T-Mobile Keeps Taking Potshots At AT&T → Always the anecdotal evidence crew at work...

We all can make up stories where T-Mobile sucks and ATT doesn't or vice versa. This is the internet kids.

We also can forever replay in our minds when carrier X didn't have service in someone's grandma's basement back in 2002. And we'll keep recanting those stories as if they are valid pre 2011 for anyone who cares to read our rants.

T-Mobile covers a lot more of the US population than most give them credit for to the point of 292 million POPS. True a chunk of that is roaming and in those areas there is likely no high speed wireless network and service quality levels are not guaranteed but this applies to AT&T too. Losing service in the back of your local Super Wal-Mart doesn't mean an entire national network sucks it only sucks for you in that location.

But for the populated areas where T-Mobile's native network serves best many times they DO offer faster speeds and better call quality than AT&T. AT&T fans hate to hear this and often fight back with "T-Mobile sucks everywhere," or has no service in the sticks (where they spend .0001% of their lives) claims but that's usually because they need to justify in their minds the real reason that they pay much more $$$ per month.

Let the marketing teams have their fun. AT&T can defend herself with their own SPIN, corporate lobbyists, threats of lawsuits or even their own Luke Wilson ads. That worked with Verizon right?

BUT it's still **NOT** technically a "4G" network . . . . . .

neither is Sprint's.

But the claim sells.

It's all about convincing customers. And 'bragging rights'.

LTE, WiMax Now Officially Not Technically '4G'
Sorry Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon

For years you've probably seen people argue that WiMax technically is not true fourth generation ("4G") wireless because it didn't meet certain criteria. Though technically, since the International Telecommunications Union had never set a standard for what 4G was, it was a little hard to make any qualification. But now the ITU has officially come out with a statement declaring that only WiMax 2 (802.16m, or WirelessMAN-Advance 2) and LTE-Advanced can technically be declared "4G":
ITU's Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) has completed the assessment of six candidate submissions for the global 4G mobile wireless broadband technology, otherwise known as IMT-Advanced. Harmonization among these proposals has resulted in two technologies, "LTE-Advanced1" and "WirelessMAN-Advanced2" being accorded the official designation of IMT-Advanced, qualifying them as true 4G technologies.
In other words, 4G is not deployed currently in the United States or anywhere else, and there won't be any 4G deployed in the United States for some time. Verizon and Sprint will have to stop using the 4G label in advertising -- as will T-Mobile -- who insists their HSPA+ upgrades deliver "4G-like speeds."

Too late. Sprint was already using the term 4G before the ITU decided to create make shift standards. They were a day late and a dollar short.

Heck the ITU considers 1xRTT and EDGE 3G but seriously who here in the US refers to those technologies as 3G. I don't.

Verizon is going to call their newer network "4G LTE."

You can fight it on technicalities all day but it's already stuck here in the US. Might as well accept it.

T-Mobile is smart to jump on the inevitable now than 2 years later.

nothing out today in the US is 4G. it really doesn't matter anyways. the common person doesn't know what 4G even means.

Even my friends who are in my age under 25 and are in finance they don't know what wimax, or lte mean. Though they should be interested if they invest part of their profit in stocks.

you would think they would want to know what they invest money into, but it looks like they don't. :-\

Who cares about data? T-Mo's reliance on roaming translates into dropped calls whenever you move between networks. I loved T-Mobile for tooling around my hometown but I had to deal with dropped calls almost every single time I took a road trip with them.

I don't know if this is a limitation of GSM vs CDMA (it never happens on Verizon when I wind up on a roaming partner, those calls hand off seamlessly) or something specific to T-Mo but it was extremely annoying.