T-mobile coverage is awful in West Virginia.

Cell towers are not cheap! They are expensive to build and maintain
and usually require all sorts of local permits which are getting
harder and harder to get. It's also not cheap to get roaming
agreements with other carriers. The company has to balance the
revenue it might generate against the cost. It may be that there are
just not enough T-Mobile customers to warrant the cost.

In my county, they shot down new towers being built by T-Mobile and
Sprint. As a result, our T-Mobile coverage is practically zilch and
on our North Shore, Sprint is poor at best.

T-Mobile has always lacked coverage in ex-urban areas. In Georgia,
they have virtually no native coverage in most of the southern portion
of the state, and very little roaming on AT&T. Can't count how many
times my phone said "emergency calls only" when it would stray onto an
AT&T cellsite but no T-Mo signal far and wide.

Bottom line is the PCS band carriers suck in smaller towns and
especially in between. T-Mobile limits their roaming onto other
carriers which keeps their service cheaper than other national
carriers, but if you want solid coast-to-coast coverage, Verizon and
AT&T are the only two real choices, and well, Sprint if you can put up
with atrocious customer service.

sorry to say this is very true your better off with at&t i used to be
a tech support rep for tmobile

I recall reading a while back that T-Mobile no longer has a roaming
agreement with AT&T. That means their coverage area is even worse than
before. As for putting up more towers, that is not as easy as you
might think. It requires permission of the local government and
citizens as well as a location to put it. It is also not cheap for
them to put up a new tower. I recently looked into switching to
T-Mobile and was very disappointed with their coverage area.

Apparently people are not reading the OP

If you read the Op's original letter he cant get service unless
roaming. The people that have replied have seemed to miss that one
small detail.

That is too expensive, my suggestion was to cancel the service.


Good Day

"Cancel the cell phone, this way you can focus more on your studies
and have some extra money."

This, as well as LadyMac's, response was to THIS. You were saying
that cell phones distract from studies (maybe, but you don't know the
OP's family, so you cannot say).

As for the original letter, the issue is that the OP has gone with a
provider that charges for roaming. Not all do. For example, Sprint
does not charge for roaming voice or data. There are some limits, but
they are reasonable for most customers.

For someone that's a heavy roaming user, it would make financial sense
to go with a someone that provides local service. Sounds like AT&T
does.

This letter is purely about letter a company know that there is market
for their services in this particular town. The company can then
decide if it's worth it to them. If not, then the consumer can switch
to another provider that works better.

Ta da!