T-Mobile Plans: Prepaid vs. Postpaid

[dawnish]

I'm having some trouble figuring out which plan will work best on T-Mobile's network. I've heard postpaid is better than prepaid. I currently have the Magenta plan on a SIM card in a WG3526 with Sierra MC7455 modem and it's been working well for the past week. Is this a post-paid plan? Is there a better plan? Is anyone else using this plan and gone over the 50GB/month?

T-Mobile is the best option for us right now as the closest tower is 6-7 miles away and the terrain is very hilly/tree-covered.

[gscheb]

Sounds like post pay to me. Yes use way more than that.

[gscheb]

Sounds like post pay to me. Yes use way more than that.

Screenshot_20201002-203425.png

[shwaba]

@gscheb

What plan/addons do you use through Tmo?

[dawnish]

Sounds like post pay to me. Yes use way more than that.

amazing. thank you! do you ever experience throttling or deprioritization?

[gscheb]

amazing. thank you! do you ever experience throttling or deprioritization?

Yes it slows down at speeds up at times. But never to the point where you can't use it. Low be around 35 down and high be about 85 down. Also keep in mind this on one band 2 with 15 MHz. No carrier aggregation.
But my tower has been updated so it is faster.
Parents on older T-Mobile tower with CA Band 2 &12 total of 15 MHz. There is speed is consistently around 35 down.

[LteHaks9]

Screenshot_20201002-203425.png

If you don't mind me asking, what's your hardware setup?

[gscheb]

If you don't mind me asking, what's your hardware setup?

Well set up three of these T-Mobile setups
Mine and for others.
1. is Parabolic antenna, WG3526, EP06
2. is Parabolic antenna, WE826, EP06
3. is log periodic antenna (plastic wedges people call yagi on here), WE826, MC7455
All three of these have the WiFi Disabled have another normal house router plugged into the LAN port.

[Dbfit89]

Is the magenta plan $70/mo?

[tetranz]

I have Magenta in a Pepwave which contains a MC7455. It's working very well where I am temporarily in Houston but I haven't even got to 50 GB yet.

[Ozarks]

Well set up three of these T-Mobile setups
Mine and for others...

Would the WE826 Unlocked 4G LTE GSM modem work with the $70 T-mo Magenta plan?
Would I first need to activate the plan in a phone and then move the SIM to the WE826?
What settings would I need to change in the WE826?

Any help is much appreciated!

[gscheb]

Would the WE826 Unlocked 4G LTE GSM modem work with the $70 T-mo Magenta plan?
Would I first need to activate the plan in a phone and then move the SIM to the WE826?
What settings would I need to change in the WE826?

Any help is much appreciated!

Yes it should work. If you call them on the phone and say you have a phone you are going to borrow and not sure what it is. They will send you pre activated sim. Done this several times.
https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=32 ... =140#p7409

[Ozarks]

Thank you. I am very grateful for your help.

[crazysteve]

Sounds like post pay to me. Yes use way more than that.

I have a post pay line with international I'm not using but I'm considering. I'm also thinking of getting a prepaid $50 Tmo plan instead as I fear getting my grandfathered plan shut down.

Why is postpaid considered "better"?

[Ozarks]

Postpaid customers are worth more to cell companies because they usually pay more per month for service and there is much less churn for postpaid accounts, vs prepaid. Their data speeds also are not de-prioritized.

[LoveMeSomeCALTE]

Yes it slows down at speeds up at times. But never to the point where you can't use it. Low be around 35 down and high be about 85 down. Also keep in mind this on one band 2 with 15 MHz. No carrier aggregation.
But my tower has been updated so it is faster.
Parents on older T-Mobile tower with CA Band 2 &12 total of 15 MHz. There is speed is consistently around 35 down.

That's fantastic. What plan is this?

I always connect through an iPAD with tethering on and TMobile randomly allocate parts of the traffic to hotspot and then throttles the whole line to 512kbps once the hotspot allocation hits 20GB.

Depending on the day of the month, and the way the stars are aligned, the total data might hit 90GB by the time TMobile decides I have used 20GB hotspot, sometimes it has gone to 120GB but last month after 30GB of traffic, TMobile decided I have used 20GB hotspot.

One thing I've noticed is that there's a strong correlation between the hotspot counter and pluralsight training videos I watch. It's almost as if they are classifying my pluralsight training video traffic as hotspot usage but I have no clue what's going on.

What plan do you have?

[gscheb]

That's fantastic. What plan is this?

I always connect through an iPAD with tethering on and TMobile randomly allocate parts of the traffic to hotspot and then throttles the whole line to 512kbps once the hotspot allocation hits 20GB.

Depending on the day of the month, and the way the stars are aligned, the total data might hit 90GB by the time TMobile decides I have used 20GB hotspot, sometimes it has gone to 120GB but last month after 30GB of traffic, TMobile decided I have used 20GB hotspot.

One thing I've noticed is that there's a strong correlation between the hotspot counter and pluralsight training videos I watch. It's almost as if they are classifying my pluralsight training video traffic as hotspot usage but I have no clue what's going on.

What plan do you have?

Hello,
Wrote that some time ago. Was using T-Mobile cell phone sim in a router. Now have T-Mobile Home Internet.
This one of the post I wrote about it at the time below.
https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=32 ... =140#p7409

You should check to see if you can get T-Mobile Home Internet. Some people say they can get it with different address then use their real address for shipping purposes and get it there and use it.

Have you ever tried to tether this Ipad plan with T-Mobile?

Can Also put a phone in into a router but it will more expensive but it works and not that bad to do. Did it for a couple of years before got T-Mobile Home Internet. Sister still using T-Mobile phone sim and going just fine with it.

[LoveMeSomeCALTE]

You should check to see if you can get T-Mobile Home Internet. Some people say they can get it with different address then use their real address for shipping purposes and get it there and use it.

I am sure I can get T-Mobile Home Internet. That's not the issue - I just don't want to deal with the shenanigans T-Mobile will start to pull soon with their Home Internet.

They are trying to sell these and once they hit some internal metrics where they no longer need to grow as much, they will start to boot out and remove people who don't fit the profile they want.

This is how they predictably work and I just dont want to deal with that.

Have you ever tried to tether this Ipad plan with T-Mobile?

Yes - the T-Mobile plan I wrote about above that's in my iPAD is the "T-Mobile Unlimited Plus Tablet with 20GB of 4G LTE hotspot data"

[crazysteve]

...I just don't want to deal with the shenanigans T-Mobile will start to pull soon with their Home Internet.

They are trying to sell these and once they hit some internal metrics where they no longer need to grow as much, they will start to boot out and remove people who don't fit the profile they want.

This is how they predictably work and I just dont want to deal with that

Has T-Mobile specifically done this before? I don't understand why they would roll out home internet if they intend on booting people. What profile would one need to get booted?

[LoveMeSomeCALTE]

Has T-Mobile specifically done this before?

Absolutely.

I documented it in details about what they did to our small rural community in 2019 here.

If you can't find my post, I can search for you. let me know, but here's the gist:

Offered us free hotspots for 30 days, gave us the $50 price that beat all our local WISPs, we all switched making most of those local WISPs go out of business and then pulled the plug after just a few months.

Now they are advertising the same thing, none of us are repeating the same mistakes of 2019. The ones buying these are those who recently moved in and didn't know. We make sure they eventually know.

T-Mobile is an unethical company: they will lie through their teeth and this is not my opinion: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/202 ... ling-says/

[LoveMeSomeCALTE]

Ok here's a short writeup I could find but I had a more detailed one. It had nothing to do with usage. There were people who were 80 years old who only use a computer to update their benefits once a month who got booted:

https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=32 ... 9687#p9868

[crazysteve]

That's sounds like a really weird thing to do. Sorry that happened.