Awful coverage in Milwaukee/surrounding areas

jfeltz1
jfeltz1 Aug 11, 2017 7:17 AM
  • Member Since: Aug 11, 2017

    I work in Milwaukee and live in a surrounding suburb. I currently do not have cell phone service nearly 70% of the time. When I look at the service map it looks great and bright pink until you zoom in. Once zoomed in it says things such as "service in buildings some times." What good is a phone that only works when you are standing outside? The 9 hours I spend at work I have no reception (neither do the 3 other T-Mobile users around me) while every other phone provider has full service including my coworker with a prepaid flip phone that is 10 years old. This causes me to not receive texts or calls, people leave me voicemails that I cannot listen to because they never actually come through and sometimes I receive texts weeks after they were sent to me. I also don't get service in the back half of my house, if I put my phone in my pocket, or if I drive more than two blocks south or east from my home. So I went and bought a new iPhone 7 thinking maybe my iPhone 5s was just crap. That wasn't the case, my service is still terrible and now I'm stuck with T-Mobile for two years while I pay off the new phone that I can't use indoors, can't carry in my pocket and can't go south or east with.

     

     

    I saw that in 2019 phase 5 of your rollout will bring some more coverage to south eastern Wisconsin. Is there anything that can be done before then so that I'm not paying $55 a month to keep around a $600 paper weight?

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    • 1 Reply
    • Latest reply on Aug 11, 2017 9:36 AM by drnewcomb2

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      • drnewcomb2

        Re: Awful coverage in Milwaukee/surrounding areas

        drnewcomb2 Aug 11, 2017 9:36 AM (in response to jfeltz1)
        • Member Since: Mar 9, 2014

        Milwaukee is a market where T-Mobile lacks current low-band (< 1GHz) licenses. Which is a good reason for having poor indoor service. (Particularly considering the amount of insulation buildings need in Milwaukee.) T-Mobile will be deploying new 600 MHz signals over the next few years but this will require new (currently unavailable) phones to use.

         

        I worked for many years in a building where I was not allowed to use a cell phone and there was, in any event, no T-Mobile signal. I just forwarded my incoming calls to my desk phone and took my calls that way. Of course, I had a personal, un-shared desk phone. I also live in an area where T-Mobile has no low-band service. I find that I must frequently connect to a store's WiFi signal to continue to have service inside. I also keep an old PagePlus PAYG flip phone active for about $32/year and sometimes conditionally forward calls to that phone when traveling where I might be in and out of T-Mobile service.

         

        If none of these are viable options for you and depending on how you purchased your "$600 paperweight" you may be able to unlock your phone, port out of your T-Mobile service to a compatible carrier (e.g. AT&T) and continue making just the phone payments to T-Mobile.

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