I still feel that people lose sight of the point that there is nowhere in the world that every carrier is perfect each one has certain geographical areas they excel in. For instance we lived in Northern New England AT&T were not available for 60+ miles Verizon was fair and TMobile was a step above AT&T it was US Cellular that everyone had here Verizon and TMobile are basically on 95% of things neck and neck AT&T is fair and US Cellular is not here at all. So I find it to be wasted breath to argue who is better when it is simpy dependent on location in the case of dropped calls signal strength and speed. Clearly grades of phones is a valid point but services not so much IMO.
If you think T-Mobile is even close to being on par with AT&T I dunno what to say. That sounds delusional. Why would DT even sell T-Mobile to AT&T if T-Mobile was on par with them.
Verizon's coverage far surpasses both AT&T and T-Mobile, but I don't use CDMA devices so they are out of the question. Their 3G speeds are pretty bad too, but they sure blow T-Mobile out of the water here...
T-Mobile has the worst coverage of all the National Carriers (living in an area where their coverage is great doesn't make their coverage great, it's just great for you). Even Sprint is better. T-Mobile depends on Roaming for most of their call coverage outside of major cities, their tower density is terrible so when lots of people get on their smartphones your data speeds drop into the ground, and outside of major cities their data coverage is attrocious.
Sorry, I travel, and when I made a 1350 mile trip and found out I mind as well should have left BOTH my smartphoneS home, it became clearly apparent that I need to drop this shoddy carrier. You get what you pay for.
And the city I traveled to is not a rural town. It's a fairly decent sized town. T-Mobile coverage is MIA. I could barely hold 1 bar GPRS, and who wants to stand outside in 20 degree weather with 10-15 mph winds just to have a cell phone conversation? Being tethered to WiFi calling is no better than using a Cordless Home Phone.
It's not depended upon location. Some of us don't stay in one place. That's why we pick NATIONAL carriers. So we can have Coverage across the Nation not just in one town or County/Parish. It just so happens T-Mobile looks like a Second Tier carrier compared to AT&T.
And like I said, I don't use CDMA phones (too much of a PITA to switch devices, not SV&D, crap 3G speeds I prefer HSPA+ 14.4-21 to HSPA 42/LTE at this point for battery life) so Verizon and Sprint are out of the question.
AT&T = Moving Forward
T-Mobile = Not.
Even if AT&T speeds were equivalent, I'd still switch for the coverage. It's not cool watching people ride the train a hundred miles with 3G on their AT&T phones while I'm sitting there twiddling my thumbs hoping to catch a bit of EDGE eventually...