For the past month, I was trying out T-Mobile’s 5G network trial on my Galaxy S25 Ultra. There was no catch (you just sign up from their T-Life app; the existing phone has to already have a working plan from another carrier), no credit card info to put in, no constant prodding for your feedback that got in the way of just being able to use it.
I had in the past been a T-Mobile customer (I set that up prepaid and maintained it even while living outside the country). John Legere was the outspoken CEO at the time (2012-2020) and championed the “contract-free” aspect which most other carriers balked at. I also remember how 4G was a miss for their network (but was good enough for whenever I returned).
I eventually ended up switching to Verizon (since from around 2016, I was spending a lot more time back in the states for personal/family reasons) because of the numerous data/security breaches (I had at least 5-6 years of those free but “useless” identify theft and credit monitoring services as part of the settlement). Anyway, their acquisition/merger with Sprint (announced in 2018 and completed in 2020) ended up netting them some key frequency bands which allowed them to build out their 5G network (for both coverage and speed) where the results are pretty impressive.
The first two speed tests on January 16th are from that T-Mobile 5G trial. I kept the phone off of Wi-Fi and solely on their network for the entire 30 days and used over 285GB; over 75GB of that was just uploading videos. The third and fourth (on February 17th) tests are for the Verizon line. The most recent (February 19th) is for Mint Mobile (which is an MVNO that runs on T-Mobile’s 5G network). Like all MVNO’s, their network is subject to deprioritization during times of peak network congestion (the primary carriers get priority). Additionally, over 50GB of usage in the month could result in bandwidth throttling during periods of network congestion (the equivalent T-Mobile service does not have that restriction).
Yes, I ended up eventually signing up for a “backup” plan with Mint Mobile (Unlimited) paying only $15/month for the first year (50% discount). The only catch is this needs to be paid in advance (thus $180 plus local taxes). After the first year, it is $30/month when paid in advance for the entire year. It has a much smaller monthly allotment for mobile hotspot data (20GB) but you can purchase additional data for that if needed. For myself, this isn’t an issue since the only time I use the hotspot/tethering is in case my main wired connection goes down.
Now I did try to signup on a T-Mobile prepaid plan (after the trial ended) for nearly the same service level that I have with Verizon (and now Mint Mobile) at $45/month (slightly better with the mobile hotspot being unlimited 3G after the initial 50GB of premium 5G is used up) using both their “trial ending” and “trial switch” message links their system sent. But I kept running into this error from their backend at the very end while checking out; that the “customer information cannot be verified and the order is cancelled” (I tried at least 4 times using different credit cards/different addresses as well). I remembered from the past, how disconnected their prepaid order and payment flow was (that situation still exists because all of their post-trial links would only work on the postpaid side of their site). This isn’t unique to T-Mobile; the same issues exist with AT&T and Verizon.
I then tried signing up on a regular postpaid but non-contract plan ($50/month) and ended up hitting another wall; their system kept telling me that my S25 Ultra was locked. I then tried it in the T-Life application with the same result. Remember, this is supposed to be an easy/seamless/frictionless process from that trial. But I already knew by this point that this was a backend database issue (only fixable by going into a store since even calling would be a headache unless you got an experienced support representative who knew what to do).
Doing a quick search, I found that this error (customer info can’t be verified) has been an ongoing thing for several years. This shouldn’t even be happening on the prepaid side (unlike the postpaid side which has other order flows to do with things like credit checks). I’d already wasted close to 2 hours by this point (going through the ordering process and re-entering IMEI, the user and billing/payment information) and was well beyond all of the “as little as 15 minutes to complete” verbiage. Some of this is probably to do with flags set when using this trial (saying the phone is now locked is an egregious error though that shouldn’t even be happening when you just came off a trial that required an unlocked device).
I then tried signing up for an AT&T prepaid unlimited plan ($45/month) and everything seemed to go smoothly (my phone was definitely not locked) as I was able to enter my IMEI and to check out fine. The next part however with the e-mail verification (receiving the code to finalize the account setup) didn’t work because I never received the e-mail verification info (double checked the spam inbox as well after trying several resend attempts). I tried using the forgot username and forgot password options but their system could not find that info. At that point, I also hadn’t received any sort of order confirmation via e-mail. The order status on the website at the time was still pending (I saved the web URL link for my order status). I went to bed at this point.
Next morning, I finally see an e-mail with my order confirmation stating the service has been activated and refreshing the URL also displayed on their site that it had been activated along with the new number and a link to get my eSIM (but there was still no verification e-mail with the code to finish setting up my prepaid account). I followed the steps to setup the actual service (which takes me to the page with an activation code that I then enter which gives me the QR code to scan for my eSIM. My phone proceeds to add it and all looks fine until I try and test it out (after restarting my phone).
AT&T (disappointingly) showed only 4G/LTE service and when I tried the network, there was no connectivity. Similarly, attempting to place a call (or trying to call the new number) also didn’t work (seemed like the service wasn’t actually provisioned properly).
And here is the crazy part for AT&T; I received their welcome text messages (the ones you always get after setting up/activating the SIM/eSIM) so I knew that at least that part was working. Just as I was about ready to call customer support, I received a text message from my credit card issuer where it had flagged the AT&T transaction as possibly fraudulent activity (face palm). It looks like the AT&T billing side tried to put the charge for my service through at the point that I added the eSIM to my phone (like what?)
I logged into my bank and only saw the pending transaction for the eSIM ($1.37) but no actual charge for the first month of service which likely meant the actual transaction had been cancelled (normally those transactions will remain if the merchant side had not cancelled it to allow manually flagging them as valid/invalid transactions). I tried again to see if I could reset the account info for AT&T (just so that I could check to see if there was any status info there) but every method I tried, it was clear that this part of the setup had failed.
Their billing system knew that same e-mail address to send the order confirmation info but their account management had no record of that e-mail address to do a password reset. Nor was this assigned mobile phone number useful since it wasn’t fully provisioned for service due to the charge not going through (and I couldn’t use that number to try a reset). If this sounds like a mess, it is. Prepaid accounts tend to have this catch-22 where you often times aren’t able to log into your account (since that number ends up deactivating) until you refill a balance on the account/pay that bill as a guest.
In hindsight, their system should’ve never sent out those successful activation/assigned number messages/email either (because the actual charge did not go through with my card). I should’ve actually gotten a message that there was a problem with my order because the charge didn’t go through and that I should check with my bank. I just shook my head (because this highlights just how terribly designed these systems are in 2026).
Verizon’s prepaid and postpaid sites don’t even work well together for similar reasons (the differences ordering flow between the two) BUT I never had this much issues signing up for prepaid service with them (3 times easily in under 10 minutes with no issues). All I wanted here was a quick signup with a different provider for a backup (and it was turning into hours of wasted time). I checked later in the afternoon just to see if AT&T would send me a message about the failed billing but it was ZILCH.
This is why I do prepaid. No lock in. If you don’t pay, no service. If things screw up like this where the billing fails at the start, I just walk away versus wasting potentially more time. When you are running into this much glitches just trying to initiate service, I can only imagine what a mess there must be if your billing gets messed up for the next cycle once you are reliant on that service. I just took this as another sign that neither AT&T and T-Mobile wanting my money (and if things are going this awry, maybe it’s wisely telling me to stay away).
This is when I decided to give Mint Mobile a try (nothing to lose). Myself, I wouldn’t rely on an MVNO being my primary mobile service. But I wanted a backup and well, having that wide bandwidth available (and at 50% off for the first year), was worth a try. After reading a bunch of feedback from many previously longtime T-Mobile customers who switched (for the much lower pricing), I decided not to even bother trying the 3-month unlimited and just went all in with the 12-month. Signup and service provisioning went smoothly in less than 15 minutes (how it should be). No frills for sure but everything just worked.
I know this will sound insane, but I currently now have 4 smart phones (iPhone 14, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro, and S25 Ultra) with 5 total lines + unlimited service for under $130/month (one of the other lines is on a different MVNO running on Verizon’s network that is free for the next year – it’s simply a free burner number that I will cancel before that free year is up). Also after thinking about it, I plan on putting my Apple Watch Ultra 3 onto Verizon’s $10/month plan (they began offering this for prepaid accounts) just so that it doesn’t have to rely on an iPhone for connectivity.
With the Galaxy S26 line slated for release at next weeks Unpacked event, I might be picking up the S26 Ultra (the S25 will become my travel/burner style phone along with the iPhone 15 Pro) and am unsure what service I will sign up for once that S25 becomes a backup. Given the above, I might just do Mint Mobile as well.
