T-Mobile Data speeds in Portland, OR?

[archer75]

I've been searching for info on data speeds for the various carriers in Portland. I did find an official speed test and a user review, both done back in March. I know the carriers have been working on upgrading their networks and am curious if anything has changed in my area since that test?

Basically I am planning on ditching my sirius service and using a phone to stream Pandora in my truck and the data from back in March suggests that the T-Mobile network here can do it and had the highest download speeds. Just wanted to make sure it's suitable for music streaming.

 

[John Jason]

I've been searching for info on data speeds for the various carriers in Portland. I did find an official speed test and a user review, both done back in March. I know the carriers have been working on upgrading their networks and am curious if anything has changed in my area since that test?

Basically I am planning on ditching my sirius service and using a phone to stream Pandora in my truck and the data from back in March suggests that the T-Mobile network here can do it and had the highest download speeds. Just wanted to make sure it's suitable for music streaming.

The fastest carrier at this time in Portland is Verizon, the hands down winner. Go to a Verizon store and try out a Thunderbolt, and you will see speeds of 12-14 Mbps down.

T-Mobile is in second place, and would be in a very close second position if they had phones available right now to take advantage of their HSPA+ network. HSPA+ can deliver a theoretical 42 Mbps down, compared to a theoretical 52 Mbps down for Verizon's LTE. The problem is that you can't yet get a phone that will take full advantage of T-Mobile's HSPA+ speeds. The best you can get is 7-8 Mbps down with a top end 4G phone like the Sensation. Such phones will probably be available in a few months, at which time T-Mobile's speeds will be practically as fast as Verizon's.

Sprint has WiMaxl, which doesn't do as well. And AT&T will eventually be coming out with LTE as fast as Verizon's LTE, but it will take them a long time to deploy it due to lack of bandwidth.

I stream internet radio stations to my *3G* phone all the time and have little trouble, even though the best download speeds I can get are a little over 4 Mbps down. In other words, any 4G phone on any of the carriers ought to deliver enough speed to stream internet radio.

 

[colnago]

An issuse you may want to be aware of is the amount of data that streaming internet audio will use, and your daya limits. Even though a plan is "unlimited", I believe speeds are reduced to Edge rates once a limit is breeched.

 

[archer75]

An issuse you may want to be aware of is the amount of data that streaming internet audio will use, and your daya limits. Even though a plan is "unlimited", I believe speeds are reduced to Edge rates once a limit is breeched.

Yes, i've already checked into that. 200mb gets about 4.5 hours of streaming on pandora. So a 2gb plan will be plenty for my needs.

 

[doxiemomma87]

I live in Sandy and mine has never had an issue streaming pandora. I drive from Sandy to Clackamas,Portland,Gresham...Never had an issue with it streaming pandora. But now that im on limited data plan I dont use Pandora much. Unless im in a wifi zone. But when I had the unlimited data it worked fine. One thing I didnt like about verizon was there was always some kind of hidden fees attatched to my bill every couple of months. Almost like they make up fees to charge or something. But that was a few years ago. Since then ive been on tmobile. Ive had to go in a few times for tech issues. But anytime they tell me they are going to charge me I just insist and refuse to pay. It worked lol.