Lets talk about the quality of service or lack thereof of t-mobile.

I just signed up with T-mobile and dropped AT&T because T-mobile has the 1700 3G frequency.

I was feeling very happy that I switched because now i will have 3.5g but now that I have been with T-mobile for about 2.5 days I am starting to regret it.

I have some issues and I want to see if you guys have those issues too.

I realize that cell phone frequencies are easy to block but I am next to a window when I am at home and I'm about 2 or 3 miles from the T-mobile office I signed up with.

I am at 1 to 3 bars (most of the time 1 or 2 bars) EDGE now where as before with AT&T I was at very lowest 3 bars edge.

When I am at 1 or 2 bars edge on T-mobile at home it is as though I have no connection.

3 to 4 minutes to find and load yahoo.com? Other simple websites like this just to test the connection are sooooo slow it is unbearable. 3+ minutes just to load first home page is very unnacceptable.

To top this off, If I tether to my PC using Nokia PC Suite it seems to let me access for about 2 minutes then completely shuts down all access for Firefox Browser to the internet but still shows access on the N900 and on PC Suite says connected. It is as though I am getting blocked because I am tethering.

The other thing I noticed is that when i connect to T-mobile it says 3.5g for first 5 to 10 seconds then goes to 3g then goes to 2.5g then starts dropping bars until i get all the way down to 1 bar.

As far as I am concerned that is "bait and switch" and it is really pissing me off.

MY solutions in just these 2 hours that I finally got pissed off was....

1) I mounted/placed my N900 into a Gorillapod (google it) and stuck it up as high as possible on my corner desk. It is now 2.5 feet from the ceiling and it shows 5 bars edge.

2) I went to opendns.org and got their primary and secondary DNS servers and entered theirs
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
into the T-mobile dns addresses instead of relying on t-mobiles DNS servers.
I got immediately better, faster results from doing these 2 things.

I am in Ventura county just outside of Los Angeles county and we have had heavy storms here just yesterday and today in Cali so I am really, really, really hoping that this is just intermittent service outages because the rain and wind is causing problems but I'd like to get some of your opinions.

Has T-mobile dropped the ball for you with poor area coverage, signal strength?
Are they blocking you when you tether? Have you tried using open dns servers? Do you see a difference?

Please bluntly and without any regret say any dissatisfaction you have with T-mobiles service. You are after all paying them good money to get internet access.

I dropped connection (1) time, just outside of Baltimore, while driving from DC to Philadelphia, streaming internet radio via FM transmitter for 2.5hrs straight. I was on 3.5G the whole time. I pretty much get 3-full bars 3G from Baltimore to northern Virginia, with a few weak spots here and there. Only slightly worse reception than I had with my Motorola Q on AT&T.

For comparison sake, I had worse reception with the Droid on VZ, finding 4-5 dead spots in my town alone. I believe MD is supposed to be "solid red" on VZ's 3G map. I think it was the phone though...wound up making an antenna mod for it.

I live in Orange County and get horrible reception in my home. But compared to the Nokia n97, the n900 gets much better reception in my room. But i think the best way to deal with not having UMA is skype or google voice + gizmo.

tethering isnt a problem for me when I use the epc.tmobile.com APN. never had to deal with putting in DNS either.

"Has T-mobile dropped the ball for you with poor area coverage, signal strength?"

No. I have had much worse experience with AT&T. I was not able to make or receive phone calls with AT&T inside my home in Santa Clara. No phone with AT&T SIM card was able to connect to the network inside. With T-Mobile SIM I can speak inside, although the reception is not the best possible...

I think the bottom line is that in U.S. all operators have spotty coverage and the problematic spots are different for all operators. (for me the weak spot of T-Mobile network is coverage in remote locations - like national parks - where AT&T seems to have edge over T-Mobile)

Hartti

Yay Ventura County! I am in Agoura Hills about two miles from the Ventura County line. Unfortunately, I am using WiFI so I don't know anything about T-mobile issues now, but it wouldn't surprise me that there are some in all this rain.

I'm good with T-Mobile in the DC metro area.

The infamous 'ymmv' applies here. I'm over in the east side of San Jose, not far from Santa Clara at all and I haven't had any issues with AT&T at all. Sometimes the call quality has been iffy, but nothing terrible. For the most part I've had no issues with AT&T at all. How-ever I am very much missing 3G now, and I'm having a hard time convincing myself to go through the effort of switching to Tmobile just for the network boost.

So yeah, it all depends on where your at. The house your in, nearest cell tower, elevation of the moon, solar flares that day... :

Have you checked your 3g coverage? T-Mobile's coverage is not as extensive as other carriers.

well i can't complain since i got 2000mins unlimited text and web for 25$ w no contract ... but yes i do miss at&t coverage

It must have had something to do with your location I never encountered this problem. I used about 2GB of data last time within 2 weeks or so by tethering the N900 with my laptop since I have no ineternet service at my place.