I think you should avoid T-Mobile if you can. Not just as a matter of principle, but also pragmatism. They have an extremely crude SMS censorship/anti-spam system [1] which even blocks links to lichess.org, the popular online chess website.
They have poor security practices like storing passwords in plaintext [2], and they had a large data breach (probably about 100M customers affected) last year. [3]
PS: This isn't protocol blocking at the packet/port level, so I may have used "protocol blocking" a bit inappropriately. Apparently Apple allows the carriers to prevent people from enabling iCloud Private Relay, and T-Mobile is doing that. Apple is probably doing so due to the pressure by the carriers. In August, four carriers (Vodafone, Telefonica, Orange and T-Mobile ) signed a letter urging the European Commission to stop Apple from providing Private Relay. (According to a report by The Telegraph: https://archive.fo/BRUS4#selection-915.74-925.194) This, of course, still quite preposterous.
I would love to leave T-Mobile, but they are the only carrier in the US who offers such a core piece of functionality for me: International service included out-of-the-box.
I love to travel, and nothing beats being able to land in (pretty much) any country in the world, turn on your phone and have working service just like that. No SIM cards, no different numbers, no local pre-paid cards, and no crazy international fees.
As someone who enjoys work/travel for weeks to months at a time, every other major carrier is not feasible for this (think 10$/day, which becomes unreasonable when you're out of the country for 3+ weeks).
Unless somebody else could recommend another option it seems I'm stuck with T-Mobile for now.
This is the only reason I switched to T-Mobile originally and the only reason I still have them. Their coverage is so poor that I get no LTE service sitting in my house in a core part of the major metro area. I'm only able to maintain them because they were an early and ardent adopter of WiFi Calling. On a recent trip in the US I had no service off major interstate highways. Internationally though, T-Mobile is amazing. I honestly wish my experience in the US was as good as my experience while traveling... there's not much point in having uncapped LTE when you get 1 or 0 bars of service, at least internationally I get great service even if it is speed capped at 256kbps.
Does your phone support band 71 (600 MHz)? This band is only a few years old, and T-Mobile has been deploying it as their primary long-range, building-penetrable band. It's unsupported on phones made before approximately 2018.
Band 12 fulfills the same role in some areas, and is supported on most phones, but T-Mobile doesn't have a nationwide license for it.
I now do Unlocked phone that supports eSim + Airalo app for intl data packs + Mint Mobile for the US, this works extremely well and is very cost effective.
With Wifi calling + texting, you can even use your US number internationally since it will work off the eSim data.
Google Fi is an MVNO of T-mobile/Sprint (last I checked anyways). so if T-mobile blocks the private relay for their network, it could affect them too.
Also, Google Fi kinda sucks. They used to be the cheapest, but nowadays you can get better prices from other services. For example, Google charges $10/gb/mo, whereas Mint Mobile (another T-mobile MVNO) charges 4gb for $15/mo, or $30 for unlimited.
Google Fi is only cheaper if you use less than 1.5gb of data per month, and the service quality is probably the same.
...and that's not even mentioning all the privacy concerns attached to Google.
The difference is that Google Fi runs at the top network priority. You can find loads of dirt-cheap MVNOs, but your data is at the back of the line if there's any congestion.
The difference is that Google Fi runs at the top network priority. You can find loads of dirt-cheap MVNOs, but your data is at the back of the line if there's any congestion.
Get my vaccination card at the entrance to a stadium. Messaging, email, access my NAS at home through my VPN. Download a podcast or audiobook. I mean, the answer to that question is literally "anything except watch videos".
My car has an "unlimited" plan with AT&T, and holy crap, it's worthless. If I actually need to do something, like, now, usually I have to turn off my phone's wifi if the car's on.
And this isn't me modifying my behavior. If I had a habit of watching YouTube or Netflix from all over the place, I'd get a different phone plan. I'm not like penny pinching here. It's just that my current phone plan works, I like how easy it is to administer, and switching providers in a huge PITA for a family of 4, so something else better be damn good.
Google Fi has had alternative plans to the $10/GB one for a while now. Works out to be similar (slightly less) cost than going to T-Mobile, Verizon or another carrier direct. Still very happy with the service personally but they do also block iCloud Private Relay.
As someone who used Google Fi for a while internationally, DO NOT get Google Fi! So many problems on an iPhone 7. Little to no connectivity in many places where they advertised having connectivity. This was ~2018-2020, so maybe it has improved, but I had such a bad experience with them.
I have a newfangled 5G phone that doesn't do 5G even though I'm in Los Angeles, so I was glad to switch from VZW to TMo, to make them buy my phone, then I switched back to VZW because TMo doesn't have 5G either, no matter the maps they show on TV.
I'd do Cincinnati Bell in a heartbeat, if I could.
Oh god, their service was EVEN worse in the United States!! In major metropolitan cities, in San Francisco especially! I have never had a worse experience with a cell provider. And I use AT&T!
Google Fi has been blocking iCloud Private Relay for longer than T-Mobile. I’m a subscriber and it stopped working after the new iOS went to GA, but worked during the Developer Beta period.
Have you considered Google Fi? I've used it for the better part of a decade now and its always been great, especially internationally. The plane touched down, I turn off airplane mode, and I get a notification from the Google Fi app, "Welcome to The Netherlands!"
Plus, it's primarily the T-Mobile network anyways with the addition of the US Cellular network and the old Sprint network.
That's why many phones come with two SIM slots, and eSIM is starting to get popular ( on top of one or two physical slots). That way you can keep both your usual number and your local card in use simultaneously.
Google Fi uses T-Mobile in the background. Depending on what you mean by "service probably isnt [sic] as good", you may either be wrong or be making a niche point.
On Lopez Island T-Mobile is pretty much the only thing I been able to use. This is in the village area too, not just south end. And T-Mobile gets service on most of the ferry ride to Anacortes. When you are waiting in line for 90 minutes for a ferry ride in your car, cell service is really appreciated.
Counterpoint to the anecdata: I carry both TMobile (work) and AT&T (personal) phones most of the time. Often the only way to get any data response in a major metro is to tether the TMobile one to the AT&T phone - this is in a major metro area, and largely the reason I switched away from Google Fi (though it turns out Apple Watch cellular is so useful that Google Fi isn’t an option at all anymore).
Or that competition only worth anything if it is made in a very well regulated environment (as per Adam Smith himself). If the playing field had customer-friendly laws in place, none of these giants could be this scummy.
It looks like T-Mobile isn't actually preventing or blocking Private Relay, but that it doesn't function while T-Mo's Content Filtering is enabled. Here's more information on that.
Good point. I upvoted your comment, and I wish I could edit my comment to add this. It seems that I can't edit the comment anymore though.
PS: The 9to5mac article has an update which indicates that the blocking is _not_ exclusive to users who have "filtering and blocking features enabled".
I'd like to switch, but after testing Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint (prior to the merger) with SIMs in my unlocked iPhone, none of them had reliable coverage at my house. T-Mobile was the only provider that gave me a good signal. I'm in city limits, so it's not what I expected, but I guess the problem is very localized.
Unless someone can spare me $70,000 so I can pay the install fee for a Comcast Internet connection to my home in downtown Chicago, I have to stick with T-Mobile for my main Net connection.
Because there is no reason to get internet from any of the big boys if you're in downtown Chicago. All you need is fiber to the big brick building next to McCormick Place, and there is fiber under every El track, in the old freight tunnels, along the Metra tracks, and just plain old every street.
When I was shopping around there was a huge backorder on the receivers because of the chip shortage. In the end, for a wireless connection, the 5G T-Mobile one works out better in bandwidth and latency.
Dude, t-Mobile is leagues better than AT&T or Verizon.
AT&T essentially bankrolled OANN, Trump's propaganda network. Verizon has done tons of shady stuff in the past as well.
Plus my bill for TMO has been constant (like the same) for years straight - no overages or surprise bills. Not going back to ATT/VZ for a long time if ever.
I've come to really regret my recent switch to Verizon Prepaid. They are very over-provisioned, which means anyone not on post-paid (i.e. MVNOs and to my disappointment, vzw prepaid) will get deprioritized to practically zero even with plenty of data available in the plan. I am unable to load even the simplest of web pages when this happens, which is a terrible state to be in when one is trying to check-in to a store to pickup an order, for example. I feel I would have gotten more enjoyment out of the money I am paying them if I had set it on fire. I am frantically looking for a less nasty alternative.
AT&T and Verizon have very checkered pasts, advocating to switch to them is ridiculous. That's not to say T-Mobile is perfect or even great, but at least for me they are the significantly lesser evil. That might just be down to the fact that they've only been around for 2 years.
I also can't complain that I get 8 lines of unlimited everything for $150.
They have poor security practices like storing passwords in plaintext [2], and they had a large data breach (probably about 100M customers affected) last year. [3]
A̶n̶d̶ ̶n̶o̶w̶,̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶m̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶o̶w̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶t̶o̶c̶o̶l̶ ̶b̶l̶o̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶o̶.̶
PS: This isn't protocol blocking at the packet/port level, so I may have used "protocol blocking" a bit inappropriately. Apparently Apple allows the carriers to prevent people from enabling iCloud Private Relay, and T-Mobile is doing that. Apple is probably doing so due to the pressure by the carriers. In August, four carriers (Vodafone, Telefonica, Orange and T-Mobile ) signed a letter urging the European Commission to stop Apple from providing Private Relay. (According to a report by The Telegraph: https://archive.fo/BRUS4#selection-915.74-925.194) This, of course, still quite preposterous.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29744347
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16776347
[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28192423 (The first comment by @jonathanmayer has a list of other recent T-Mobile security incidents)