and we are losing revenue because their service is awful. We had a rep from Sprint call us and tell us he can likely pay the E.T. Fee to take over our business coverage. HALLEPHUNKINLULIA. T MOBILE EATS DONKEY CHEESE!!!!

Their coverage maps, if anything UNDERESTIMATE signal strength. I checked and I was only supposed to get 3 or 4 bars at my house….I get 5 solid. I made sure that the locations I would be using the phone would have 4 or 5 bars ahead of time. I noticed though that when I was in a semi-underground basement I had no service but a friend on Verizon was getting 3 bars (I get 5 bars outside of the building)….so while they may not be the best coverage/strength, they sure are cheap enough to get my pre-paid business.

Their coverage is terrible everywhere!!

I hate tmobile…there coverage sucks, their customer service is wack, and their representaives in their store are plain bitches….its so messed up how they expect you to pay 200 dollars just to switch compaines..they charge that much cuz they know that their company sucks and thats the way they make their money….tmobile should just shut down for good cuz their the worst out there.

T-Mobile has outsourced their email customer care to a company named NCO. NCO’s center in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada has been where ALL your emails have been coming from for a long time.

Now they have sent all the emails to the PHILIPPINES! Get ready for your email and webchat customer care to be coming from Filipino people! HAHA. I thought T-Mobile would never go offshore? They do through NCO. You thought your customer care was bad before?!

I recently got into a contract with T Mobile due to being told (sold) on their superior roaming coverage. Don’t try it in Montana as you won’t get any service. It tries to piggyback on Cellular One but won’t work. I never had this problem with AT&T anywhere. I will return to AT&T the minute I can get out of this contract. What a rip off company who oversells their ability!