You know I’ve been usin’ Pandora a lot lately. And although it can take a long time to start up or can bug out if you need to change songs ‘n’ crap via Edge, it’s been workin’ out nicely. I’ve been listenin’ to it a crap load when I’m out drivin’ or if I take a walk somewhere.
I’ve been impressed with it’s constant great quality and reliability over Edge. I’ll leave it docked in the Lexus, playing through the sound system and I sometimes forget I’m playing muisc over the Internet… music over the Internet anywhere you go… it’s a crazy concept.
Peace, J
For me, I’ve joined the whole unlimited mobile Internet game late. So one thing I’ve noticed is how fast T-mobile’s Edge (2G) Internet is. I mean long before I had mobile internet, I heard stories about it, how it was slow and how even 3G wasn’t that fast… at least all of these stories were for AT&T, and if any of them were talking about T-mobile, it was from like 2007 when iPhones first came out.
But I’ve noticed that my T-mobile 2G Edge seems to act, well… almost as if I had 3G. It’s very fast. In fact, I’ve noticed simple pages like news.google.com load up about the same speed as iPhones on AT&T’s 3G.
I started thinking about this… why would T-mobile give such good speed to their 2G network? All of their smart phones access their 3G network… and I’ve heard so many complaints of it’s 3G speed compared to AT&T’s 3G speed. I know T-mobile’s 2G’s network used so be dirt slow, but now they’ve put so much quality in it. Why bother when most complain about T-mobile’s 3G? After all, the only ones on T-mobile that even use 2G to the full extent are… iPhone users, that’s it!
That’s why T-mobile’s Edge is so fast and reliable now. It’s because of all the iPhone users. Any model iPhone unlocked and running on T-mobile are only able to access their 2G network. Makes perfect sense. They have virtually no new phones that use the 2G network, so T-mobile boosting it’s 2G network makes it’s iPhone users happy. After all, if people bring their iPhones over to T-mobile and are then let down by sluggish 2G speeds, they’ll jump back to AT&T.
Keeping T-mobile’s Edge boosted helps them steal AT&T iPhone customers, and because they’re paying for the 3G network speeds anyways, but can only access 2G… so it’s only in their best interest.
Now, I can’t speak for all areas… but in the Tampa Bay area, T-mobile’s Edge is nice ‘n’ fast. I took some speed results from the Neocell to show what I mean…
Peace, J
So ‘ight, here’s the deal. It’s been about a month or two since I had the basic $9.99 Edge Internet stop working for the Neocell. As you can read from my post here, I was using a “social hack” method to get the $9.99 a month Internet for the Neocell, but started getting blocked. I’ve gotten to the root of the issue…
I put the SIM card into my old phone and the Internet worked, but not on the Neocell. I thought it might just be a flook so I waited and tried to test it out a few different times that whole month, but the same thing…
So what’s this mean? It means T-mobile’s system will at some point detect… whatever, and disable the net for just your device. Now, your not able to just pop your SIM into your old phone, call T-mobile, say your net’s not working and have it be done. You’ve gotta’ have the full, $25 a month Internet plan. Keep in mind this doesn’t include any text messages, which is fine by me. **** text messages.
So, is it worth it? $25 for unlimited Internet? If you were a chick readin’ this, I’d say, “Honey, it’s so worth it…”. The 2G speeds we get with Edge are very fast… don’t believe me? I’m able to stream net radio from WunderRadio and Pandora. And no, no skips or delays… just pure music. In fact, I plan on installing a secret, hidden little dock into my Lexus’ center console to play net radio straight into the stereo (already tested it on a few drives, works great).
I couldn’t do this with the $9.99 Internet plan ‘cuz they give you 50 MBs a MONTH… so I was turning on Edge only in the rarest of times, and there’s no way to track usage with T-mobile. So bein’ free to so what I want with the Internet when I’m not on wifi, shoot… I swear I go through 50 MBs in a few days.
Havin’ unlimited Internet is so worth it.
Peace, J
Ok, a music producer bud of mine also happens to work for T-mobile’s tech support out in Washington. I happened to speak to him today about the problems I was havin’ usin’ Edge.
I don’t use T-mobile’s normal internet. Na, I ain’t payin’ $25 extra a month for mobile internet. What I was doing was using the “phone only” internet plan, where you pay $10 a month for 50 MBs of data a month. T-mobile wants you to pay for their $25 unlimited “3G” plan, but as I’ve mentioned before, it’s impossible for any iPhones to use T-mobile’s 3G network because the bands are different than AT&T’s. So your basicly paying for unlimited 2G internet, which is fine because I have a 2G iPhone for that exact reason.
So what my bud told me is that T-mobile has started doing auditing of their data and billing each month, either to make sure customers aren’t getting chraged twice, or that they’re doing it in a way to try to push users into upgrading their plans, or both.
I already know there’s a way to get the $9.99 Internet back, such as putting my SIM card into my “non-smart” phone and call into T-mobile to reactivate my Internet, but my bud says T-mobile will do the same thing at any given time that month.
I really don’t know if I wanna’ go through that hassle, ya know? It all depends. For now, I’m just planning on turning the Internet off. I’ll keep ya updated if anything changes though.
Peace, J
