Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

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I have Sprint and I live in Alameda Ca - and work in SOMA in SF - It is hands down the worst cellular carrier in the bay area with respect to LTE coverage and speed:

1. They have been claiming they are building new towers for the last THREE years. 2. No coverage AT ALL in any bart tunnel 3. No coverage fully across the bay bridge 4. Spotty coverage in SOMA 5. Google hangouts is utterly useless on mobile 6. three huge dead zones on 880 between Oakland and Menlo park, no coverage across dumbarton, etc.

I wish companies would stop partnering with them for services like this.

I carry a verizon MIFI with me everywhere for work (ops) and I turn it on every time I get on bart - when I am in the car and when I am sitting around in any restaurant / coffee shop / bar for any time because the network sucks so bad.

But that's the whole point of Google Fi. They partnered with Sprint and T-Mobile.

When your in Alameda and Sprint sucks, Google puts you on T-Mobile's network, and you get better data + coverage.

When you head to the rural Midwest, and T-Mobile has EDGE or no service at all, Google can put you back on Sprint LTE and it's at least better than EDGE on T-Mobile.

If this works the way they describe, then you win in both situations -- you get the best of either network, wherever you happen to be.

This is exactly where I'm at. T-Mobile is super fast in Oakland, SF, and even in the BART tunnels, but I just went home to WI and had terrible T-Mobile coverage outside of Milwaukee. So I popped in my Ting SIM (a Sprint MVNO, $6/mo to keep the line open, pay for what you use) and instantly had good coverage.

If you combine two crappy networks, the result won't be as crappy, but it won't necessarily be good either.

In general yes, but TMO and sprint are often the jack and Jill of coverage.

I also live in Alameda and work in SOMA. I have T-Mobile and get excellent coverage in Alameda (definitely improved over the last 4 years), across much of BART, most of the Bay Bridge (not in the tunnnel), and perfect in SOMA. Hangouts works great. One dead spot on 880 approaching 80, but no other empty spots down to San Jose.

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