FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Changing to T-Mobile. What is best acquision choice for phones?
Old Aug 26, 2015 | 8:27 am
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WIRunner
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Originally Posted by kmersh
I have been with at&t since the days of McCaw Cellular and after 28 years and many incarnations I am considering moving my Wife and I to T-Mobile as we are pretty sick of at&t at this point.

Colleagues have said that T-Mobile's network is inferior to at&t and that does have me worried, but the latest at&t billing fiasco also has me worried so I find myself looking for greener (or at least seemingly greener) pastures.

I have a Nexus 6 and my Wife has a iPhone 6 Plus (bought unlocked from the Apple Store) and from my understanding both should work on T-Mobile without issue.

The Wi-Fi calling thing is a little confusing and I have gotten conflicting info from both T-Mobile employees and the internet itself. According to the T-Mobile Corporate Store Employee, since my wife had her at&t SIM in the phone, the phone has programmed itself to work most efficiently on at&t and things like Wi-FI calling would be impossible, but other things like cellular service would be fine. The T-Mobile Employee told me that my Nexus 6 would just, "barely work with T-Mobile and that I really should get a better more compatible phone."

According to the Internet the iPhone 6 Plus would just work and whatever programming it had for at&t it would reprogram itself for T-Mobile. With regards to my Nexus 6, the Internet seems to feel that my Nexus 6 would work well enough, if not perfectly and that anything it might not be able to do, I really wouldn't miss. I tend to believe the Internet (in this case) over the T-Mobile employee as it seemed he wanted to make a sale rather actually assist us.

Any thoughts, before I make the change?
I haven't noticed huge gaps where at&t is the strongest carrier. There are plenty of places where both att and tmobile have 1900 mhz networks and they perform roughly the same. You will likely notice a faster speed on tmobile though.

As for your phones... Put in new sim cards, they'll get carrier updates and you're good to go. Wifi calling works fine on an unlocked iPhone, and the same with an n6.

You can always just order new sim cards online and do the activation at home, it is a pretty straightforward setup.
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