I’ve Switched to T-Mobile

I didn’t realize it would take me this long to recover from Demo!I finally had time to take care of some personal things that I’ve been wanting to do. First and foremost was dealing with my cellphone. I’ve been unable to get reception at my place, which would explain why I had over 8,000 rollover minutes from AT&T. And since my fingers are too fat for the iPhone, it just made no sense to continue with AT&T. So this weekend I went cellphone shopping. I looked at Verizon and T-Mobile (I did give AT&T a chance but more on that later). In the end, I went with T-mobile, and I got a Blackberry Curve, which I’m pretty happy with.The UMA feature on t-mobile was what sold me. Turns out that If you register the wi-fi network you’re on as a homespot, you can make calls over the internet as opposed to wireless, which means that you don’t lose those precious anytime minutes. Also, since I travel constantly, when I’m overseas if I can get on a wi-fi network I can talk to the US team without paying long distance, which is very very cool. If I need to call someone with an international number (for example I’m in Singapore and need to call a Singapore number), when connected to the wi-fi I can call my Skype To Go (local US) number, which allows me to then dial an international number at the Skype rate.Hey, you know when you’re start-up you’ve got to figure out how to save money.The only problem I’ve had with t-mobile thus far is that the Curve doesn’t do a great job at auto switching from EDGE to wi-fi. Sometimes I have to force it to happen by turning if off and then on again. When I called the t-mobile support they were puzzled by this and offered this to be the only solution, which I think is mediocre.So about my AT&T experience. Like t-mobile, they pulled up a coverage map which showed that their coverage of my place was between “best” and “good” whereas with t-mobile it was smack in the middle of “excellent”. The person at the store then proceeded to tell me that the structure of my building could be preventing good reception, and that I should call customer service to have them re-orient the tower nearby to point more towards my building. I asked him to call them but he said he couldn’t, that I should do it from my place (where I get no reception, so how was I to call?)I had received an iPhone as a birthday present, but after this incident I returned it. When I went to the Apple store I told them that I needed to return the iPhone because I couldn’t type on the phone, and the guy who took the phone from me nodded knowingly and didn’t try to convince me that I should give it another try. I think they must have had enough returns based on that reason alone.