My 2-yr-old phone did this a few weeks ago, twice on 2 different days. T-Mobile network. The first time I got a person on the phone who had me manually enter in the location of the nearest cell tower, but it didn’t help. Both times I just had to wait it out and the next day it worked again. I didn’t know about the cold reboot mentioned above. Everything’s been fine since, and I have no idea what was going on. I’m in a large city with good coverage.
I tried the cold reboot several times this morning, and it didn’t help. What helped was driving to the other side of town.
@ParallelLines is there a website with a map that shows T-Mobile cell towers?
I don’t have the tools I did as an employee, but this is what I use to troubleshoot for friends and family
I pre-loaded it for T-Mobile, and you can check band by band for what tower and frequencies are available in your area.
T-Mobile’s website shows customer-facing estimated coverage, but doesn’t show the towers themselves or ‘known issues’ like the internal facing stuff did.
Thanks!
The saga continues: the phone worked fine at home all day. About an hour ago, I rebooted it because my hearing aids did not want to connect and that usually facilitates. (Bluetooth) When the phone booted up- NO SERVICE! 
In the interest of science, I got in the car and drove way out to the Episcopal church, wishing to recreate the conditions of this morning. Sure enough, when I got about half a mile away, I have service. I may have rebooted-- I don’t remember.
Therefore, I think you are correct about the towers.
Would it be worthwhile to call T-Mobile in the morning? I don’t relish the idea of spending an hour (at least) on the phone re-telling my story over and over until I get to someone who knows something. What would be the best way to describe my problem in CSR-speak?
I just looked at that link-- whoa! VERY interesting! What do the band numbers mean, e.g., 2, 12, 66, 71?
What does it mean that some are red and some are green?
Bands are shorthand for frequencies used by different carriers and devices, the red and green depends on what you’re looking at, can be signal, can be verified vs unverified towers, etc. The legend is your friend!
Contact options that will probably be easier -
- Call and use the option to request a callback (so you’re not on hold forever)
- Log into the website or T-Mobile’s app and do the online chat (you’ll do a minor tech support flow in general and then get transferred to an agent)
- Login into Facebook or Twitter and send a message, they at least used to have a dedicated team (I subbed for them) that did support via Private/Direct Message, but don’t have confirmation of this anymore as I don’t use either).
As for what to say, I’d go with something like “I have an intermittent ‘no service’ error, after consulting with your website, I followed the flow (the one I linked earlier)”
They should basically confirm all the steps, you’ll want to provide the # of times it’s occurred and the dates/times if possible. They’ll almost certainly mention that the support they can provide is limited because the BYOD issues I mentioned earlier. But they should be able to tell you at least yes/no if the towers in your area have been having issues, or if there’s any frequency migration going on.
I didn’t see a legend on the page. Maybe because I’m non-kosher?
Thank you for the properly worded question. If I call, I’ll report back.
(Not on Facebook.)
Thanks ever so!
You’re very welcome. I really liked doing tech support, I left when they forcibly combined us with customer service and added a monthly sales metric. 
As for the legend, it’s in the lower left hand corner of the left sidebar if you scroll down. You may have to move to the left depending on the screen you’re using. And I shouldn’t have been snippy about it, I’m used to the page, so of course -I- know where it is. [ rolls eyes at self ].
OUCH! Don’t do that. You could turn your head inside out.
I do see the legend after scrolling down the column on the left. Okay, what’s a “verified tower” v. an “unverified tower”? Verified by whom?
I am in the middle of an area with few nearby towers.
I love this chart. I love maps and charts. Always have-- atlases, road maps, especially topographical maps. If they had had Google Earth when I was a kid, I’d never have left my computer. Not that there were personal computers when I was a kid… Hell, there were barely mainframe computers.
Since the site and it’s information is crowdsourced, the sit (and app) are a bit unpolished. So you have to go digging in the FAQ which is… not user friendly, but should have all the details you’ll want when you’re digging through the maps.
On map, we show towers red pointer or green. Red tower means it’s automatic located using uploaded data from our app. Green means it’s manually located by someone of users. You see user’s on map on box “Extra Data”.
It has a metric ton of FAQ and details when you dig down, but again, you have to somewhat intuit the right question to get the answer.
As for rolling my eyes, have you seen my cartoon avatar? I can roll those bad boys like a muppet!
Soooooo, when you lost service, were there any strange clouds or aerial phenomenon in the area? Bright unexplained lights? Did you lose consciousness or not recall the passage of time? Any animal mutilations? Dogs and cats acting strangely? Unearthly noises, chanting, howling?
Funny you should ask… ALL of those things! 
I’m thinking it might be law enforcement types cruising the 'hood with a Stingray device.
That makes sense. Well, as much sense as anything else.
It may be time to switch carriers. I’d ask Consumer Cellular if they support the phone.
They use AT&T towers in most areas.
I’ve had good success with them. They do require 4g or 5g phones. Same as AT&T.
Since this thread has been pinged, I’ll tell the astonishing story of the happy ending.
Last week, I woke up one morning and had “No service.” I got in my car and drove to the church parking lot (even though it wasn’t Sunday) because I knew I could get service there. Sure enough, as soon as I pulled into my parking space, there was “T-Mobile” on my screen.
I drove back home loaded for bear. I’m gonna get to the bottom of this if I have to spend all day on the phone with someone!
I called T-Mobile when I got home and told my story to the first CSR I encountered. She figured out pretty quickly that my problem was something she couldn’t help me with and transferred me up one level. (“Here we go,” I thought.)
But here’s where the plot takes a twist. The second CSR by the name of Wendy, grasped immediately what my problem was. She had me go into the system settings on the phone and read her some numbers (IMEI and a couple of other things). She did some stuff at her end-- this took about 10 minutes-- and then said, “Reboot your phone and I will call you back.” EEK! Rebooting the phone had inevitably led to “no service,” and, given my past experience with CSRs at various cell phone carriers, I lacked faith in Wendy. However, I did what she said, and miraculously, the phone rebooted to “T-Mobile,” and she called me back!! I gushed and beamed (which, of course, she couldn’t see) and heaped thanks and praise on her head. And gave her all 10s in the survey that followed.
This was the most satisfactory encounter I have ever had with a cell phone CSR. Usually, I have to tell my story many times before I’m allowed to speak to a high-enough level tech who might help me. But, frankly, most of the time, they can’t.
My phone has been connected and fine ever since Wendy worked her magic. I can reboot without a care in the world. The end.
-fingers crossed-
Wendy was probably in the group that I worked in, before they switched us to customer service and forced us to reapply for actual tech support jobs. We had a lot looser call time metrics and yes, we would schedule and make call backs just like she did. And trust me, she appreciates those 10s, another major metric.
If I had to guess based on your side of things, she may have done an ‘over-the-air’ carrier update. This is something we had in my time, but it was… more likely than less to fail - pretty much a phone specific software update for non-tmobile phones that included corrected carrier connectivity information. I mean, I could send the email with all the direct settings, but typing it all by hand when a single misplaced character would cause part or all of the services to fail was a nightmare.
I assume that’s what it was because of them going to IMEI would be needed to get the exact sub-model and thus the correct software package. But this is just an educated guess.
Most of all, happy working phone!
I’m sure if I had gotten you, you’d have fixed my problem immediately! 
I don’t know the techie side of it, but this fits my gut feeling. When she had me go a couple of levels down into the settings, it seems to me there was no network listed… or else it just said “T-Mobile,” but afterwards it said, “T-Mobile - USA”-- does that make sense?
And when I said my phone was a BlackBerry Key2, she didn’t freak out or make a dismissive sound/comment. At that point I started to have a very good feeling about the call.
I’m a very happy camper.
Thanks for all of your helpful and understanding comments. 
Yep, sounds like my guess is likely on target. Now… being the debbie downer I am, there is the possibility that the phone burps at some point in the future and drops back to it’s original, non T-Mobile settings, and the problem may re-occur. So I’ll link this juuuuuust in case (and Wendy may have offered to sent you a text/email with this link because a) it’s a good idea and b) it was a +1 from management)
This is what your APN info should look like. As you can see, if you have to manually type in all of that correctly (especially the MMSC) it can be a nightmare. But you have it. This way if it happens again, you can check and see if your phone dropped the settings, and if so, fix it if you want or if a Team of Experts member isn’t available.
NOTE - this is not the only possible place that the carrier settings can bork, but the one that most frequently did. Especially with VOLTE being the main call carrier option these days.
Wow. You are The Bomb. Thank you so much.
I would absolutely expect this to happen again. Frankly, I’m surprised that techie stuff mostly works as consistently as it does.