said by hoch51 :buying t-mobile will not accomplish any rural return for at&t. T-mobile is city oriented with contracts with rural carriers to suplement their lines. In eastern Colorado, we use a Cross-tie with Viaero for service. Their network is shakey at times and service goes from excelent to marginal in a heartbeat. spectrum has less to do with it than poor distribution oif towers and maintenance on that equipment. They just do not want anyone else getting their hands on the system as it will impact their size ratio to Sprint and Verizon. Both companies need t- mobile also. Their signal structure sucks out here. The viaero contract and many others like it are the pursued portions for these giants in communications.
on an interesting note, I *just* went on another drive from St Louis to Denver and experienced precisely what you were referring to with Viaero. "Edge" data all the way, but not very reliable. Marginally faster than TMO's GPRS til Hayes, KS.
On a more interesting note, however, I of course have T-Mobile (and Sprint, but I didn't have it with me during that trip), while the other 2 people with me had an ATT iPhone and a Verizon iPhone. Logic would dictate that the cheap guy with T-Mobile would have the worst service, followed by the ATT customer, then the Verizon one. Especially in the Rocky Mountains, right?
Totally wrong.
The friend with the Verizon iPhone had to consistently switch to wifi for internet access, since cellular data continuously failed. The ATT iPhone fared far better, however it surprisingly lost data entirely while my little ol T-Mobile phone had 4 bars of fast HSPA+ available in multiple places south east of Estes Park, as well as north of Grand Lake into RMNP. In fact, a running theme for the trip was me making fun of their iPhones for not being able to access data, and them using my GalaxyS on T-Mobile to check their facebook pages, etc.
Go figure.
T-Mobile: Faster. More Bars. No dropped data.
And cheaper.
