30% Apple

[Mark J Dulcey]

On 2/23/2011 6:06 AM, Scott Ehrlich wrote:

> How would you compare price and coverage of MetroPCS to T-Mobile's
> prepaid $100 for 1000 minutes per year, whichever (minutes or money)
> is used first?

Comparing apples and oranges. The prepaid T-Mobile plan is great for 
people who don't use the phone much. My T-Mobile prepaid phone is a 
backup to my Sprint phone, in case I visit places with poor Sprint 
service and for travel to Canada (where I can use it expensively but it 
does work). The phone is also unlocked, so I can put in a different SIM 
for international travel. By the way, if you don't use all the minutes 
in a year they stay on your account so long as you buy another batch of 
minutes before they expire.

T-Mobile also has a $50/month prepaid plan with unlimited talk and text 
plus 150MB data, and a $70 plan with unlimited talk and text plus 2GB 
data; those would be more directly comparable to MetroPCS. MetroPCS 
service is $40/month for non-smartphone devices, $50 for smartphones, 
and $60/month for BlackBerries. For 4G smartphones you can pay $50/month 
for unlimited voice and text plus 1GB data, or $60/month to add 
unlimited data.

MetroPCS has started to deploy LTE 4G data service in some places. 
Otherwise their network is only 2G (they never deployed 3G data service 
at all) so data will be VERY slow, which means that the "unlimited" 
service you get with the $50 non-4G plan will be of limited use, as will 
the $150 Android phone they're offering. The 4G Android phone is $400, 
which is really pricey for a phone with only an HVGA (480x320) screen.

If you want a smartphone, another option to look at is Virgin Mobile. 
They have plans from $25/month (300 talk minutes plus unlimited text and 
data) to $60/month (unlimited everything; they recently announced they 
will throttle data over 5GB/month on their USB data devices and that 
might apply to smartphones as well), and the data service is reasonably 
fast 3G. They have a $150 Android phone (the Optimus V), which isn't a 
top of the line device but it's a reasonable deal for what you get.

I tried out MetroPCS for a month when they first came to Boston (almost 
two years ago now). At the time I found their service substandard with 
poor voice quality and lots of dropped calls. I believe that they have 
built out a lot more infrastructure since then, so service now may be 
better. The REAL dealbreaker for me was their dysfunctional voicemail 
system; the command keys were dead while a message was playing so you 
had to listen to the entirety of each message before you could delete it.