Help from T-Mobile customers, please

[ChrisF]

Greetings:

I'm leaving Cingular thanks to poor customer service and a costly bait-and-switch :evil: . T-Mobile here in the SF Bay Area looks attractive. I remember from by first Cingular sign-up that the in-store reps didn't always correctly match service packages with capabilities dealing with PDA users.

I'd be grateful for a post or two from T-Mobile customers who could tell me what services they signed up for in order to enable dial-up (PSD) or GPRS access that allows the PocketPC to connect to internet provider using the cell phone as an intermediary (I connect to my cell via Bluetooth). Thanks.

ChrisF

[Janak Parekh]

Chris -

You have to be more specific. Do you want GPRS, CSD, or both?

If you can budget it, I recommend unlimited GPRS, which is a $19.95 addon to any voice plan. Getting it enables the use of their 56k-like service without use of any of your minutes, and T-Mobile itself is your "ISP". Otherwise, let us know what your constraints are. :)

Be aware that T-Mobile uses Cingular's antennas in CA, so the coverage is almost identical... i.e., make sure that's good for where you live/work.

--janak

[stitics]

I, too, have the $19.95 Unlimited GPRS add-on plan, and I really like it.

Somehow, before I started typing, it seemed like I had more to say. :?

[CTSLICK]

I use the setup Janak describes on T-Mo. Works fine and I love that word "unlimited". No worries about how many megabytes I have downloaded or wondering if I need to turn off the graphics on webpages to save a few bytes or if I have enough left on my plan to download that big fat email attachment someone sent me. I can just do it. Well worth the price of admission.

I was in the Bay Area this summer and Janak is right about T-Mo and Cingular using the same towers. In fact, most of the time my phone said Cingular not T-Mobile.

[ChrisF]

Janak, Douglas CTSLICK:

thanks for the replies - yup, unlimited GPRS would be nice, and 19.95/mo is tolerable. Right now I use CSD services on my Cingular plan - I have ~5000 night/weekend minutes so I connect to my ISP off-peak and don't worry about charges. But it is a slowish connection.

So, it's the 19.95/mo add-on if I want GPRS.

Is the CSD option standard in T-Mobile's service if I want to use it the way I do now on Cingular? At Cingular I had to enable a couple of $1 or $2 options that were confusingly named to get this functionality...

Chris

[Janak Parekh]

Is the CSD option standard in T-Mobile's service if I want to use it the way I do now on Cingular? At Cingular I had to enable a couple of $1 or $2 options that were confusingly named to get this functionality...
You should, in theory, be able to get CSD for free, but good luck convincing T-Mobile's support reps on that one. :? Most posts I've read say that getting the very smallest GPRS plan (the $2 T-Zones, IIRC) is the best way to get CSD enabled on one's account.

However, once you try a "high-speed" solution, you'll never go back to CSD. 9600bps? ACK! ;)

--janak