Moving from T-Mobile to ATT Wireless
Posted on Jul 20, 2009 by
Paul WhiteSo I go my new used
Sony Xperia X1i off ebay. Unlocked and ready to jump onto any GSM network. I was already with Tmobile, and I knew they had G3 support in Houston. So I put my sim card into my new phone only to find that all I could get was Edge Data ( Max 12 KB/sec ). Of course if you signal is weak you are lucky to get 2 KB/sec. I thought that maybe it was because I was using Tzones. But turns out this is not true. If you device supports Tmobile's G3 bands, it will get G3 speeds on Tzones. The problem is the way Tmobile has setup their G3 network.
Tmobile's G3 Network
Unlike other networks that use a single band for G3, or at least just use a single band per area or region, Tmobile decided to complicate things. They use two bands. This isn't a use one or the other type of thing. You must be able to support both bands. They use the 2100 band for downstream, and the 1700 band for upstream. If your phone doesn't support both bands you will not be enjoying G3 on Tmobile's Network. I had to learn this the hard way. If you do some searching on the web you will find there is a very limited number of phones that support the 1700 band.
AT&T G3 Network
After a call to AT&T and going through a couple service reps until I got one that could communicate with me( they were american but they were not tech or computer savy ) I was able to determine the frequencies that they support. They support 850, 900, 1800, 1900. Which just so happends to be the same frequencies that my
Sony Xperia X1i supports. From searching the web it would see that AT&T uses two bands for G3. They 850, and the 1900 band. Unlike Tmobile you do not need both at the same time. Depending on the city and region will depend on which band is supported by the towers. So if your phone only supports one of these bands, you will get G3 in some cities, but not in others. I have not yet found a map that shows which cities support which bands. And the customer service rep was unable to find this information internally.
The AT&T plan I got
Here are the specs of the plan I got with AT&T for my
Sony Xperia X1i450 anytime Minutes / month with rollover
5000 Nights and weekends
Unlimited mobile to mobile calling
40 cents/ minute overage
17 cents/ minute to Canada
$39.99 / month
Unlimited Data and Unlimited text
$30.00 / month
So in total I am paying
$69.99 / month
not including additional BS taxes and fees.
I don't spend very much time talking on the phone. If I am talking its with my wife and her company phone is with AT&T / Cingular, so I don't have to worry about those minutes.
If you plan to tether your laptop to your phone, they will try to get you to pay $80 /month for the data plan, but considering all the data comes from the phone, I find it hard to believe they can actually tell when you are tethering, unless you are running BitTorrent which tends to be a very intensive network application. But for small things browsing web, checking email I don't think you would get in trouble tethering, as long as its not an everyday type of thing. I told the customer care rep, that I would be tethering only a couple times / year, and she said I wouldn't need the tethering data plan.
No Contracts when you bring your own phone
If you don't want to get locked into a 2 year contract, go on ebay can get yourself an unlocked phone. They will happily let you sign up for a month to month plan.
Don't give them your IMEI!
Something I read online is that if you give the carrier your IMEI number, they can look up what type of phone you have and then force you get a more expensive data account if they determine you hame a smart phone. I refused to give the rep my IMEI and she didn't make any big deal about it.
Sony Xperia X1i thus far
Something I will say is that even though I have only used the phone using Tmobile's Edge. I was able to check email, and even run remote desktop from my phone. I have to say remote desktop on the X1i with the 800 x 480 screen is beautiful. Those of you who need access to your
dedicated servers and
VPS boxes, I highly recommend the Terminate Services Client for Windows Mobile 6. You might have to hunt for it on the web if you want to get it for free, but it is available.
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