Forum Discussion
Ohio coverage is pretty awful
I have 6 lines for my family. We moved to Ohio last year and the coverage is god awful basically anywhere that isn't a major city. The coverage maps show fair to good 4g LTE in basically all of Ohio (including all of the places I mention below), but my wife and I regularly in end up places where we don't have 3g, no internet at all, and even no ability to make phone calls at all. We've had Tmobile for something like 7 years now and it was great in GA, but we are to the point where we are going to have to change carriers because so often we can't use our phones at all if there's no wifi around.
Springfield: Shows good to excellent signal on the coverage map and can't get signal in the parking lot of the Walmart off 40.
Mechanicsburg: Show fair signal on the coverage map, but can't even make calls out there.
Brothers house outside of Cable: Shows fair signal on the coverage map, but can't even make calls (the map does at least show no signal in areas close by, so this one is understandable).
Greenville: Good/Excellent on the map -> no data at all.
Hockingport: Fair on the map -> no phone or data
I70 between Springfield and Dayton: regularly lose data.
I75 heading north from Dayton to Michigan: regularly lose data.
This is happening across 6 different phones. It's super frustrating because I don't want to go through the hassle to switch carriers, especially since Verizon which seems to be the only reliable carrier around here is quite a bit more expensive. I don't want to have to deal with paying off phones that are all at various stages in being paid off etc. The most frustrating part is that TMobile tells us all of these places have decent to excellent data coverage when a lot of them we can't even use the phone let alone data.
I have a Note 9. My wife has an S9+. The rest are pretty cheap phones, but I've experienced all of those issues on our higher end phones as well as the prior versions (Note 8 and S8).
The crazy thing to me is that Springfield is a decent sized city in Ohio. Greenville is smaller but still an actual city. I can kind of understand Mechanicsburg/Hocking Port/Cable as those are all boondocks areas, but our family with Verizon gets 4G LTE in those places while we can't even make calls there.
Losing signal while driving on the interstate and being close to large cities is frustrating too.
I just wanted to make sure your phones had band-12 (700 MHz), which T-Mobile has licensed everywhere in Ohio. My niece went to Oberlin where T-Mobile has indifferent service. Works on one side of a building, doesn't on the other side.
Just remember that on T-Mobile's coverage maps, "Fair" equates to "Maybe".
If T-Mobile's coverage doesn't satisfy your needs, I wouldn't wait around holding my breath waiting for better service. T-Mobile's current and future focus will be 1) integrating Sprint's customers and infrastructure 2) building band-71 service in areas newly cleared by TV stations. I don't forsee a lot of greenfield deployment of new band-12 coverage.
It is bad in a number of Ohio towns. My experience is that much of South Charleston, Ohio in Clark County along routes 41 and 42 and the Ohio to Erie bike trail and Van Wert Ohio along US highway 30 are dead sports. Band 71 has not arrived in most places in Ohio yet, I think it comes in 2020 when TV stations get moved to lower frequencies. I don't know if it will help much or not. Band 12 helped the area near Battelle Darby Creek Park between Columbus and London and some other areas near London Ohio with its deployment. It still does not do as well as AT&T or Verizon in many of the rural areas. Berlin Ohio is also dismal for coverage. It seemed to do well along I-70 including Springfield in my experience. I have no experience with Greenfield but I noticed it is along highway 127 south of Van Wert and that place has dismal coverage.
normanh wrote:
.... Band 71 has not arrived in most places in Ohio yet, I think it comes in 2020 when TV stations get moved to lower frequencies. I don't know if it will help much or not. ...
If band 12 is available, band 71 won't do much for coverage. It will help rural capacity but won't improve coverage over what could be done with band 12.
I too am ready to check for "greener pastures" due to poor rural Ohio coverage. Amish Country and just recently, the rural areas just north of Newark. Not only is it simply frustrating-and disappointing having only been with T-Mobile for a year-but personally concerning when you have a mentally ill son that NEEDS access in case of emergencies!
Low Service Trumbull County, OH. 10/07/2022-6:11 Pm EST. Called for little to no T Mobile internet for the past week. 24.11 download and 3.76 upload!!! Support told me they have been working on my tower (Niles, OH) for a week, as an upgrade to 5G? Says it'll be another week or two! Said I should have received an email or text. I received nothing. Great service for someone who works from home and could loose their job over their "unannounced" service interruption! Time to shop for new internet. Oh Yeah, the $50.00 monthly internet fee, that never goes up? It went up, not much, but it went up. Kinda false advertisement, ay? BYE
