T-Mobile First Impressions

I've been thinking about switching cell phone providers for quite a while. For one, I don't use my phone all that much - maybe an hour per month. So paying 35+ bucks for my 800 anytime minutes seems quite excessive.

Secondly, I had a lot of trouble with Cingular in the past, so I switched to AT&T. I'm kind of funny in this respect - if you piss me off enough, I'll avoid doing any more business with you. (You'd think if everyone would do the same, a lot of mediocre companies would be in a lot of trouble). I guess Cingular thought they'd just buy AT&T and get me back that way ;)

T-Mobile offers a pretty interesting prepaid plan for people like me. For $100 you'll get 1000 minutes that are good for a year. I figure that'll be all for me. I'll probably even have a few minutes left over at the end.

I have an old Siemens S40 phone (GSM 800/1800/1900) that I was going to use, but T-Mobile offers a starter pack with the Nokia 6010, which supports GSM 850/1900 and may provide better reception in some areas. The phone is a real brick, but that's ok - I only use it an hour per month ;)

So I went to the mall today to check out the phones and ask a few questions. Most importantly, I confirmed that I'll be able to keep my old mobile number! That's pretty good, especially for a prepaid plan. Secondly, I looked at the phones that T-Mobile offers with the prepaid plan and decided to take the Nokia 6010 home. After all, the S40 is already four years old, so there is no telling how much longer it'll last.

I don't know why, but getting a mobile phone is always quite exciting. Cecile is making fun of me because I'm checking the bars constantly on the way home. Full signal at the mall and on the highway. Sweet!

The signal strength at home is about half the bars. uhoh! However, the sound quality on either phone is still excellent. In the coming days I'll see how it does in other places, most importantly on my way to Santa Cruz, in San Francisco and at Lake Tahoe.