Cell Phone Service

[ceo_of_the_sofa]

Verizon: great service and coverage (US) but crappy phones and data plans.

 

[CA1900]

its your blackberry with the poor audio quality, not ATT (particularly with the new UMTS/HSDPA "3G" service).

Well, I've used several of their other phone offerings, and while they were all better than the Blackberry, none sounded as clear as my LG on Verizon. Further, my brother's been using them for about 8 years, with half a dozen different phones, and the quality talking to him (even through a landline on my end) has been consistently awful.

The biggest thing that affects the calls is dropouts, which is more common with AT&T's GSM than the CDMA technology used by Verizon and Sprint. A CDMA phone will maintain a connection with several towers simultaneously, and repeat the same signal through all of them. If one signal drops out or has errors, that portion is simply ignored, and the call stays crystal-clear with the signal from the other towers. GSM cannot do this; you're limited by the technology to one tower at a time. And if that tower malfunctions during a hand-off, the call drops -- with CDMA, the call continues on the other towers in range.

Sidenote: Europe went with GSM because of a political mandate, not because it was the best technology. One standard was picked and mandated because they wanted all of the EU using the same protocol. But rather than letting the marketplace dictate the winner based on performance and customer preference, one was picked arbitrarily and it because the legally-required standard.

What if Congress had done that in the U.S. with the VHS vs. Beta wars, and declared Beta the only legal video recording format? Or made MS-DOS the only authorized operating system for computers? Competition is what drives technological innovation; legislating a format to the exclusion of all others is a mistake that stifles innovation.

 

[Americam]

Verizon gives 25% discount as well. Education and airline.

 

[Mr Wu]

A guy in our crashpad had cingular. He did a tdy in BKW for a month and cingular dropped him as a customer. Said he used too many roaming minutes. He had a nationwide plan with free roaming.

 

[John Pennekamp]

I was with the original AT&T when they were bought by Cingular. I've found that the phones used to be great, and you will get a minimum level of coverage everywhere you go (from the desert, to the mountains to the islands and everything in between), but you DO get a lot of dropped calls or "call fail" messages. An interesting side note is that with the old AT&T merged with Cingular, the coverage level doubled. Now that my phone says "at&t" again, my reception has gone down. My wife's phone is identical to mine, but for some reason it still says Cingular and she'll put her phone next to mine and have 3 bars when I have none. I can't explain this.

The Cingular/at&t plans offer a decent amount of minutes and while not as cheap as Sprint/Nextel (stay far,far away, get to that later) they do offer discounts. We can get an ALPA member discount. With Cingulat/at&t you can get a boatload of anytime minutes, plus free mobile to mobile and free evenings/weekends. The nice thing about m2m is that if most of the people you call have Cingular you will rarely use your anytime minutes. And your minutes roll over for a year if you don't use them. I don't think Verizon has that.

The problem with Cingular (now "The New AT&T") is that they DO NOT care about their customers. In my 8 years with AT&T/Cingular/at&t I have been told at least three times (quote) "We don't care if you switch to another carrier. We make our money be signing new customers and as the world's largest telephone company, you are just one of hundreds of millions of customers". This is what I encountered when I called with legitimate problems, like service interruptions, unresolved billing errors, etc. My wife was told this by the "New" at&t last month, so apparently Mother Bell is back. And Cingular no longer offers perks. With the "old" AT&T you could get a new phone every two years for free as a longtime customer bonus. Now you must buy all new phones, and their new phones are crap.

As for Sprint Nextel, their network is inferior unless you mostly stay in your coverage area. I hear nothing but complaints from pilots and FAs who went for Sprint because they were cheap. The problem is that unless you spend most of your time in large cities, you won't have coverage a lot of the time. The reception alson tends to suck unless you're in a large city, and the phones are really cheesy. You truly get what you pay for. As for Nextel my wife used to have Nextel and in addition to the network limitations, the direct connect, while convenient, wasn't always practical or used as much as expected. And it's very expensive. Regarding coverage, I COULD NOT call her on any weekday between 3 and 6 pm when she was in ATL because I always got a "trying to locate the wireless customer" message then her voicemail. The network was simply overloaded and I couldn't get through. She also got hosed by them once, because she dropped down her minutes, and they signed her up for another two year contract, but didn't make that clear. When she tried to switch to Cingular a year after she thought her contract ended, they hit her up for a $299 cancellation fee, and threatened to go to collections. They calimed that the fine print agreement they sent explained it, so they didn't have to, she "should have known that would result in a contract extension".

She switched to Cingular so that we could use the m2m since most of her friends and I had Cingular. We've considered switching to Verizon just to get away from at&t's take it or leave it customer service, but we're stuck because the m2m requires us to have about 1/2 the minutes we'd need with Verizon since all of our people have Cingular. So the m2m is a good strategy for them I guess.

I guess the bottom line is look at who you call most. If they have Verizon, go with them. If they have Cingular, go with them. Stay away from Sprint/Nextel.

 

[Brasilia Flyer]

Sprint now lets you roam off Verizon towers for free

You sure about that? Verizon is CDMA and I believe Sprint is GSM. Those two aren't compatible, are they?

 

[CrownandCoke]

I've had Verizon for 5 years. Many times have had a Captain with Sprint ask me to call the hotel because they don't get service. Also, the 25% discount can work with Verizon. Just tell them that you are getting a better offer from Sprint, and they will give it to you.

Their customer service is the best out of all the companies as well.

 

[Brasilia Flyer]

Verizon Wireless

Another vote here for Verizon. Never had a coverage problem. Ever. Their customer service is top notch also. Once, I called to ask about their family plan. I didn't sign up for anything, but the lady gave me a $50 credit anyway just in case I joined the family plan, to cover the cost of an upgraded phone.

I usually have the warm fuzzies after talking to those folks!

Also, if you do sign up, I love that Krazr K1M. Best phone I ever had.

 

[John Pennekamp]

You sure about that? Verizon is CDMA and I believe Sprint is GSM. Those two aren't compatible, are they?

Sprint/Nextel is CDMA. Cingular at&t is GSM. They chose GSM so they could brag that the phones work worldwide (if you can afford it).

I have a friend who works at the previous Bell South. She told me that when at&t came back in they threw out the industry leading policies and rolled the company back 30 years. They they put the "Death Star" on the top of the building. Sad, but predictable. And empire is resurected.

 

[CA1900]

You sure about that? Verizon is CDMA and I believe Sprint is GSM. Those two aren't compatible, are they?

The two technologies aren't, but Sprint is CDMA, as is Alltel, and there are roaming agreements between both of them and Verizon

Cingular/AT&T and T-Mobile are the big GSM carriers in the US.

 

[sweptback]

I guess the bottom line is look at who you call most. If they have Verizon, go with them. If they have Cingular, go with them. Stay away from Sprint/Nextel.

Bingo... that's the best advice. Having the best network in the world doesn't matter if you have to burn tons of minutes when you call your wife or family.

I've had Cingular forever. I agree that they don't care about you as a customer, but really what company does anymore? I've only had to call tech support a few times and they weren't much help, but they were at least nice. The rollover minutes help, although I just end up with a bank of 1000 of them or something. The coverage is fine -- I've never not had a signal, although there have been several times where the network is overloaded. I just wait a few minutes and then the call goes through.

One thing I'd recommend is to avoid the two-year contract. At least with Cingular (I assume with others as well), you can pay $50 more for the phone and only get a one-year contract. I've done that plenty of times. That way if you're phone breaks after 15 months, you're not stuck paying full price for a new phone. Avoid insurance too, as it's a ripoff. For the first year your phone is covered by the manufacturer's warranty, and after that you're on borrowed time anyway. You have to pay $50 to get a new phone under the insurance anyway (on top of everything you've paid every month), so why not just pay that up front and buy a new phone when it comes time?

 

[atlcrjdriver]

I've had cingular (the new ATT) for years up and down the east coast/mid west/Canada/Mexico/P.R. and the service has been great. Even in those whole in the wall towns you've probably never heard of. They also give airline employee discounts to union members:

www.unionplus.com

Computers and Tech banner

 

[purduej]

If you want a good phone cheap without having to sign the huge contract, try buying the phone on eBay. Quite a bit cheaper if you get a refurbed model. For GSM phones it's even better since all you do is swap SIM cards.

As for service, prior to moving to Chicago I had no problems with my service. This city is absolutely horrible for reception, I drop almost every call and frequently can't get a signal. Out at the airport there are no problems, but as soon as you get into one of the biggest cities in the US, there's no coverage. It's a known problem with Sprint. If you're staying domestic + Mexico and Canada, go with Verizon. Otherwise T-Mobile is supposed to be very good.

 

[tomgoodman]

Worth waiting for?

Apple is about to unveil the iphone (Cingular), which may cost $500 or thereabouts. It MIGHT just be that "all-in-one" device that has not yet appeared. http://www.apple.com/iphone/

 

[navigator72]

Cingular/ATT sucks, I have more dropped calls than I have ever had. I can understand if I am hiking in northern Maine but in Portland (Maine's largest city) It's ridiculous, the lousy signal I get. From the sounds of things, Verizon is the way to go.