said by ssavoy:True. I do use T-Mobile but live in an iffy market. Luckily I get 3G at home and on my campus so it's not a huge deal...and routinely 15-20mbps down and 3mbps up. LTE is not important to me...what is important is overall coverage, and coupled with Sprint's lower spectrum, I think they will be in a better place than T-Mobile in terms of overall coverage.
I think T-Mo just needs to stop cheaping out on where they put their antennas. There's a few "popular" cell sites in my market still on copper, barely pushing 100kbps on HSPA+ because they can't get fiber to them easily. All the other carriers have no problem because they share towers. T-Mobile rarely shares the same sites.
T-Mobile does share many of the same sites as other carriers, albeit possibly not in your market. Similarly, T-Mobile isn't exactly "cheaping out". They literally can't get the gear quick enough from their suppliers Nokia-Siemens Networks and Ericsson. Obviously lower spectrum is ideal for coverage, but $billions invested in AWS licenses tend to be a pretty good incentive for them to upgrade their coverage. Additionally their 2g network is aging and the equipment is no longer supported. The importance here is that when old 2g equipment fails it is being replaced with either at least 3g capable equipment. Moreover, if T-Mobile doesn't want to lose AWS licenses it already paid for across the nation, then by 2015 they'll have to expand their 3g+ coverage. This is already in their gameplan and falls in line with their 1900 refarm and LTE deploy. At the VERY least T-Mobile's existing 2g coverage base will get upgraded to 3g. Beyond that, for T-Mobile to keep its AWS licenses they'll need to deploy LTE or (more likely) HSPA+ in quite a few places where they only have roaming agreements.
T-Mobile seems to be quite aware of what they need to do, and are spending to do it. Between their new CEO, the cash infusion thanks to ATT, the 1900mhz refarm for HSPA+ deployment, and LTE deployment on the AWS band I think they're very much on a good track. It's quite a bit going on, and very involved to boot. Figuring in that the biggest delay at this point are on the supply-side, it's hard to complain with where they're at today and what looks to be in store over the next 2 years.