I can't understand having trouble using your iPhone on t-Mobile's system.

It works fine for me. But then I might located in the right neighborhood.

Some years ago I had cable internet through an AT&T company. The email service frequently crashed and the best advice that they could give me was to establish an email account with Yahoo. Then there was the Wednesday that they deducted my monthly charge from my checking account and followed it up the next day canceling my service for non-payment. I'll spare you the rest of a long story that includes many calls and many many minutes on hold. I stopped reading about the iphone the moment I read the word AT&T in the press release. AT&T and any company they are affiliated with can kiss my ass.

I went through exactly this last August. I was on T-Mobile with a Dash, and a good nine months left on my two year contract, over which time I'd never been able to really place or receive calls in my house. Rather inconvenient when works freelance, for oneself, out of ones home. After establishing that there was nothing more they could do, and establishing that they weren't going to be building any new towers that would help me (I'm less than two miles from downtown Austin, and less than 200 ft from the largest highway in town... not exactly the boondocks), I went to Best Buy, told them I wanted an iPhone, and haven't looked back. Yes it cost me $200 to get out of that damn t-mobile contract, plus the cost of the iPhone, plus the $85 a month, which is around $30 more than I was paying under the old plan. But at least now I can make calls, and that iPhone is pretty nifty too.

I guess I should have waited... then we could have just traded.

First let me say - i have no love for AT&T. But since 1997, I have used just about every mobile service out there and AT&T has consistently outperformed everyone else when it comes to coverage. I started with Sprint - great rates, worst coverage imagineable. Then I switched to AT&T - great coverage, worst rates ever. Next came t-mobile - extremely affordable but horrible coverage. Then came a magical period - verizon wireless. They had reasonable rates and fairly good coverage and even helped me out with a substantial rebate when i was visiting NY on business while two hurricanes hit my Florida home in a 2 week period that required hours of calls to mky wife. Unfortunatley a horrible verizon store experience while trying to purchase a new phone resulted in switching to AT&T once again. I travel all over the world and wherever i go people are always saying - "how do you get coverage here, my phone won't work". I hate their rates, but the coverage is always great.

I really do hope that your experience with the other carriers is better, but I'm on my 3rd one now, having switched to ATT because of the iPhone.

I find cell service with all carriers and all devices wanting at best. I can't tell you why, I have no idea, but all three of the carriers have given me problems. My favorite one is when the phone is sitting on the table, and I get a voice mail notification.... if the phone can get the voice mail notification, why couldn't it get the call?

Bottom line is They All Suck. Period

I've been using GSM mobile service since before AT&T knew there were such things as mobile phones. Everytime a new popular phone comes out the service suffers, the iPhone is just the latest hiccup. I've never been a trend follower, and in this case it's all followed me. I got a Nokia N95 with 3G months before the iPhone had it. Service is decent if I'm not in Fremont, but not the fastest ever. In the end though, I'm thinking about breaking my streak with Pacific Bell/AT&T/Cingular/AT&T and going for Sprint.

What's ironic about the post though Om, is that T-Mobile in the US leases their network space from AT&T, and if your voice only phone uses the network that Verizon acquired from AllTel, then that one is leased space on AT&T's bandwidth too. So in the end you actually haven't gotten away from AT&T, it's all one big happy inbred family in your pocket. Hopefully that Verizon phone is EVDO. Here's all the details:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators

My experience in South Florida has been almost the opposite. When I first got my iPhone in December 07, I was quickly disappointed with web and e-mail performance on the Edge network, and I frequently dropped from the network completely. Over the last 6 months this has steadily improved, and I am using more and more of the phone's capability every week. I was looking with some envy at the new crop of Blackberry models coming out, but I think I will ride out the remaining year on my ATT contract.

My first ever cell phone was with AT&T. The service was so bad, I had to walk around the block in Manhattan just to get a signal. Then I switched to Verizon for a long while. Very good service. I even got a signal under the tunnel between NJ and NY while on the train. When the iPhone came out I was upset that AT&T was the carrier. No way was I switching from Verizon for that old POS service I used to have. But lots of my friends started getting it, and all said the phone and data service was fine.

So I said, "What the hell?" I got the phone. The phone is awesome. The data service is fine. The voice service is not as good as Verizon. I can't call you from beneath the Hudson. I got the odd dropped call. But what I get from the rest of the phone makes it well worth it.