T-mobile joins US Cellular in 2017

General Discussions
#1

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Above should be a link to t-mobile expect growth in 2017. You can also Google the leaked investor map for end of 2017.

Over at reddit, the reason is revealed, which is a roaming agreement with US cellular. It comes online, once us cellular turns on volte market by market, Midwest expected to be first.

What I wonder is, volte roaming is same as data roaming in practice, so how about in roaming via republic wireless? Will, perhaps us cellular roaming allow data, will it be invisible to phone?

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#2

Veeeeeery interesting. So, is the white on the map the US cellular area that is being added to T-Mobile? I wonder if MNVO’s will even have access at all.

#3

Rumors of a pending LTE roaming agreement between TMO and U.S. Cellular have been out there for some time. Their LTE networks are mutually compatible because though U.S. Cellular is a “CDMA” carrier, LTE is an evolution of GSM not CDMA technology. It’s potentially a harbinger of things to come as CDMA carriers begin to abandon legacy 2G and 3G CDMA technologies in favor of 4G LTE and future 5G networks, which, again, are and will be evolutions of GSM technology.

Regarding this specific agreement, the devil (as always) is in the details. If implemented as a reciprocal roaming agreement (there is speculation this is the case), then coverage would appear as native to each other’s customers. That said, any roaming agreement between TMO and U.S. Cellular need not be implemented that way. Further, what the availability (if any) will be to MVNOs remains to be seen. Time will tell.

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#4

Hard to say what the MVNOs will get. If it’s like the agreement T-Mobile has with iWireless, expect very little.

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#5

Elaborate.

#6

iWireless and T-Mobile have a reciprocal data roaming agreement, 4G LTE where available (T-Mobile also owns a good chunk of iWireless). That agreement does not extend to any of T-Mobile’s MVNO customers. That vast wasteland of zero data coverage in Iowa is iWireless territory. That’s why I cringe a bit when I see folks here telling potential Republic Wireless customers to refer to the T-Mobile coverage maps. The maps tend to graphically misrepresent data coverage in iWireless territory that is not available to MVNO customers.

iWireless - Wikipedia

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#7

This is scary. I wonder how accurate open signal tower map is. Once you activate the republic sim, you can see towers enroute for any trip. But if these are tmo, or mvno, or roaming who knows… Already, I am skeptical of open signal reception map due to roof top boosters and unusable 4g…

Already found one spot in first week of use where I had 4 G but was unusable. This happened much on sprint, but didn’t care because sprint had 1x and voice. With heavy reliance on 4g by tmo, unusable 4g is a major concern of mine.

#8

As far as maps for T-Mobile MVNO coverage, I refer to this one.

#9

That map is such a tease. I’ve been gritting out Republic 3.0 because of this possible expansion, but maybe I should abandon hope. For reference, I live in Bozeman, MT. I’m on WiFi almost all the time, but if I happen to be out on the road when I get a text (even plain text SMS), the phone will say I need to download the message and I don’t have a data plan…
On Republic 1.0, it would download SMS over roaming towers (Verizon) so it was not a problem.

#10

Bozeman, MT is a roaming area for the GSM partner according to this map. You should still be able to send/receive SMS. See:

Particularly this part:

Note: For Republic Wireless 3.0 Phones our GSM provider requires mobile data to be enabled in order for all messaging, including SMS, to be sent from the phone. See Check Network Settings for instructions on making sure mobile data is enabled.

#11

I’ve checked and rechecked those settings several times. It does not matter. The phone sees all incoming/outgoing texts as MMS and since I have no data plan, it requires I be on WiFi to get or send them.

As far as I can tell, paying more for a data plan will not help one bit, because there is no roaming data unless the grey “partner” area of that map turns a glorious green shade.

I just switched from Messages to Republic Anywhere as my texting app today…I feel that’s more likely to break things than fix them, but I’ll see.

#12

You are correct that having a data plan will not help. But roaming data can normally be utilized to run core Republic Wirless functions (such as sending/receiving SMS/MMS), regardless of whether you buy a data plan. I would encourage you to work with Republic Wireless support directly.

#13

A Republic Admin said it will never work to send/receive SMS on the Moto X Pure over in this thread: Moto x pure can't receive sms; sees them as mms

#14

If there’s no roaming GSM data partner available, you’re dead in the water with the GSM provider. But perhaps there is a roaming data partner available on the CDMA network. Start working with support, perhaps they can help you find a solution. You’re not the first to go through this.

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#15

Ticket opened…we’ll see if I get anywhere. If it doesn’t, I’ll probably just start fresh with a new phone with a new number from a different carrier.

#16
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