CloudShredder

I've experienced T-Mobile for years. Not reliable when traveling outside of large cities. I use Verizon, and the coverage is incredible.

NineGturn

I have used T-mobile and highly recommend them for pilots.

Coverage is generally very good in most metropolitan areas. You will always find some place that another service has coverage and you don't but that's true with any service.

T-mobile's network is generally less expensive and the speeds are comparable or better than the competition. In most markets I think T-mobile has actually surpassed Verizon LTE because of less congestion.

Here's the best reason for T-Mobile for pilots. The free calling over wifi...I have literally walked down the street in European cities and found open WiFi networks to call home on. You can also receive calls over WiFi on pretty much any phone (not sure about Apple). I've sat in a MacDonalds in Hong Kong and made free calls to the USA...and received them too. But not using a third party app...using my T-Mobile phone number.

T-Mobile uses the standard Sim cards used throughout the world (so does AT&T but not Verizon or Sprint) and you can just pop in a temporary foreign sim card you pick up at an airport vending machine and use it to make free local calls or get local 3G Internet and make Skype or GV calls from it without having to search for WiFi. Then you can use it to tether your laptop or iPad and chat on these forums while on a layover in Japan or China. Pretty cool.

T-Mobile is very liberal about granting an unlock code to use foreign sims as long as you are a reliable customer...or you can just use an older phone that's paid off. I think AT&T pretty much won't allow unlocks.

I use a rooted LG G3...

Name User

I went from Verizon to pre-paid Verizon on Net10. $86 a month including taxes for 2 lines ($43 per line) unlimited talk text and 3gb LTE data each. For the $$ and coverage you can't beat it.

TMobile is great if you leave the country. I do, and still value my US coverage over their int'l coverage. The big joke is their coverage is far superior outside the country than in it.

lakehouse

This, I'm confused if pilots are this dumb or what, reading this thread. Tmo will be all 4g lte by late this year. They also purchased a better band off Verizon and the upgrade will fix the indoor issue.

As many said the international roaming rocks. Unlimited everything rocks. Get a few friend or family on the promo family plan right now and with a new phone, unlimited everything and 5gb tether, it's like $75/month. How can you go wrong. Plus the wifi calling. IF your house has bad service they'll give Ya a free router for your wifi calling.

Name User

We're not dumb, we just use our cell phones as phones first not Netflix machines over WiFi. I love the free router in home idea, great so when you leave your house you now have a paper weight. T-Mobile coverage is a joke, there is a reason why they have to offer so many extra features...

Celeste

I had one too many times where I was in a place with absolutely no service and no wifi and needed to make a call... one time at a non towered airport with a blown out tire stuck on the only runway at Midnight. Another time with a broken down car along i70 in Maryland. Wifi calling does no good without wifi. I guess those are not airline pilot problems, but I digress. Coverage issues + poor customer service is why I left them.

4g lte on every tower when tower coverage is sparse isn't that great imo... But it would be cool to watch Netflix and not worry about data... do they still throttle it when you hit your max? When I was on tmo, whEn I hit my limit they throttled it back to the point where web pages loaded quite slowly. Wifi calling for international was something I never really had an opportunity to take advantage of, and that could be huge forbCanadian/Mexico layovers if you get a lot of them.

I hope you all have better experiences with them than I did. And buyer beware of their termination policies. For being a 'no contract' carrier without early termination fees, don't be surprised if you get slapped with several hundred dollars in bills if/when you decide to leave.

AdiosMikeFox

Yes, you will get slapped with big bills on a no-contact service plan if you split early if you haven't paid off your phone. You pay for your service and phone in a combined package, however, once your phone is paid off your bill lowers. If you leave , you owe the remaining balance on your phone. Unlike ATT, who keeps charging you the same rate no matter if your contact's up or not.

Celeste

In my case, both phones were unlocked ATT branded phones bought on amazon, not bought from tmobile, therefore no balance was owed to tmobile. The plan was an old 2-year contract plan from 3-4 years prior that rolled into a month to month no-contract after the initial 2 year commitment was over.

When you leave they do not credit you any time left in the current billing cycle (most other carriers do) plus they bill you for an additional 60 days of service. If I had bought phones from tmobile I would have owed that AND the remaining balance of the phones. All of this was buried somewhere in the two pages of fine print that nobody reads but i should have. Just giving a heads up...

TBucket

I went and got T-Mobile for the unlimited international data. Switched from verizon. The domestic network is NOWHERE NEAR as good as VZW, but if you're out of the country T-Mobile is invaluable.

fiveninerzero

I switched to Verizon. I pay triple what I was paying T-Mobile for a lesser level of service (internet not unlimited), but at least I get a signal in rural areas.

T-Mobile is great if you never leave the limits of a heavily built up metro area.

That said, if you take a lot of international trips, T-Mobile is worth it's weight in gold because of the free international roaming. It's almost worth it to have a Verizon line open for domestic primary use, and a burner $65 a month T-Mobile line for trips out of the country.