Rob's Rants

Real-world Experiences in and Around Boston, MA

Note: Update 8/19/2009: As I suspected in my recent post it appears that T-mobile has expanded coverage near my house. My house is between the Mass Pike (I-90), Rt. 9, and just west of I-495.  So I assume this means that coverage along the highways has been improved. The map has been updated to reflect these changes.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&vps=1&jsv=166d&msa=0&output=nl&msid=114567696637192567932.00046eedc72ba1a4ca36d

It’s generally accepted that T-Mobile has the worst 3G coverage of all the major carriers in the US (and also the worst coverage in general). But I’ve been a T-Mobile customer for more than 5 years and with the exception of places in far northern New Hampshire and in rural North Carolina, I haven’t really had a coverage problem. In general, my experience tells me that the coverage is about the same as AT&T/Cingular. And I base this on my experience carrying an AT&T Blackberry for work alongside my own T-Mobile personal phone for 3 years.

T-Mobile 3G Speed

So now that I have my new 3G phone, I decided to keep track of my own experience with 3G signal. The completely unscientific results are included in the Google Map above. Green indicates that I had a 3G signal — Red means that I did not. Yellow areas are places where the signal fluttered in and out. Most of my survey is done while driving. Where pins or waypoints are noted on the map, I was tracking my position with GPSed — other times I simply noted my position while driving and what the signal was doing. I simply layed a line over the road with the results. In areas where I moved around a lot (like the North and West End in Boston where I work) I overlayed a shape.

Anyway, this is a snapshot in time and not meant to be the definitive map of coverage. But it might be useful for someone looking to see of T-Mobile will work for their commuting needs around Boston.

As far as speed, my first tethered experience was positive and comparable to the best speeds I saw using a Verizon 3G USB modem. Above is the Speedtest.net result while tethered in downtown Boston.

The latency is more than I’d like, and the upload was a little slow, but 730 kbps down is a respectable speed for a PC tethered to a cell phone via a USB cable. It’s also twice the average speed I see using the free Wi-Fi on the MBTA Commuter Rail.

Speedtest.net from a moving train ...

To try this as a head-to-head with some other results I’ve reported, I ran a second test on 7/20/2009 while tethered on a moving train between Back Bay Station and West Natick. These results were somewhere around Newton, MA:

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Related posts:

1. T-Mobile 3G Coverage Update — Expanding?
2. T-Mobile Dash 3G — First Impressions
3. Essential Windows Mobile Software For My New T-Mobile Dash 3G
4. T-Mobile bumps their entire 3G network up to 7.2Mbps, 21Mbps coming soon
5. Goodbye to Windows Mobile … Hello Android