I'm currently evaluating both on the same phone, and I have not had that experience. If Helium had as good coverage as Tmo, I would have already switched. Fortunately, Helium usually has coverage when Tmo doesn't, so I may keep both since Helium is quite cheap (and even close to free with discovery mapping turned on).
They’re not owned by T-Mobile, but they’re just an MVNO.
Everyone can save by switching to an MVNO. The first trade off is that the big 3 carriers have essentially a tier list of customers based on what type of service they have for network priority. E.g., postpaid customers are highest priority, big carrier prepaid and big carrier-owned MVNOs are second, and unaffiliated MVNOs are placed based on the specifics of their agreements with the carrier. For example, Google Fi has high network priority because they undoubtedly pay more to use their networks than lower cost MVNOs.
The second trade off is that MVNOs handle customer service and a lot of the customer facing administration. This can vary but is often pretty barebones for lower cost MVNOs.
I think you are better off not saying that. If everyone were to switch to an MVNO then the large carriers MVNOs depend on would not offer as favorable rates to the MVNOs. Reminds me of when Apple licensed their OS and promptly got spanked.
Well, still, MVNOs aren’t for everyone. That statement in particular might have been a broad one by me.
One Postpaid carrier strength is family plans. The per-person cost for 4 people is very comparable to MVNOs and you get better service.
The next is phone financing and subsidies. If you’re the type of person who wants a new phone every 3 years, a postpaid carrier will have some of the more low-friction options for that.
Finally, MVNOs simply don’t offer high usage plans for heavy users. For example, my current postpaid plan gives me something like 50-80GB of monthly tethering allowance before throttling. There isn’t really an MVNO offering that at any price.
So, I think postpaid plans fit a higher income heavy user and/or a family pretty well.
+1 to Helium. I’m currently on Verizon on my iPhone, but got a second phone (pixel) that I got Helium on, grandfathered in to $5/month since I was early on.
I don’t use it super often when out so can’t comment too much on the data service quality, but whenever I do use it, it works fine.
