How's Your Cell Service?

Coldeagle writes "Well for those of us who are fed up with your current leash...Cellular phone providers... Here is an interesting article on various US cell phone providers and how their service adds up."

Comments

Check!

[vladid]

Can you hear me now??


GOOD!

Re:Check!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, your call seems to have been dropped by my provider, t-mobile, again...

(*sigh*)

I don't have a cell phone.

[Black Parrot]

You insensitive clod!

Re:I don't have a cell phone.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can have mine! Count yourself lucky.

Re:I don't have a cell phone.

[dnoyeb]

I bought a phone and had it for 3 years back in '92. contract was 2 years. Then I decided to upgrade, so I got a new 2 year contract with a new phone. 2 days later phone was stolen. They made me pay out the rest of the contract even without the phone, and would not give me a deal on a new phone. They wanted like $500 for a cheap ass motorola botom of the line phone.

From then on I quit Ameritech. Screw them. I just tought me I could live without a phone, and I have for 8 years running now...

I got one for my wife though. Married folks know how it is. Nice to to have your wife tethered, but not quite as nice to be tethered yourself.

Re:I don't have a cell phone.

[Alan Partridge]

"Nice to to have your wife tethered, but not quite as nice to be tethered yourself."

What a fucking prick you are.

Re:I don't have a cell phone.

[MikeVx]

They made me pay out the rest of the contract even without the phone, and would not give me a deal on a new phone.

I'd be rather surprised if any carrier behaved differently on that point. The purpose of the two-year contract is to 'repay' them in service for supplementing the cost of the phone. Most 'deals' on a phone are the carrier eating the cost of phone up front and getting it back from you over time. Get the insurance if you can't risk the phone going missing.

For good customer relations, some carriers will let you out of a contract if you move to an area where they do not offer service. Generally this has to be at least six months later, though, or you risk being thought of as suckering them.

Re:I don't have a cell phone.

[Steve B]

Nice to to have your wife tethered, but not quite as nice to be tethered yourself.

TMI, dude....

Re:I don't have a cell phone.

[dnaSpyDir]

i think you have yer sig backwards...

"run from the president mr. powell!"

How's My Cell Service?

[Anonymous Coward]

Overpriced...

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[DecimalThree]

I have to wonder if the survey was biased. Their listed "best" provider has been among my worst in terms of experience. I can say that and not be biased; I work for them!

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Overpriced

You must be American. Over here (UK) t-mobile gives you 750mins a month of free offpeak calls to land lines and other t-mobiles. Wap access is included in the free time. And 50 text messages. All for 13.99.

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[ZaMoose]

Few people seem to realize that many cell phone companies, in the interest of retaining subscribers will actually do quite a bit. Give your company's service desk a call. Explain that you think you're paying too much and ask the service rep if there's anything they can do to help you.

Since cell phone companies' service plans seem to change all the time, you can usually luck out and get them to change you to more minutes for less money than you're paying now.

Try it some time. If you can stand wading through the 7 layers of Phone Menu Purgatory, you may just be pleasantly surprised.

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[whatch durrin]

I had a 2 year contract with Sprint. At the end of the contract, I called them and asked if they could offer me any incentives to stay with them.

I was basically told no.

Funny, I thought the biggest profit for cell phone companies was retention of customers.

I changed to T-Mobile and have been happy so far.

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[Chelloveck]

Funny, I thought the biggest profit for cell phone companies was retention of customers.

It is, but only because they're not giving incentives to the retained customers. The extra profit comes from the existing customers paying full rate (and probably on an older, more expensive plan) whereas the new customers get XX months or YY minutes discounted. Give the existing customers a discount and they're no longer a profit center.

Which is why phone providers are so vehemently opposed to number portability. The current pricing structures try to get as many new customers as possible, and try to wring as much money as possible from the existing customers. The only incentive there is for people to continue with one provider is that they'd have to get a new number if they switched. Enter number portability and you get to take your number with you to any provider. Now there's absolutely no reason not to jump to a new provider for the incentives every year or two.

Of course, any provider with a sensible pricing policy has nothing to fear. Call me when you find one...

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[whatch durrin]

True, but aren't there also some initial costs to get a new customer signed up and on the network?

Besides, they should realize that even if they aren't making as much money from you if they offer you an incentive (vs. you just staying with them as-is), the loyalty they will gain is worth much more.

We can only hope number portability will help alleviate some of these issues.

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be American. Over here (UK) t-mobile gives you 750mins a month of free offpeak calls to land lines and other t-mobiles. Wap access is included in the free time. And 50 text messages. All for 13.99.

Ummm.. that doesn't sound like a very good offer.

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[arkane1234]

I was told the same thing when my contract ended with AT&T. I was paying 25 cents a minute peak time (way back when...) and when my contract ended alot of other places were offering >10 cents a minute peak time fee.
I figured I'd give them a ring, and when I did they said their rates have actually gone up, and since my contract ended with the old rate I'd have a new, higher rate with my new contract.
Obviously I tossed the phone in the trash and didn't continue service....

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[arkane1234]

that should have been less than 10 cents...
need my coffee for the morning.

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[AKnightCowboy]

Give your company's service desk a call. Explain that you think you're paying too much and ask the service rep if there's anything they can do to help you.

I just did. They laughed, said no, and hung up. I think Dogbert runs my cell phone company. :-(

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[darkmeridian]

After my contract expired, I called Sprint to cancel because I got a phone from Nextel because of their free incoming minutes plan. Sprint then offered me that service for free.

Of course, I had already signed with Nextel. But Sprint never offered free incoming anywhere before.

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would, but I have Sprint, and Claire doesn't understand my voice, let alone requests like that.

Also, Sprint charges $2 to talk to a representative. I found that out when I had an odd billing charge of $1.50 (talk about irony).

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[Cramer]

The opposition to number portability is mostly because of the technical problems with actually doing it. Image if number portability were applied to IP addresses... That's the exact same mess LNP creates. LNP updates can (and usually do) take days.

Please remember the age and size of the devices at the core of the PSTN. This isn't a network of state-of-the-art Cisco 12000's with TB's of RAM. Phone switches have extremely simple brains with less RAM than most modern hard drives. No telecom is going to rip out their existing 30+ year investment in Lucent/AT&T/Nortel equipment for modern, new (read: unproven) technologies -- which do exist. (For starters, no one has the money to do it and stay in business.)

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[Cramer]

Setup costs are a very small drop in the bucket. Get the phone's ID code and assign it a phone number (or put a pre-programmed SIM in it.)

It's only slightly more complicated than assigning an IP address for a cablemodem... punch the MAC address into your DHCP server and off you go.

How long does it take to activate a DSS receiver? A few minutes for a new customer and seconds for an existing customer (in fact, existing customers can activate it themselves either by phone or web.)

Re:How's MY cell service?

[Stalus]

I had a similar experience with the telco in New York, when I spent a summer up there. It took about a month (maybe more) to get a phone because they had to run new lines. And then once it was up, if I didn't pick up before the third ring, the line died, so my answering machine never picked up. Sprint's been pretty good to me for signal in Austin and on the road, but they're starting to get on my nerves between the lack of info about the T608 and also their reinterpretations of 'unlimited data'.

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[Sammich]

Yea that is unless you get a company that keeps double billing you "by accident" and wants you to RE -SIGN a new contract just to change anything on your plan. No thanks, the reason I wanted to change plan was because I was tired of paying too much and wanted to see if you could offer something better/work with me, not basically tell me to screw off or redidicate, and end up screwed for another 12/24 mos.

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[David Gould]

Funny, I thought the biggest profit for cell phone companies was retention of customers.

From what I've seen, their biggest profit must be from contract-termination. Seeing as those highwaymen charge you the full base-rate for the remainder of the contract term if you cancel early, the real money must be coming from the young girls [*1] (for values of "young" including not just teenagers, but up into the early/mid 20s) who don't know anything about money and sign up only to cancel it three months later. They'd probably rather not keep you as a customer -- then they'd have to actually provide you with a service, instead of just taking your money for nothing.

I thought one year was bad when I first got mine, but now I guess it's two, and aren't some of them asking for -- Dear Lord -- THREE years? At ~$40/month, that's almost $1500 that you're committing to pay, whether you stay with the service or not! It's pure piracy.

--
[1] Is it still sexist if it's based on true personal observations? I know several girls, ~24 years old, who've done this, some of them more than once in just a few months.

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[Detritus]

The phone companies have been doing number translation for 800 numbers for years. How hard is it to map a logical phone number to a physical phone number?

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[BlankTim]

Heh!
I yell at Claire all the time. That bitch hates me, I swear.

Try this the next time.
Tell her to "Bite My Crank" (or any other expletive such as F U Bit).
You'll get a LIVE billing rep within about 15 seconds, as opposed to saying "Billing" which leads to hold times of 5 minutes or more.

YYMV of course, but it works for me.

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[Cramer]

800#'s are handled by very different hardware: Long Distance Switches. They are designed to handle a great deal more than a local switch. And they do things much different.

LD switches have a large volume of highly fluid data to manage. This gave rise to SS7 and offloading of the database management and lookups. Local switches have only recently (relatively speaking) begun to use the same kind of SS7 infrastructure because of the size of the database(s) and the frequency of changes. All they used to need were NPANXX tables -- and those don't change everyday.

Telco switches don't run OSPF :-) Imagine trying to run the internet via static routes. Even with various databases and systems to generate the route tables, it's still a mess. And that's exactly how the telecom world works... Go wander around the Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC) website and learn how all this mess works.

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with AT&T Wireless and as far as staying with them as a continuos customer I've had no problems. My ex tried to convince me to jump ship to Verizon. Turns out her "great" deal costs more per month than I am paying. She also tried Sprint, which in Portland and Seattle the phones performed beautifully, here in Salem OR the service was horrible.
As far as service with ATTWS I'm as happy as can be. I have very few dropouts, usually in big concrete stores. And a few remote locations (no cell tower in sight) :) and I mean few. Some problems in the extreme end of Keizer, low population and far from the freeway. And a dead spot for 20 minutes on my way to the Oregon coast. Far less problems than her Verizon phone and a whole world better than the Sprint service. And it's good even in the "big cities" (ok quit snickering you LA and NYC natives) Portland and Seattle.

To get a good deal with ATTWS go to the independent and big stores (Circuit City and Best Buy), check out their deals, call ATTWSs phone number, check out their web site and check out their stores. And then start dickering with one of the reps you talk too. You'll end up with either the best deal from one of those visits or one slightly better. I think it depends on how hungry and knowledgeable the rep you are dealing with is. If you don't like the details one rep gives you, talk to another one, persistance pays dividends there. Also the pricing seems to be better at the independent stores that carry all brands of service. Also the prices are higher at the known discount stores around here, which seems odd. My best deals have been on the phone with ATTWS (another oddity, around 2-3 am, bored rep maybe?) and at the "expensive" stores.

~Mark

Interesting article but

[mjmalone]

What about taking into consideration types of services offered? I had Verizon up until about 3 months ago when I decided I wanted to upgrade my phone. I found that Verizon had no GSM network and after talking on the phone with some representitives I found there was no plan to implement one either. The phone I wanted (ericsson t68i) was a tri-band GSM phone, so I decided to switch networks. I now have T-Mobile, and I admit that their coverage is not quite as good as Verizon's, but I have found it is getting better (I was in blacksburg, Va. in June and there was no service, I went back in July and had full coverage all over town.) Also you have to take into consideration the location of the individuals being polled. Some providers have excellent service in various regions, but very poor service elsewhere.

Re:Interesting article but

[numbski]

Very true. I've used SprintPCS since 1998, and I would have sworn by them all the way up until last year. Then it seems like they started oversubscribing their network.

Well, I've moved a few times, and it seems that in some areas this network over-subscription began in 2000, combined with the fact that their newer phones didn't always get the best signal. I had an old Qualcomm 1100 and never had any issues, then I got an LG flip phone, and the signal was miserable, and a 2G phone too. Now my sanyo 4900 will get full signal right next to that LG phone that gets none....wierdness.

Some R+D and catchup work on their network would do them a world of good. I realize over-subscription is the profit ticket to a network provider, but it has to be done INTELLIGENTLY.

Re:Interesting article but

[andy1307]

after talking on the phone with some representitives I found there was no plan to implement one either.

A customer service rep told you that!!??!!

Re:Interesting article but

[TopShelf]

Another aspect that's left out, of course, is actual customer service (as opposed to merely cellular network coverage). I'm sure the majority of people with cell phones have at least one horror story - like my wife who had to cancel her AT&T Wireless phone service on 4 separate occasions before they finally stopped sending us bills...

Re:Interesting article but

[Misch]

I had Sprint back when I lived in Rochester. It was great, always had good reception (living near 2 major colleges really helps that). Now that Ive moved into a bassackwards town, I find that my apartment is in a no-sprint service zone. Even when it's plugged in, my phone shuts itself off at night because it can't find a signal anywhere, and I am constantly bombarded with the "Bloop-bleep!" of moving in and out of digital-analog ranges.

I'm dropping Sprint when my contract ends in 15 days. Verizon has a store just down the street from me. I think they'll have better service there :-)

Re:Interesting article but

[ananke]

I'm still in Blacksburg, va, and I find that verizon does indeed have the best coverage around here. [except when you get to wythvile area, that's when you get dropped to nothing].

Re:Interesting article but

[smithmc]

Also you have to take into consideration the location of the individuals being polled. Some providers have excellent service in various regions, but very poor service elsewhere.

I don't mean to sound like a shill, but I have never failed to have Verizon CDMA coverage (Motorola StarTAC) anywhere I've been in the US. Meanwhile, though, the T-Mobile phone I also have (because the Handspring Treo 180 is so cool, except for the phone itself) has really terrible, spotty coverage - but I can use it in Europe, which sometimes is a real plus. Go figure. :-/

Re:Interesting article but

[remusrm]

GSM SUCKS

Re:Interesting article but

[CaptainStormfield]

Heh. I had to call sprint several times to cancel my cell. They finally stopped charging me, but for the last year or so, I've been receiving monthly statements telling me that I don't owe them any money. I thought about calling again to get them to stop sending the damn zero balance "bills," but given how much hastle I went through to get the phone canceled . . .

Re:Interesting article but

[Gamma]

I bet if you changed handsets, you would get better coverage. The T68 series is notorious for it's poor RF performance. I had one for 3 months and went back to my old Motorola P280.

Re:Interesting article but

[kramit]

I am really tired of the fact that so many phones are tied to providers/network types.

More people chose a provider based on the phone they want, than the service they will get.

I am on a 2 year contract with Verizon. While the service is better in my area than with the GSM providers like T-Mobile, Cingular, etc (Horrid coverage in Alameda, CA), I have become really fed up with the fact that my service is HALF DUPLEX.

It makes having a phone conversating very pain full as the person you are talking to cuts out everytime there is a noise on your side of the conversation (A loud bus, fire engine, pet, etc).

One day I would like a handspring or other combo PDA, Phone, MP3 player, coffee maker, and it is obvious that I wont get that from Verizon. At least, not a good one.

I can only hope that number portability will force providers to give better service.

Re:Interesting article but

[elmegil]

Sprint PCS sucks. There's no other way around it. Here in Chicagoland, we regularly miss calls when the phone is on and shows a good signal, and of course you don't get voice mail notification until 30 minutes later if you're lucky. If I could convince my wife that she really could get a different phone with a different carrier that could still double as a pager (vibrate mode critical, she's frequently in classroom situations where a ringer would be a no-no), we'd have left Sprint months ago.

Re:Interesting article but

[uradu]

> I am really tired of the fact that so many phones
> are tied to providers/network types.

If you want to do something about that, switch to T-Mobile or any other GSM provider in your area. Even in case their service currently is worse, at least you're being proacive.

Re:Interesting article but

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me for being ignorant, but how is accepting worse service being proactive or sending the right message to cell phone providers?

Re:Interesting article but

[goldenfield]

Switch your phone to look for PCS Network Only. This will make it try harder to find PCS signals, and it'll hang on to them a bit harder once it finds it.

Re:Interesting article but

[Anonymous Coward]

T-Mobile is the worst. I am actually good friends with a lead wireless data engineer who explained that GSM will never be able to offer the quality levels of CDMA. the euros screwed us.

T-Mobile (Deutsh Telecom) seems to have spent all their cash on hiring Catherine Zeta Jones and less on infrastructure.

Re:Interesting article but

[uradu]

> how is accepting worse service being proactive

The OP was talking about interchangeable phones, something currently only GSM provides. Part of Sprint's and other proprietary networks' strategy is platform lock-in; even if someone licensed the exact same technology as Sprint (as some very well may have) you can be certain that Sprint would NOT interoperate their phones with them, other than on a roaming agreement level. While T-Mobile might have poorer coverage in some areas at the moment (which is what I was talking about regarding poor service), their trend is to improve this. With time their coverage will equal or surpass the proprietary ones, while those proprietary phones won't at the same time become less proprietary. IOW, switch to a GSM carrier if you want to send a message that you don't care for proprietary phones.

Re:Interesting article but

[rbird76]

I had Sprint about 3-4 years ago. I live in Columbus, and couldn't get any signal with a StarTac. (It dropped 70-90% of my calls.) Sprint was unhelpful and said that it was a moderate coverage area (I think I know what low coverage is). Eventually, I bought a Samsung, and got good coverage everywhere. I droppeed Sprint because I didn't use it enough and because their prices per minute were high. In addition, the only way to get help from them (when I had them) was to call and say you were activating a new phone. I called for help two different times and was placed on an endless loop; other times it took 30-45 min. to get an actual person. I have Verizon now and they're OK. Just my two cents.

Re:Interesting article but

[Wordplay]

It makes having a phone conversating very pain full as the person you are talking to cuts out everytime there is a noise on your side of the conversation (A loud bus, fire engine, pet, etc).

Huh? I have Verizon in the Bay Area, and mine's full-duplex. What phone are you using?

Re:Interesting article but

[kramit]

LG510.

As soon as my contract is up, I plan to switch to sprint. I have verified that they are full duplex, and I can have a Handspring Treo.

Re:Interesting article but

[sfm]

Using AT&T Wireless for the past 4+ years and firmly believe their coverage in the U.S. West and South is the best there is. While I'm paying a bit more than some of the other choices, it is worth it. Try driving across California with a Sprint user in the car and notice how often AT&T is usable while the Sprint phone isn't.

Just my $0.02

Re:Interesting article but

[uspsguy]

Guess what? I don't really give a rip about sending a message. I want a phone that works. I have Verizon and my son has T Mobile. GSM may have cute phones but the coverage STINKS. 4 times out of 5, if we check our phones at the same spot, I'll have service and he won't. I made several road trips last summer. I had service 90% of the time and he had nothing outside cities and towns. I don't need to carry a fancy paperweight in my pocket, I need a real phone.

A note about SprintPCS + Vision

[numbski]

If you purchased an account (or bought a new phone/got a new advantage agreement as an old customer) and had unlimited vision, and you removed unlimited vision since then, guess what?

You still have it. They've 'grandfathered' your account into having unlimimted vision anyway. Set that next to the fact that since the christmas season, the novelty of the vision network has worn off, and I'm now getting comparable to ISDN speeds off my phone using a USB cable hooked to my powerbook.

Ja ne!

Re:A note about SprintPCS + Vision

[Anonymous Coward]

comparable to ISDN speeds off my phone using a USB cable hooked to my powerbook

You still use cables? Sheesh, and I thought that it is annoying to take out your phone from pocket since IR has its limitations when compared to Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, but to actually need to cable the two together... man that is really annoying.

Re:A note about SprintPCS + Vision

[nolife]

I spent about a week looking at providers and talking to various CSR's from multiple carriers for a three phone package. No one plan from any company was above and beyond the others. My advice is to take what is most important to you and make a weighed scale.

My general comments on Sprint..

Overall, very happy with the phones and the service. Occasional dropouts when driving but not an issue for me.

Pros..

The phones they offer are very good with many gadgets and gizmos and are not expensive to replace.

The Vision plan offers unlimited and unmetered internet access (+$15/month or free with 2000 minute plan). The phones work with many portals including /. (I specifically recommend www.sprintusers.com portal)

Your phones email account is web based accessible from the phone, any web browser, or your favorite email client via POP3 or IMAP. Your email address is selectable and changeable. You get 10digitnumber@sprintpcs.com and pick-one@sprintpcs.com

The Free and Clear America Plan (FCA) (+$10/month) gives you free roaming when off the PCS network. Basically, if you get a signal, the phone will work. If you use more then 50% of your minutes roaming they reserve the right to remove that option to prevent "abuse".

There is no smaller "home" concept area like some of the Cingular plans have.

The phone to phone option (free with 2yr contract or $5month) is unlimited, some carriers charge for this.

The add-a-phone plans (Family Plan) are $20 for each extra phone (the 2000 minute plan offers the second phone free) and it carries the same options as the main plan (Vision + FCA + phone to phone etc..) at no extra cost.

Unlimited N&W, pretty standard but some providers still have limits on the minutes.

Not sure if Sprint specific but there are portals that allow you to download games, pictures, ringers, and upload your own content to the phone with no charge. You can get stuff from Sprint directly but they charge.

Cons:

Although you recieve unlimited messaging and unlimited download, you can not send SMS messages directly from the phone without going "online" first. Basically you have to be on the web to send SMS messages.

Customer service - Touchy issue and really only messured by your own experience. I have had billing issues since day one, the CSR's are friendly and helpful but not very knowledgeable of the billing system. Luck of the draw I guess.

Niether:

Signal quailty - Really depends on the buildout of your area. In Northern VA and Western PA, I have not had issues. I took the coverage maps into consideration with the FCA option when I chose Sprint and dropped Cingular. For me, the overall plans and prices outweighed the potential coverage pitfalls.

YMMV depending on what you plan on doing with the phones.

Re:A note about SprintPCS + Vision

[iradik]

Hmm. I have the same thing, USB cable, a sanyo 4900, and sprint pcs unlimited vision. but i've never gotten isdn like speeds, except in short bursts which immediately subside into zero like speeds. don't get me wrong; it's a great thing to have when you are on the road and with a laptop, but it usually don't work all too well. at least not in the midwest.

steve

Re:A note about SprintPCS + Vision

[Ryosen]

All in all, I have been very disappointed with SprintPCS Vision. I wish that I could claim the same speed and satisfaction, but in the NY/PA metro area, Vision sucks to high hell. Assuming that you can even get on to the network, it's slow as balls and very error-prone. Navigating with a Sanyo 4900 and it's built-in browser is an excercise in futility. Signal strength has nothing to do with it. For calls, I get great service and reception all over the place. But, even with a full signal, I ahve a difficult time logging into the Vision network.

As for messaging, who in their right mind came up with the brillant idea to take something as quick and easy as SMS and replace it with Web-based messaging? In order to send a message or email, you must log on to the Vision network and use their messaging website. It's painfully slow, cumbersome and prone to "Page Read" errors. What really amazes me is that the phone *IS* capable of SMS. When you receive a notification that you have a text message (which you have to go to the website to read), it comes through as SMS. What's more, you can have messages sent directly to the phone, something that Sprint does not tell you. Using the address ######@messaging.sprintpcs.com where ##### is your phone number, you can get around the website requirement. No way to respond to the messages, tho.

I use the phone for business and I have had the same number for six years. As soon as the FCC gets off its ass and pushes the requirement for the telcos to transfer phone numbers, I'm switching to Verizon.

Sad to say, the wireless (cell-phone-based) Web just isn't there yet for Sprint.

Verizon Wireless

[GeckoFood]

I have Verizon Wireless. Last month, I drove from Northern Virginia to northern Indiana (and back), and I never lost the signal and never went into roaming, even in the mountains of West Virginia. Can't get too much better than that...

Re:Verizon Wireless

[slyckshoes]

What kind of phone do you have?

My girlfriend and I (both loyal Verizon customers) have driven between RTP, NC and Chicago, IL several times. Usually we both get bumped to analog roaming somewhere in West Virginia. However, her signal deteriorates first and stays gone longer, and we both think it's because her phone was significantly cheaper than mine.

Re:Verizon Wireless

[jmkaza]

Good to hear that Verizon's coverage is good, but as a fellow motorist, I'd prefer that you had watched the road rather than stared at your signal strength bar the whole drive.

Re:Verizon Wireless

[duckpoopy]

Try I-95 near the North Carolina-Virginia border. Very bad to no coverage. I guess it could also be my cheap (V-120) phone.

It seems that phone quality can skew the results of customer surveys, like those in the article. My phone is apparently prone to dropping calls, by no fault of Verizon. Perhaps the companies that push better phones have better perceived service quality.

Re:Verizon Wireless

[pogle]

Go just a little further south with Verizon and you encounter problems. I just got back from a week in North Carolina, once we crossed from VA into NC my Verizon Wireless connection went to perma-roam. Roaming charges everywhere in the eastern part of the state. Made me severely unhappy, despite good service elsewhere. Lucky I don't visit down there too often, would be expensive.

Re:Verizon Wireless

[garymcg]

I also have Verizon. I live in MI but spend as much time as I can in Key West. Over Easter we rented a boat to do some diving, my cell rang while we were about 5 miles offshore and the call from a friend back home in Ann Arbor was clear as a bell. My girlfriend gets nothing but noise with Cingular in Key West although it's fine at home. I haven't been anywhere in the U.S. where Verizon's coverage is poor.

Re:Verizon Wireless

[lucifuge31337]

Try I-95 near the North Carolina-Virginia border. Very bad to no coverage.

That probably because there's nothing there, other than that funky smell, probably from one of the Perdue rendering plants, but I'm not sure.

Re:Verizon Wireless

[arkane1234]

I'd prefer you kept your eyes on the road and didn't look at the radio to put a cd in, or change the station, or look to left or right.

It only takes a second to glance to see the signal, you don't have to dial fifty numbers or anything.

Re:Verizon Wireless

[daltec]

I believe it is a paper pulp processing plant near Emporia, Virginia (right on the border). The chemicals, bleach, etc used in preparing pulp to be made into paper is what generates that one-of-a-kind smell. I'm a bit of a paper geek, and I always get a kick out of the people in the grocery store who specially request paper bags because of some misguided notion that paper is more environmentally friendly than horrible old plastic. Oh if only they knew..... :-)

Re:Verizon Wireless

[Anonymous Coward]

Well clearly it varies by locality. Verizon coverage on a trip from Detroit/Ann Arbor through Kalamazoo towards Chicago is primarily on roaming, with horrible signal strength where verizon service is actually available outside of the two endpoint cities. Coverage is good in the Detroit/Ann arbor area though.

T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[geddes]

I use t-Mobile, the second to lowest scoring provider. I havn't had that many service problems, with the exception of coverage. Thier coverage could be a lot better, but I use them over Verizon because of the quality of their customer service. It is really excellent, and customer service, to me, makes all the difference. What I would like to know is how to honestly figure out a cell phone companies coverage (other than taking their 7 day trials or whatever and walking your route, that is annoying). Like, how can I find a map of all the cell phone towers in and around Groton, Massachusetts, and which companies run them. Having such a map at my disposal would be far more useful than the "coverage maps" the companies hand out with the entire nation shaded red. I have heard that some of the mobile shops have these, but that they really aren't allowed to share them. Surely these towers' locations have to be registered somewhere

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[ozbon]

I'm sure the towers are registered somewhere - however, it's then got to be mapped against geographic features that nork up coverage etc.

In the UK we used to have these kind of maps, but there were too many cases of people thnking they'd get coverage then not doing so because of geographic features such as hills etc that were creating blackspots. So I think they've actually stopped doing them now - I'd assume they've done the same in the US, although this assumption is speculative rather than based in fact.

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[ccoder]

if you are a complete sadist, you might be able to compile the information from http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/reports/index.cfm

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[WhiteDragon]

check usenet. alt.cellular and children have lots of info. I bet some people have made some nice detailed cell site maps. I actually have a friend who's hobby is finding cell towers, he has a big book with photos of just about every tower in the city he lives in, and he draws up maps of all the different providers. It is pretty cool, he looks at the pattern of existing towers, and says, "ok, I predict that Cingular will have a tower here", then goes to that spot, and sure enough, a tower! I had never previously heard of such a hobby, but he can't be the only one.

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[wolf-]

I was doing contract work for a cell provider in atlanta about 6 years ago. We had to have a serious background check done in order to even view the database with tower information in it. The cell companies claim that the hush hush is for security and anti-terrorism reasons. Personally I thought it was so we couldnt share just how lousy their coverage really was.

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[afidel]

If the providers cared they could actually map an area for pretty accurate maps of coverage zones. There is a company called wireless valley that maps a VERY good although terribly expensive package for doing just that. Then again it would probably cost way more to get a competent person to operate the software then it could possibly be worth to them.

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[frane]

Refer to the article, Grad Student's Work Reveals National Infrastructure (here)

This guy used public information to build a very thourough mapping of communication, transportation, power, etc. infrastructure. IIRC, it included cell phone towers.
Of course, this caught the attention of politicians and various agencies, and he can't share his research.

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

God I hate T-Mobile. I live in Arlington, VA, which is dead center of their pink "coverage" map of the area. Service is sporadic at best. I'm constantly missing calls, losing service, and recieving voice mail notifications up to two hours after the fact. I was pleased with the customer service; when I finally called to bitch about it, they gave me a few hundred free minutes, advised me to buy a signal booster for the phone, and gave me a $20 credit to buy one at a T-Mobile store. That made me happy until I went to the T-Mobile store, the clerk clerk scoffed at me saying that they never have sold signal boosters, and stating that putting one in my phone would violate the warranty agreement. I promplty downgraded my service to 19.99 a month and just ordered a new Verizon LG VX6000. I can't wait. T-Mobile does have helpful customer service reps, but I think that they've just been well trained at calming people down and finding ways to appease their anger over the shit quality of their phone service. The results of this poll were no surpise to me.

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[rnelsonee]

When you're shopping for your next phone, it's well worth it to go into the brick-and-mortar store and ask to see their coverage, because they do indeed have detailed maps. When I moved to a low-density area, I had to switch providers, so I went to T-Mobile and asked to see a detailed map of their coverage area. The rep went on the net and pulled up this great color-coded map of the surrounding area, with live signtal-strength data. It was really cool and I asked how I could get that type of data from home, and he told me you need a password and such. And no, he didn't give it to me... but I think most major providers have this, and it's always good to check to make sure you home/work areas have good strength.

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

alt.cellular and children have lots of info.

I checked alt.cellular and it was quite informative. However, when I went to the playground down at the end of the block and talked to some of the children, they didn't eve seem to know that cell phones needed cell towers to work. So I think I'll recommend just sticking with the Usenet and forget asking kids.

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[tinrobot]

I actually just switched to TMobile from AT&T.

I live amongst some hills, and the AT&T phone never worked in my house. When I decided to switch, I had various friends come over and checked the signal strength on their phones. TMobile was best - for my house. I also got a good quality phone (Samsung 205) which helps a lot. I think a lot of reception problems are due to crappy hardware.

Generally, I like TMobile. The service is pretty good in LA, and the rates are cheap, plus the phone works internationally. I did go to Aspen not long ago, and there was no coverage there. But I don't live in Aspen, so it's not a biggie.

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[Abm0raz]

I work for a company that does Phase-I/II** 911 Emergency Management Systems for states including PA, FL, ME, NY, VA, IN, LA, MS, NC and Washington DC. To properly figure out total coverage and signal strength, you need to know the lat/long/alt of every tower, as well as the antenna length, signal strength, and any local interference generators. You take all that info, and you plug it into a composite signal rendering program (such as SIGNAL by EDX. This will give you a "100% coverage" map. This assumes that all surrounding obstacles (trees, mountains, buildings, etc..) have 100% transparency with the carrier wave of the transmission. This is good to analyze the "best case" scenario.

After that, you get a topographic map (usually in .tif format from the state or federal gov't) and plug that in. Place the tower info on the map and run the software again. this will give you an "expected-case" scenario. Then repeat the process with known buildings, structures, etc ... to get the worst-case scenario.

If you ever have the chance to look at some of these maps, you'll see a lot of interesting patterns. Many cell towers aren't located on the top of mountains (like radio and TV towers). Most are located in valleys on the roofs of larger buildings. This is because the signal from cell tower's requires much more power at 800Mzh than radio and TV at lower bands. This increased frequency gives it a smaller propagation distance. This is why you see towers in towns/cities and along major roadways. Most cell companies use mountains to shield signals from bleeding excessively into other cells (because of how it works, especially with billing). This is why you can have a full strength signal going up a hill, lose it at the top (where your radio signal is strongest) and gain cell phone coverage as you go down the other side.

-Ab

** 911 Phase-I is where the dispatchers know your address/location via a Geo-database if you are on a landline and can ship out aid regardless of the info you give them.
911 Phase-II is the same thing, but for cell/satellite phones.

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[amarodeeps]

Do you really mean, "a complete masochist?"

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[ccoder]

doh! :%s/sadist/masochist/g

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[TClevenger]

Yeah, except my home is in the "high coverage" area on Nextel's site, and I get zero signal. It even lists my town specifically as covered, even though there isn't coverage for 15 miles in any direction.

Find people who live around you and ask them who they use and who they prefer. People who live around me carry AT&T, or they carry nothing at all, because AT&T is the only carrier in my area with coverage.

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[BlankTim]

I have a friend who does the same thing, except there aren't supposed to be any towers there when he goes to look at the site.

His job is to acquire cel/comm tower sites for companies.

The acquisition process is without a doubt, the most hassle-filled way of earning a living I've ever seen. He does get paid well for it though.

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[WhiteDragon]

That would be rather frustrating. I have seen several temporary/permanent towers (on a semi-truck bed etc.) in parking lots.

Cellular One

[r0de]

Cellular one is pretty good in my area.
Sprint PCS isnt.

You get what you pay for

[Andy Dodd]

Verizon is significantly more expensive than most other US-based providers.

It has always been (in my opinion) worth the extra money, so I'm not surprised they were ranked #1.

Re:You get what you pay for

[Xrkun]

Actually, I have to correct you on the "expensive" thing. In the second quarter Verizon Wireless's average service revenue per subscriber was $48.66 This is a lot lower then the other major cell companies out there. The reason for this is Verizon does not pull tactics like placing you in plans that are not fit for you. I.E. Some other providers like to put you in lower plans and then when you use up your minutes your bill gets outragous. Verizon actually has a computer based tool that calculates your best rate plan based on the actual minutes you use. Plus with Verizon, you can change your plan at any time.

Re:You get what you pay for

[Linux_ho]

Verizon is significantly more expensive than most other US-based providers. It has always been (in my opinion) worth the extra money, so I'm not surprised they were ranked #1.

That's funny, a few posts up a guy was saying that AT&T's coverage kicked Verizon's booty. But he said he still used Verizon 'cause it was less expensive...

I don't know where he was, and I don't know where you are, but here in the Seattle area you can't beat AT&T's coverage. :-)

Re:You get what you pay for

[tackaberry]

Verizon may have the best service...

...but they have the worst selection of phones to choose from

I'd love to get a Bluetooth phone, like the Sony Ericsson T68i

Re:You get what you pay for

[feed_those_kitties]

Verizon is significantly more expensive than most other US-based providers.

Well, someone has to pay for all those annoying commercials...

Re:You get what you pay for

[lucifuge31337]

Verizon is significantly more expensive than most other US-based providers.

Yeah...everyone other than Nextel. Who I've been using for years, as do most of my business associates and friends, and, more importantly, my fire department. LNP or not, Nextel has their customers who actually use direct connect by the balls, and thay know it.

They could double the price, and I'd still pay it. Any more than that and I'd carry a phone for calls and a Nextel for just durect connect. I suspect others feel the same.

I hate that.

Re:You get what you pay for

[zarqman]

hang in there, nextel's reign when it comes to direct connect is about over. from what i understand, sprintpcs will be offering a comparable service (ptt - push to talk) this fall. verizon also has something in the works -- should be soon. others may too.

of course, then everyone will have the joy of dealing with compatibility issues as i'm sure the networks won't talk with each other. joy.

Re:You get what you pay for

[lucifuge31337]

hang in there, nextel's reign when it comes to direct connect is about over. from what i understand

Anyoe who doesn't have their head up their ass already knows about that.

#1.) The non-nextel "direct connect" type services announced so far are "store and forward", not realtime. Doesn't sound very useful for a fire or rescue scene, does it?

#2.) Everyone who needs direct connect ALREADY HAS A NEXTEL. People who talk across organizations will NOT be switching because they don't know if other people are switching, etc. Catch 22. The best thing Nextel ever did, both for its billings and for customer retention, was to allow cross-fleet direct connect.

Re:You get what you pay for

[zarqman]

re: #2 - very true. if they talk across organizations, it's a hard switch. however, i am equally sure there are a number of organizations who only communicate internally and therefore can switch everyone at once to another provider and go their way. for those orgs where that isn't an option, they might still get a price benefit out of it if nextel is forced to reevaluate their price structure due to somewhat increased competition.

additionally, i'm certain, price or not, some orgs will change simply because coverage for their people and their needs is better with another provider, now that they can get similar functionality.

Re:You get what you pay for

[Anonymous Coward]

But customer service sucks big time.

Re:You get what you pay for

[mrwonka]

I also have Verizon wireless, I aggree the coverage is great.. i havn't had any trouble (midwest => California)

I have had alot of problems with their customer service. It seams that during sign up if the agent types in your social security number wrong your account gets flagged as possible identity theft which merits a $500+ deposit.

Re:You get what you pay for

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll tell you, I've had Verizon for 5+ years, and back east (Pittsburgh and Boston) I would have sworn by them, but after a series of clunker phones, and a move to LA, I'm at my wits end. I was sold a i60c to replace my beloved star tac, which i was told they could no longer replace, and was ABSOLUTELY miserable. After arguing for the better part of two months, they upgraded me to the i60i, and i continued to have similar problems. They kept replacing my phones with refurbished, instead of a new and obviously functional phone. I actually had to call my way all the way to the president of customer service for me to actually have someone help me out.

Sure, the offer they gave me made up for some of the hassle, but what unpleasent people they have in customer service. Add to that all of their stores are painfully understaffed.

Maybe that's just in LA.

Becoming like monopoly's

[Anonymous Coward]

Their becoming useless and using bullying tactics. My sister wished to swap her service away from verizon and verizon proceeded to contact ME telling me i would be paying higher charges because she was leaving the network. their was no information ever about lowering costs if we had the same provider in the first place and I even had my plan at my exiosting price far before she ever had a cell phone. So now they wanted to raise my price probably to pressure me into making her stay, so I told them to get the hell out and I switched too. Their tactics are bullying and that's not service.

Re:Becoming like monopoly's

[wolf-]

Nextel is threatening to change our rates in mid-contract. A very rude Mr Harris was put on the phone a few days ago when we called up about a billing problem (cell minutes magically disappeared from the plan???) All he kept saying was "we are losing money on your account"

My answer was tough, your agent signed us up and for 6 months, you honored the contract. You make any changes to the accounts between now and December, a breech of contract suit will ensue.

Ends up, customer service passed us to him. He was in "Account deactivation". They are doing anything they can to get us to leave.

They have no idea how much money they will be losing. Unlimited nights and weekends are phone when you have one half of your phones call the other half all weekend, every weekend, for the rest of the year.

Screw you Nextel, I'm going to Verizon at the end of the contract.

Re:Becoming like monopoly's

[espo812]

Becoming like monopoly's (sic)

Interesting. I assume you're trying to make monopoly plural (it doesn't make sense to be posessive in this context). Now, I fail to see how more than one monopoly can exist in the same market, seeing as that would defeat the whole idea of a monopoly.

re: becoming like monopoly's

[ed.han]

hey wolf, did you ever get a full name on this harris person? i recommend a full-blown nastygram on this, with CC: to slashdot editors. they won't necessarily know whether taco & co will or won't post it, but it might scare 'em.

they might feel obligated to reevaluate their stance.

ed

Re:Becoming like monopoly's

[Anonymous Coward]

I took it as meaning monopolies in general, which is how verizon were acting by the sound of it. An illegal monopoly will fuck around their customers with nary a thought for their well being because they don't have a choice to go anywhere. Same as a monopoly in a phone market, computer software, hardware, any service - all those types of monopolies - illegal when they act that same bad kind of way.

Good work for the original poster for straight away moving to another service, even if their grammar was atrocious :)

Not anymore.

[numbski]

Funny mods that. :P Funny -1? How does *that* happen?

Re:Not anymore.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hm, everything's summarily being rated Offtopic - must be Monday, when all the jacka%%es get their break.

Sprint PCS

[Bob McCown]

I've got Sprint. Im in the Boston suburbs, and I can't believe the amount of drop-outs I get on major roads. 128^W95 I get them, Route 2, even in some of the major town/cities, like Watertown, Framingham, Natick, I cant get signal.

UGH.

Re:Sprint PCS

[lowmagnet]

Stop driving, or switch to automatic digital/analog roam. There is coverage of some sort for PCS phones everywhere. At my dad's it is a PCS dead spot, but I can still roam analog. It might cost, but at least you can still continue your call.

Re:Sprint PCS

[gesualdo]

Forget the suburbs, coverage sucks downtown. I was staying with a friend a block away from Prudential, and while the phone would consistantly have four bars on its signal strength indicator, about 90% of the calls would get dropped.

On Long Island, the signal indicator jumped from zero to four bars at random, short intervals, and there was no chance of getting a call to go through. I must admit, however, that I was impressed that I had full and stable coverage while taking the ferry from Orient Point, Long Island to New London, CT.

Sprint PCS = Positively Crappy Service

This is an interesting article?

[rlsnyder]

The standards for "intersting article" seem to have gotten lower. This is a very brief writeup of a customer satisfaction survey. There is very little information on how the survey was taken, and the scoring on the survey ranks in the range of 0-104, with all services being ranked right next to each other at the top of the spectrum (with only a few % difference between each).

In other words, a short article vaguely describing a survey with largely insignificant differentiation in results. Whoo hoo!

Re:This is an interesting article?

[lordDallan]

Shout out to rlsnyder for laying the smack down on this being a seriously whack article!

I need to know where the approx. 16,000 folks they surveyed were located too! If they're all on the eastern seaboard or in southern California, what the hell does that tell me about the quality or lack thereof of each companies nationwide coverage. Nothing, that's what.

Re:This is an interesting article?

[VdG]

I was rather disappointed in it also. I was expecting more details on the survey and was interested to see how it compared with the UK and the rest of Europe.

Re:This is an interesting article?

[awtbfb]

the scoring on the survey ranks in the range of 0-104

I'm glad someone pointed that out. I also thought it was funny that 100 represents an average score. Was this work done at Walden College?

Re:This is an interesting article?

[EisPick]

If you live in the Washington, DC, area, there is a very good local survey in Washington Consumers' Checkbook , which is sort of a local Consumer Reports.

Non-subscribers have to pay about $5 for the report, and it's almost a year old now, but I have read it and found it very thoroughly researched and informative.

Re:This is an interesting article?

[bbc22405]

I agree. What's worse, they are mixing "doesn't suck" with "has whizzy features". They award a total of 5 points for the "whizzy features", and I'd swear I see the scores for the providers grouped into two bunches, separated by ... a 5 point gap. So if the survey really had been about "who doesn't suck?", it would be even more of a dogpile, all landing in a 7 point patch!

Worse, half of "doesn't suck" is apparently "do they happen to have towers where I am and where I go?" That seems to me like an all-or-nothing condition, not some shading between 100 points of goodness and 107.

Different results

[afidel]

Here in NE Ohio between my father and I we have used all of the major cellular companies. Verizon has shit for voice quality (I might blame it on the phone but we've had 4 different sets from 3 manufacturers), AT&T I couldn't be happier with (and their coverage KILLS anyone else, I have used my phone from coast to coast and in some pretty damn remote areas like on Mt. Whitney Calif, The Grand Canyon, etc, finally Nextel is fine so long as you are in a major metro area or never get off the highway but because they have no analog backfill don't expect to get a signal in the boonies (or even the outskirts of the Cleveland/Akron metroplex in my case). Oh yeah the only reason I put up with Virizon? Price, $80/month for unlimited anytime minutes =) My dad and I both use up more minutes then even the jumbo plans that many carriers offer for well over $100 and none of them have reasonable per minute charges if you go over.

Here, in Switzerland...

[mirko]

I remember being called while I was on the top of the Schilthorn (the Piz Gloria is the restaurant in which G. Lazenby plays "At Her Majesty's service").
So I guess the coverage is quite decent, even far up the mountains. :)

Useless

[tbase]

With so many people having cell phones these days, all you have to do is ask around to see who's best in your area. This explains the high ratings and little spread in the study. By now people have figured out who they should go with in a particular area.

A useful study would ask how people rated their service when travelling. I think you'd see the ratings plummet. I have T-Mobile which is ok for where I normally use it, but I just went on vacation, and any distance at all off the highway or away from any cities, and it was useless. And at our family reunion at my folk's place in the boonies (about 45 minutes from the nearest town), I think we had every carrier represented, and not a single signal among them, including the ones that showed coverage on thier maps.

Theyre all pretty bad

[Crashmarik]

In my area I have had the following

Primeco
Verizon
Bellsouth
ATTWireless
NextTel
Everyone of them had problems. Finally I got MetroPCS. The service isnt any better but it costs only $40/mo unlimited usage. I may not have the service I want but at least I am not paying for service I don't actually receive.

Nextel sucks.

[Lumpy]

Well it's great in the cities that are covered. but leave the city or highway and you are stranded. While traditional analog or tri-mode cellphones still work (at a higher "ohhh your roming? gimmie GOBS of cash" rate)

It's all about coverage for me. AT&T wireless has the worst coverage and the worst agreements with other carriers for roaming so you get no service more often.. while verizon has super crappy customer care.

I guess it's taking the lesser of the evils.

Re:Nextel sucks.

[Slipped_Disk]

Funny, my experience has been just the opposite - I went camping with some friends and we all took our phones along for emergencies.

Well, lo and behold none of them (AT&T, Verizon and 2 Nextels) worked at the camp site (in a valley at Macedonia Brook State Park (CT)), but when we climbed up to a fair height during our hike both nextel phones had full service, the Verizon was on analog-roaming and my AT&T phone was pleading No Service.

There are some places my Nextel (switched this year)doesn't get service (my room for one, with gobs of unshielded open-cased computer hardware - if you put it down in the wrong spot you're screwed), but there are others (assorted basements, data centers, a few subway stations) where I never had service with AT&T.

Granted it is an expensive leash, but it works for me.

verizon in maine

[J05H]

Verizon service in Maine is aweful. It's fine in southern New England, but i end up having to call-back several times to hold a 10 minute conversation. That's why I'm going to get an i90 and nextel service today.

Some people I've talked with say that their cell phones get odd messages when calling sometimes, they say "Welcome to roaming services, credit card number please?" or similar. It seems like it might be a new "slam" or some telco trolling for extra cash.

josh

Re:verizon in maine

[qwertyatwork]

Its not slamming, usualy you get that message when your cell phone isnt found anywhere (as in it has been disconnected, or theres a technical issue) call customer service and get the problem fixed instead of blindy accusing others you lazy bastard.

Re:verizon in maine

[J05H]

not me, bro, two other people have used the word "slam" in describing that event on their fones. Just relaying other's experience.

I'm just sick of the disconnected calls.

Re:verizon in maine

[qwertyatwork]

Slamming is changing someones long distance without permision.

Now that we know about coverage

[LogicX]

The next thing I want to know is which provider gives the best wireless internet services, including unlimited connections for a reasonable price -- and services such as AIM with a real client instead of through SMS messages. aim.com/wireless is a start, but I want to hear from those of you who use the services.

I currently have cingular, who does not offer AIM, and I've had numerous problems trying to get the wireless web service to work (apparently it wasn't supported by the towers in my home calling area).

Re:Now that we know about coverage

[dacetone]

I use AIM constantly on my T-Mobile Sidekick (the phone showed on the website you referenced). I have the old plan, with 200 minutes, unlimited weekends, and unlimited internet for 40$ a month. I absolutely need unlimited internet (I usually use around 20MB a month), and they still offer unlimited internet with any Sidekick plan for 20$ extra with the new plans.

It feels very much like a 'real' client. It's very easy to use, compared to an SMS interface (ew). It's a client that's built into the Sidekick, as opposed to a web-based client. I love it. Speaking of web, it's the only phone I've found that will show images from the web.

As for their wireless web coverage, it's been just fine in major cities (Seattle, SF, Minneapolis, Hartford, and more), and even some not-so-major (Yakima, WA, Missoula, MT, Torrington, CT, and way more) that I've visited lately. It surprises me how much coverage it gets across the country (I'm currently on a cross-country drive, and it's been my godsend!). If you live along the Seattle-Hartford trail, and I'm going through your city, just ask and I'll tell you how it is there.

Re:Now that we know about coverage

[Gamma]

You want to look at T-Mobile. All of their phones do AIM via SMS messages and a WAP client. The low end Motorola peanut shaped phone offers an internal AIM client. I've never used it personally, but, the AIM client on the Nokia 3390 was pretty slick. It sends them as SMS messages, just a nice front end on them. The SideKick has a built in AIM Client. They offer unlimited data on a voice plan for $19.99 or $29.99, I forget which.

to cell or not to cell

[selderrr]

I'll probably get modded redundant, but I still don't have a cellphone. And so far, except for 2 occasions where I got stuck in traffic for several hours and got late to pick up our kids from school, I have never even thought "damd, I wish I wasn't so stubborn and bough that cellphone"

I honestly go whooptie-flip over those 15-year olds crammed together in the bus messanging or calling eachother, yelling in my ear, poking with their elbows and tripping over anything smaller than a shepperd-dog (I recently saw a teen running along the road while phoning. Neither he nor the road-sign pole had the immense fun I had when I saw him smack his forehead fullspeed into the metal, and then the back of his head into the asphalt as he bounced back. The silliest thing was that when I tried to help him get up, he could only utter 'mind your steps... my phone is on the ground somewhere overhere' The guy was nearly blind from the impact for christ sake !)... Not to speak of the near-constant phone ringing all around me whenever I step out the door. At a bus station for instance. Sometimes it's funny to just watch everyone grab for their phone (women in their purse, machos grab their crotch as those things seem to live in simbyosis with testicles)...

That's perhaps one reason to buy a cellphone : stand at the busstation with a friend, and secretly call him. He doesn't pick up. I hang up after 3 rings and repeat. Mr. Cleese would be proud of me.

Re:to cell or not to cell

[Palos]

The main reason I ended up with a cell phone was price vs a landline. For $40 a month I get unlimited nights/weekends, no charge for long distance, and a decent amount of anytime minutes. Compared to the phone in my house which used to cost about $30 after caller id/etc and included no minutes, this was very nice.
As far as the article itself goes, as has been mentioned before its 100% location based. If you're getting a cell phone talk to people who have one there, and find out what is best.

Re:to cell or not to cell

[espo812]

achos grab their crotch as those things seem to live in simbyosis with testicles

cellular = radiation + testicles = ball cancer. I'll be sure to keep my phone in my purse from now on.

Re:to cell or not to cell

[autocracy]

I travel around the New England area constantly... until I have a cell phone, answer to "what number can I reach you at?" are only speculative and numbers I give have to be for other people's phones. There's nothing like saying "try here, then here... or maybe I'll end up over here." Some of us have a real use for them... and sometimes using one is more polite than not.

Re:to cell or not to cell

[selderrr]

I never said that there are no proper uses for cellhpones. I never said that, even with lack of proper purpose, tards shouldn't be allowed a cellphone. I don't even said that phoning in the most insane places (yesterday I went to the toilet at the 12th floor of our builing where usually noone comes since it's a mass of dumped old hardware) and to my amazement I could hear not one, but TWO people in the stalls having a phone conversation... Very nutty situation.

The only thing that I don't like about cellphones is the attitude people are calling with. The 'look at me, I need to be reacheable cause I'm important' attitude.

Re:to cell or not to cell

[whatch durrin]

My cell is one of the best moves I made. I wish I would have kept up with how much money I saved over the past two years by dropping my landline.

Free nights, free weekends, free long distance, mobility. Land lines can't compete.

The biggest drawback is not having access to DSL to compete with my cable internet.

BTW (offtopic), is it legal for the phone company (landline) to deny you DSL service if you don't have telephone service on the line?

Re:to cell or not to cell

[frantzdb]

I just got my first phone recently. One use I didn't see coming is that I nolonger have to worry about meeting people places. You can go to an amusement park with friends, split up, and then find eachother again without a wory.

--Ben

Re:to cell or not to cell

[Anonymous Coward]

The silliest thing was that when I tried to help him get up, he could only utter 'mind your steps... my phone is on the ground somewhere overhere'

Let me guess, you are British, right? Because the thought of a 15 year old kid saying "mind your steps" is the most absurd thing I could imagine (I'm American).

Re:to cell or not to cell

[NDPTAL85]

Anyone who wants a cell phone these days can have one. No one is important anymore for whipping out a phone in public and making a call. Time has PASSED. Society has MOVED ON. It would be nice if you did so too. Not meaning that you have to get a cell for your self, just update your reasons for being angry at those who do.

Re:to cell or not to cell

[mOdQuArK!]

Free nights, free weekends, free long distance, mobility. Land lines can't compete.

Don't forget a really important point: it's illegal for telemarketers to call you on your cell phone.

Re:to cell or not to cell

[BlankTim]

BTW (offtopic), is it legal for the phone company (landline) to deny you DSL service if you don't have telephone service on the line?

I don't know if it's illegal or not (talk to your local Public Service Commision), but it seems to be standard practice with Alltel, whether they're selling the service as the ILEC or CLEC.
You can use any ISP you want though, in Nebraska, anyway.

I hate the phone

[AssFace]

I absolutely hate the phone and will do nearly anything to avoid talking on one.

That said, I love shiny things. I have had a series of phones over the years and a series of carriers.

I started in '99 with a Nokia - I think it was a 6590 or something like that - it seemed cool at the time. It was with Sprint in Boston/Cambridge.
There were small, but frequent dead zones and when I walked into one while on a call, it would drop out. Frustrating.
I called Sprint about it and they actually said "yeah, we aren't planning on upgrading out networks at all"... so I told them I would be leaving their service, which I did.

I then got a Nokia 8860 - the shiny mirrored girly phone that Christina Aguilara had on one of her MTV interviews. That phone scratched easily and had terrible reception - but I was worshipped like a god whenever I pulled that out of my pocket. It was also excellent for finding nose hair issues.
The reception on that phone was so bad that it is hard to fault AT&T for any of that. That said, AT&T fucked up the billing on my phone and my cable service about 4 times in a row and led to a several month series of events that made me decided to never use them again. They were incredibly annoying to deal with - one person would say the situation was resolved, then I would get a letter from a collection agency - for something that I never needed to pay in the first place according to AT&T.
Finally, the last straw was when the woman (many supervisors up) said to me "I understand that you aren't supposed to have this charge, but you do, and I can't fix it, so how about you just pay $10 of it and then I will write off the rest (of a $100 charge)".
I was so pissed that I had to pay anything at all since I wasn't supposed to - but at that point, I saw the $10 fee as my way of getting out of their fucking phone annoyance hell - and I was sick of getting collection notices for things that weren't my problem.

So I will never go with them again. I later got some mail telling me that I was part of a class action suit against them and would in the end get like $1 off of my cable service if I upgraded - right.

Then I switched to VoiceStream, and they then renamed to T-Mobile. I have the Nokia 8890 with them. GSM - works in other countries and many cities.
Great service, great customer service - no billing errors - great phone.
Was very happy with them - they would upgrade my service for free as things came along - great stuff.

Then I moved to Bermuda and had to cancel that.
I can still use the same phone here, and the service is decent enough, considering I didn't want to get it in the first place (work made me get it, but then refused to pay for it, so as a result, I don't answer it much).
The customer service here is non-existant - but so far haven't had to deal with that yet. Have had a rude person and a nice person when signing up. That is pretty normal here - usually more rude.

In the end, the only way I would change phones is if I get one of the new Treo phones from Handspring/Palm, or if Nokia's upgrade to the 8890 comes here (I think it is the 8910 and 8910i - nice looking phones).

Re:I hate the phone

[Lifewolf]

That said, AT&T fucked up the billing on my phone and my cable service about 4 times in a row and led to a several month series of events that made me decided to never use them again.

The first cell phone I purchased for my wife was from a company later bought by AT&T. She had the phone, and their cheapest ($19.99/month) plan, for flat-tire-on-the-turnpike-at-night type emergencies. Of course, those sorts of things don't happen with great frequency, so the phone saw maybe two minutes of use every six months or so. Tops.

Regardless, once AT&T took over the plan, they'd bump her up to a higher-minute, $29.99/month plan every month to "better suit her calling patters". So, each month I'd call, demand her plan be dropped back down to $19.99, and be told:

1. the $29.99/month plan was a better deal for her
2. they didn't have a $19.99/month plan anymore

It generally took some time before they'd concede my counter-arguments (

1. she hadn't used any minutes for months
2. long ago, when she had used minutes, it had been less than a quarter of the $19.99/month plan's monthly limit
3. I had, in my hand, a current advertisement for AT&T plans "starting at $19.99"

) might have some merit.

And that was the routine every month. Meanwhile, they somehow kept slamming our long distance service, even though our local phone company insisted our account was locked so that couldn't possibly happen.

I am not fond of AT&T.

Re:I hate the phone

[Lord_Dweomer]

" I absolutely hate the phone and will do nearly anything to avoid talking on one. That said, I love shiny things."

Replace phone with drm/RIAA/MPAA/M$/cool-new-orwellian-technology and you've just given the most accurate description of the Slashdot demographic I have ever seen.

American vs Japanese cell service

[Stanley Feinbaum]

I remember when I was in Japan I was impressed by their vastly superior cell phone technology. 3g phones which double as pdas and have video capability. And the size, very impressive. More people use cell phones in Japan than traditional copper wire service, which cost a lot there as it is.

I'm hoping one day we will catch up to the Japanese in cell phone technology but that is unlikely as they are far far ahead of America in almost every department. While our students are lazy and self centered individuals, the Japanese youth know the value of conformity and hard work. Ever hear of crime or poverty in Japan ? There isn't much. Gun control along with a generally more polite attitude keeps crime there very low. We Americans could learn a lot from the Japanese, although we are still the best damn country in the world our technology is slightly lacking!

Re:American vs Japanese cell service

[Anonymous Coward]

Piss ass moron. "Japs are great!" Go live there. I for one, am quit happy with my country. Gun control, how does that compare to cell phones? In Australia, gun control went into play, and, guess what, crime went up! Hmm. Whatever.

Re:American vs Japanese cell service

[duckpoopy]

I remember dirty, used panties being sold in vending machines, professional businessmen looking at hardcore porn on the subway, and Japanese teens urinating in the streets. I agree that Japan is a very nice place with a very different culture, but it is not nirvana.

Re:American vs Japanese cell service

[Anonymous Coward]

Pff, thats just the sort of high jinks that any Japanese school child gets upto at one time or another.

Re:American vs Japanese cell service

[Pompatus]

I remember when I was in Japan I was impressed by their vastly superior cell phone technology. 3g phones which double as pdas and have video capability.

Like this or the older now $199 model from Sprint? Ironic they should fair poorly in the poll in the article, but understandable, since I can't get a signal at times in uptown New Orleans (note there are no tall buildings in uptown New Orleans, due to the difficulty and expense of building a structure in the swamp. And in general, we're quite poor). Also, the market is a bit different between Japan and the United States.

While our students are lazy and self centered individuals, the Japanese youth know the value of conformity and hard work. Ever hear of crime or poverty in Japan ? There isn't much. Gun control along with a generally more polite attitude keeps crime there very low.

I'm going to skip my flaimbait rant here, because your next sentence

We Americans could learn a lot from the Japanese, although we are still the best damn country in the world our technology is slightly lacking!

astounds me. Tell me, is it our lazy and self centered students, or our high crime and poverty that make America "the best damn country in the world"? I'm a bit confused here.

Re:American vs Japanese cell service

[Zane Edwards]

Don't they have radio signal pollution? I cant imagine using a bluetooth phone, laptop and Wi-Fi there.

Re:American vs Japanese cell service

[whatch durrin]

While our students are lazy and self centered individuals, the Japanese youth know the value of conformity and hard work.

I don't think it's necessarily the Japanese students pushing themselves to conform and work hard. I think it's Japanese society. It's part of the reason they have such a high suicide rate among the student population.

From what I've heard, India is beginning to have problems with this as well. The enormous pressure to succeed has side effects.

Re:American vs Japanese cell service

[Lord_Dweomer]

"Tell me, is it our lazy and self centered students, or our high crime and poverty that make America "the best damn country in the world"? I'm a bit confused here."

No, it is our ability to point out imaginary flaws in other countries while never even considering the possibility that we have some very real flaws of our own.

Re:American vs Japanese cell service

[BlankTim]

Ever hear of crime or poverty in Japan ? There isn't much. Gun control along with a generally more polite attitude keeps crime there very low.

ROTFL!!!
Do you *really* believe the BS you're spouting, or are you just being sarcastic?

There's a lot more crime in Japan than you think. Most of it is domestic violence, but there's also a high rate of group suicide, usually Mothers and Children, There's also a very high rate of rape in Tokyo.
I take it you think the Yakuza are just members of some kind of Men's social club?

Gun control is irrelevant. The only people who obey gun control laws are *shock*gasp* the law-abiding!
Yes, they have gun related crime in Japan as well.
Not at the rate it occurs here in the state, I'll grant that. But, it's still there.

Re:American vs Japanese cell service

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose the fact that they have one of the highest (if not the HIGHEST IIRC) suicide rates of industrial nations means nothing? There is a HUGE price to be paid for by conformity.

And if you haven't noticed, Japan's crime rate has been inching higher every year. This is mostly blamed on the MINUTE amounts of foreigners here (granted Americans do cause a good chunk of that) but Japan is NOT the peaceful utopia you seem to think it is.

Furthermore, the US could never be Japan. Japan accepts one of the fewest amounts of immigrants of industrial nations. That is the price for conformity.

How would the US conform? One of our greatest weaknesses/strengths is how diverse we are. That diverseness is the essence of our conformity. That doesn't mean though that we all act alike or have the same values. It just means that our method of conformity is to be different.

That being said, I LIVE IN JAPAN, and while yeah I agree I love being able to use my cell anywhere, if the US had stuck to ONE type of cellular network in the first place we could have well been like the Japanese.

My $100 cell phone here has as many features as your $200.

Pretty bad in denmark

[Anonymous Coward]

The service I'm using, DanmarkFon, has suffered from intermitent failures for months. Unfortunately I signed a 1 year contract with them, so I'll have to stay with this for 4 months.

Poul-Henning Kamp, FreeBSD committer

Regional Considerations

[timothy_m_smith]

The problem with this article is that mobile service should be rated regionally as opposed to nationally. I understand that some carriers have national plans, but in general each carrier has strengths in different geographic areas.

Since last christmas (left that part out)...

[numbski]

I got modded up anyway, but I meant to say if you bought a new phone/agreement this last christmas season while they were giving unlimited vision for free, and then removed it.

Hate to see a bunch of people remove it and find out they are getting metered because they didn't fall in that group. I'm saying if you've removed it since christmas, not to go do it now. :P

sprint PCS sucks!

[JeanBaptiste]

In Minneapolis anyways... my phone will drop connection just going under an overpass! it seems random how much signal strength I get. I can be in the same place, sometimes the signal is strong, sometimes there is none. My friend has verizon and he can get signal in many different places that I cant.

Re:sprint PCS sucks!

[MImeKillEr]

When we had our Sprint PCS (Nokia?) "Dual Band" phone, we also had an old Analog cellphone (carrier and brand I can't recall). The wife and I took a roadtrip and plugged both into the car outlets (cig & accessory). Every time we saw a tower on the horizon, we'd check both phones. The Sprint phone got a signal maybe 80% of the time whereas the older analog got a signal more like 90% of the time.

Both plans reported that they had coverage on the highway we were driving on.

Re:sprint PCS sucks!

[ahector]

I'd concur. My phone is usable most of the time, but I seem to get bad/no coverage a lot of the time for no reason at all. The thing that really ticks me off, though, is when my phone is on, appears to have a signal (maybe low, but at least 2 or 3 bars, sometimes more) and I just don't get calls. The phone never rings, never notifies me of a missed call, and all of a sudden I get voicemail out of the blue.

Re:sprint PCS sucks!

[zarqman]

there are two things that play big into sprintpcs's service coverage.

one, capacity. i, too, sometimes just don't get calls; voicemail takes forever; etc. i think it's a capacity issue. i recently attended an event where there were tens of thousands of people all gathered in rural area. the cell system(s) definitely couldn't keep up. most calls went to voicemail, even when calling someone else there. voicemail took forever to be delivered, etc. this was an unusual event, yes. but it gave me the chance to see what happens when you have serious capacity issues.

two, signal strength meters. this applies to _all_ cdma providers. the little meter has little to do with signal strength. it's actually a measure of the signal-to-noise ratio of the signal. yes, it means a little something, but not very much. so you could have a strong signal, but a lot of noise (eg: typical metro area) and have one or two bars and it might work fine. on the other hand, you could have a weak signal, but no interference at all, have four bars, and still get a dropped call. pretty useless if you ask me. and again, this isn't just sprint. it's also verizon, alltel, us cellular, and any other cdma provider.

Re:sprint PCS sucks!

[snooo53]

I haven't had any of the problems you're mentioning (same metro area) but I have noticed that when I'm not driving around sometimes the phone will go in and out of service for a few seconds. While the phone says 4 bars of service the whole time. So suddenly I'll just be sitting there and I'll have a voicemail notification from a call that supposedly came in 30 seconds ago. It's really wierd, and very irritating. Sometimes even the voicemail notification doesn't come for like 10 minutes.

As far as verizon; I know some people that have it, and while it's true they do get coverage in many more indoor places, it seems like they are always cutting in and out when I talk to them (even when they are outside). Whereas when I'm talking to people on regular phones they always remark how even though I'm on a cell phone I sound really good.

So I dunno, the conclusion I've sorta reached is that it's a tradeoff for me. Wierd coverage problems, but good prices ($30 a month ain't bad) and good sound quality (like talking on a normal phone most of the time).

Re:sprint PCS sucks!

[tjb]

No, SNR is the correct way to measure signal strength. In fact, its the only way to measure signal strength unless you plan on proving that Claude Shannon was wrong about everything. Inside the phone, eveything (noise and signal) get boosted to some set energy level anyway, so signal energy only makes sense in the context of its relation to noise energy (SNR).

IANAWE (I am not a wireless engineer - though I am a wireline engineer and know the basics of CDMA and wireless tech), but AFAIK the problem is due to multipath delay (creating Rayleigh Fading/ Frequency-Selective Fading). The effect of Rayleigh fading is that while the signal may be fine right now and right here, if you move the phone (or something in the area moves) a half-wavelength to the left or right (at 900 MHz, about 6.5 inches. Less at higher frequencies), the signal may suck. Hard.

If you're moving quickly (say, in a car), this effect is ameliorated somewhat as you zip in and out of the fades and your average SNR isn't too bad. Standing still (slow-fading), however, the phone can't deal with being in a fade for that long and drops the call.

Re:sprint PCS sucks!

[scribler]

I've had Sprint PCS for a little over 3 years and the its coverage definitely differs depending on the area. When I lived in Dallas, Sprint was perfect. I rarely lost a call, the sound was great and very rarely did I find an area where I just could not make a call. I loved Sprint PCS. (Unlike AT&T Wireless. I had nothing but problems and customer service was horrible.) Now I live 45 min north of West Palm Beach. Here my Sprint PCS service is not nearly as good. Lots of areas where I have little or no reception. And oftentimes, when I can use the phone it is very staticky. However, I will be staying with Sprint for 3 reaons. 1. I don't have a contract. 2. I have no proof other providers would be better. 3. I love my Motorola StarTac and would not want to give it up.

Some improvements..

[kmak]

The problem is that they rarely upgrade their structures to support more users after they sign on - and everyone has a year or two contracts, so they have to stay for that duration.

Luckily, it's changed nowadays, competition does that, I guess, and it's better, now that we can keep our cellphone numbers!

Most times...just like ewoks

[emo boy]

I have Sprint PCS and I would say over 50% of the time the people on the other end just sound like Ewoks. It could be the service quality or it could just be that I'm talking to Ewoks but I mean what sounds more likely...Eworks or the quality of service?? Yeah Ewoks...those damn ewoks.

Re:Most times...just like ewoks

[remusrm]

it could also be that you are using a 2g phone and do not upgrade your phone:-)

AT&T

[gabeman-o]

I just got AT&T service a few weeks ago and I am happy with it. Although coverage in my town is spotty (I live in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but trees), their coverage elsewhere is excellent. I also got the Sony Ericsson T306 for free, which I have found to be a good, full featured phone.

Cingular

[LogicX]

Just wanted to toss out there that I went to get a new phone at cingular last week, and they've JUST switched everything to GSM networks from CDMA. All their new plans are for GSM service, all their new phones are GSM. If you are a currently customer you have TWO phones to choose from that still do CDMA. The GSM service has MUCH less coverage, they claim better quality and signal strength.

Does anyone have any good URLs showing what network types all the providers use, and maybe compares them?

Re:Cingular

[DemonMucha]

Cingular was TDMA, not CDMA. They have alot of upgrading to do here in Conencticut (50+ towers) untill they reach the same footprint as they did with TDMA.

And let me put in a plug for Howardforums , find all your cell phone info there.

Re:Cingular

[WhiteDragon]

cingular was never CDMA, they have been TDMA. That being said, the two phones that have TDMA and GSM (a combination known as GAIT) are the Sony-Ericsson T62u and the Nokia 6360. I have had a cingular phone for a year and a half and really love their coverage. I am on a national plan which includes roaming to analog and tdma, and I almost always have some signal. I don't care whether it is cingular, other tdma, or analog, since I don't pay any extra for it. My only complaint is the fact that calls made while off the cingular network are not billed immediately, so you might have to wait a month or two, then all of a sudden you wonder where those extra 150 minutes on your bill came from. I suppose that is probably not cingular's fault though, since they have to wait until they get the data from the roaming partners.

Re:Cingular

[Anonymous Coward]

seems strange for a company to be switching from CDMA to GSM..i would have thought 3G would be the next progression.. did they give any reason as to why? As for better quality with GSM, you're right to be skeptical, we've had GSM for years and its not that good, ive only used CDMA phones a couple of times but i wouldnt say its inferior. I guess the advantage of GSM that i like is the ability to pop your SIM card into other phones (unless they have SIM locked the phone that is...)

Re:Cingular

[LogicX]

Thanks for the correction. Mental acronym switching ;)

Re:Cingular

[spicyjeff]

They also offer the Motorola c331t (GAIT model) at least in the Boston market. I wanted to go GSM with them but the coverage just can't match their TDMA network right now and that is what is important to me.

Note: the voice quality of the Motorola c331t is no where near as good as my Nokia 8260 was.

Re:Cingular

[babbage]

This may depend where you live, I'm not sure. I've been a Cingular customer for three years now (from back when they were CellularOne around here), and I got a letter in the mail a few months ago saying that I was eligible for a free upgrade.

I liked my old Nokia 6120i a lot, so got the current equivalent, the 6340i -- which happens to now be the tri-band GSM/CDMA/analog phone.

From what the sales staff told me recently, this phone is the only one they offer now that'll work on their west coast service, as that's all GSM now. In the middle & east of the country they're still working through the switch, and GSM is just an extra around here.

My hunch is that they'll have to have a generation of tri-band phones (where generation here means maybe 2 or 3 years, and isn't meant as a reference to 3G etc) before they can switch off their non-GSM network around here. Maybe they're trying to move more quickly than that, but I'd think it'll take time to get all their users to want to upgrade.

My one observation with the new GSM phone, unlike the older 6210i, is that I end up jumping networks a lot. VoiceStream is the only provider with antennas on the subway system at this point, so whenever I'm on the T my phone says that I'm on their network rather than Cingular's. Likewise whenever I'm going under the Big Dig tunnels, if I can get a signal at all it's as likely to be AT&T or Verizon as Cingular, and the same sort of thing happens when I hit random dead spots in the area: I rarely have no signal at all, but I frequently end up on someone else's network.

At first this freaked me out, thinking I'd be paying roaming fees, but as long as you're in your covered calling area then it doesn't matter -- the billing just looks funny and, as another commenter noted, sometimes there's a delay before it shows up on your bill.

Basically, as far as I can tell, GSM might or might not make any difference in the call quality (I for one can't tell any difference), but having the capability has made the stability of my connection much more reliable, even if I'm on someone else's network.

That and the ability to transfer the SIM card to a new phone someday is a nice future capability (down with re-keying all your data!), and the ability to exchange data between the phone's IR port, my palm pilot, and any IR equipped laptop computer has just been spectacular to me -- not that that's a GSM thing :-)

Re:Cingular

[MikeVx]

cingular was never CDMA, they have been TDMA.

Cingular as such was never CDMA, but Ameritech Cellular, which became Cingular, was CDMA for digital before the great SBC consolidation, when they then re-built the network to do TDMA. I live in SE Michigan, and have had a friend in the Ameritech/Cingular switching center since before digital was deployed around here.

I've just recently switched to a Cingular National using a GAIT SonyEricsson T62u phone. I haven';t had a chance to test the extended calling yet, but I now get calls in areas that the TDMA phone wouldn't work. Mind you, this is by roaming on to ATT, but it is included in my minutes. It just messes with mobile-to-mobile figures when I do that.

One interesting wrinkle in the Detroit area. The GSM coverage for Cingular seems to be a bit thin, so they have this interesting arrangement with ATT. When they are running out of channel space in a thin area, they hand off incoming calls to ATT to handle. Other than producing a strange call record, this is treated as a local call for mobile-to-mobile purposes. I get a 248/FollowMe line on my bill when this happens. Also, they have feature transparency wuith ATT so my text messaging works the same.

Re:Cingular

[WhiteDragon]

I thought the c331t was a TDMA and analog only phone. Phonescoop has more details. It looks like a cool phone though, so it would be cool if they offered it in a GAIT model!

Re:Cingular

[WhiteDragon]

That is cool. I currently have a TDMA phone, with free nationwide roaming. The phone is based out of Springfield, MO, even though I now live in Maryland. This means that ALL my calls are roaming! This weekend, I am going on vacation back to Springfield, and I will be buying the T62U. I hope I can keep the same plan, because the current plans, while having the cool rollover feature, are lacking in other areas such as free wireless internet.

No

[computechnica]

There are still alot of rural areas out west that do not have any service. I doubt some of the areas in the commercials really had service.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

especially in north eastern pennsylvania. though they don't claim to provide service where i'm from there. everytime i go up there my girlfriend complains of the lack of service AS soon as we get to this one hill. frustrating

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention gaping holes in areas surrounded by service. A significant portion of northern Pennsylvania is without decent service by any provider. Go 30 miles in any direction, though, and you'll be in your calling area. The towers are certainly there, but for some reason everyone I've talked to around here claims "well, we don't service there"... so who does?!

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

There are still alot of rural areas out west that do not have any service. I doubt some of the areas in the commercials really had service.

Yeah, but they probably don't have TV either. No harm, no foul. :)

T-Mobile around DC

[zymurgyboy]

I got tired of feeding the beast (Verizon) and I already have one dedicated ad server (tv) so I cut off local phone service and ditched my Verizon wireless phone for T-Mobile.

I love the phone, Sony Ericsson t68i, but I must admit the service doesn't come anywhere near Verizon's. I mostly have to go outside when I'm at home to use my phone. Admittedly, this may have as much to do with the phone as with T-Mobile's tower placement. I get good signal strength everywhere but in my house, and around my small town in some places.

I had the foresight to leave my wife with her Verizon cell phone, so we can get calls in our house. But truthfully, sometimes it's nice not to be reachable.

Most of my friends who have to be reachable at all hours here will tell you that that pretty much makes Verizon the only option around DC.

Isint this a poll question? ;p

[Comsn]

you insensitive clod! my tinfoil hat blocks cell service!

Towers Available

[Rosyna]

I don't get it. Shouldn't something like T-Mobile, AT&T and Cingular all have the same amount of dropped calls when using the same towers? I have T-Mobile but when I go to San Francisco it shows me on a Cingular tower, when I go to detroit or something, I am on the AT&T tower.

Service is not too bad here, mostly indoors

[snake_dad]

But this guy Bubba always stares at my soap, almost as if he wants me to drop it :s

I'm surprised..

[MImeKillEr]

.. Sprint PCS did better than T-Mobile. We had nothing but problems with our Sprint phone and I had absolutely no issues with my VoiceStream (now T-Mobile) phone.

I'd like to see another report, however, that takes cellular coverage issues as well as billing and customer support. I wouldn't be surprised to find Sprint at the bottom of that list.

Verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using Verion here on the East Coast for 2 years. No drop outs. Can drive the PA turnpike(even tunnels) with full signal.

Not a big fan of Verizon, but in my opinion they rock on the East Coast cellphone wise.

--Rob

survey reflects my experience

[mlong]

I used to have alltel and had no end of problems. I'd be driving down a city street and get no service...I'd try to make a call and get a fast busy. I switched to verizon and have had almost no problem. The only time I have a problem is sometimes when I am in a large brick building, but that is to be expected I guess.

Re:survey reflects my experience

[bryanthompson]

i get the fast busy with alltel all the time, plus they'll disconnect me after about 15 minutes. I'd switch, but i'm locked into the contract for another year :( Being only 18, they made me promise to stay for 2 years.

Bad experience with ATT

[vladid]

When I first applied for a cellphone, ATT seemed to have the best deal. But being a foreign student with no credit history at all, they wanted a $600 dollar deposit that I would have gotten back after 6 or 9 months with little interest. A real shame if you ask me.

Sprint however, cleared me within 5 minutes and I am a satisfied customer ever since.

uhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Giving Cingular an above 100 score makes this article complete and utter nonsense.

Cingular and T-Mobile use the same network. They are constantly rated to have the worst reception among all cell phone companies.

Nextel and Verizon are constantly rated as having the best.

However, T-Mo is cheap. Nextel is expensive. It all depends on what you need.

But if you're too poor to pay more than $30/month, don't get a cell phone.

aka - Don't get Cingular or T-Mo!

Re:uhh

[op00to]

Wrong. In NJ, they have their own network that is not part of their GSM network.

Re:uhh

[Anonymous Coward]

Please know what you are speaking of before you type.

With the excection of a small region in the NorthEast, and the soon-to-be deployed GSM network for Cingular nationwide, T-Mobile and Cingular DO NOT use the same network.

T-Mobile was VoiceStream in Texas/Oklahoma and Powertel in the south, then merged to form T-Mobile with Deutch Telecom.

Can you hear me now?

[miketang16]

No.

At least according to those results.

Re:Can you hear me now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Be patient. When the "can you hear me now" guy gets done mapping the coverage over the entire country, some time around 2025 I hear, Sprint will put together a plan to fix things up just fine.

Sprint Feedback from recent trip

[Metroid72]

Using Sprint, this weekend I was in: Detroit Pittsburg New York Washington DC And in all those sites I got the infamous "Signal Faded" (the other end was usually a landline). Are the other carriers as bad as Sprint?

Re:Sprint Feedback from recent trip

[papa248]

Using Sprint, this weekend I was in: Detroit Pittsburg New York Washington DC And in all those sites I got the infamous "Signal Faded" (the other end was usually a landline). Are the other carriers as bad as Sprint?

Nope. I use Nextel, and it would take a miracle to pry my i90 from my hands. I used Sprint PCS phones since I was a Junior in college (roughly 1999) and I hated it.

The handset was OK, but service was atrocious, between Troy (my hometown) and Ann Arbor at Umich.edu, I was lucky to be able to make calls. I thought "Signal Faded/Call Dropped" was the home screen on my phone for a while. Then there were probably a half dozen billing snafus, an finally I was fed up when my last phone, a StarTAC, would refuse to ring (calls went to voicemail) and my voicemail notification would come maybe 48 hours after they were left with me.

I swicthed to Nextel in 2001 since that is what everyone in my company had--plus, they were buying. I've had 3 phones (all upgrades, no failures!) and I couldn't be happier. I pay $54 /month for 1000 peak minutes, and unlimited off-peak and weekends. The only disadvantages is that wireless internet costs an extra $10 which I don't use anyways, and because the phones are higher-power than typically cell phones, the battery usually only lasts me a day with moderate talk time. But for quality and reliability, I can't beat Nextel in the Detroit Metro area.

Prepaid

[Patik]

Prepaid phones are a great resource for those who wish they had a phone for occasional usage (emergencies, quick short calls, etc.) but won't talk enough to justify $30/month. I've found Virgin Mobile to offer the best rates. You have to add $20 every 90 days, which works out to $7/month if you never use it (or use up to about a half hour a month). You can add money on their website, through the phone itself, or by buying a card at a store. The balance also carries over until you cancel the service. I've never had to add any more than the minimum, and I feel like I've adequate usage out of it. It's .25/min, which seems costly but if I had a $30/month plan I'd still only use it 30-60 minutes, and I'd be pay three times per minute when you average it out. Free text messages (10 cents to send) are very convenient.

For the 7 months I've had it the service has been great, phone has worked fine, and everything has run smoothly.

Since then I've convinced three people close to me to get their own. They, too, disregarded cell phones because of the daunting costs, but have found the occasional usage quite convenient.

Re:Prepaid

[perly-king-69]

In the UK there was a massive uptake in prepaid mobiles a few years ago with prices as low as 15GBP

Problem was, the networks were making no money on them - prices are now around 70GBP for the handsets + a minimum spend

Re:Prepaid

[tetranz]

Yes, prepaid can be handy. I got a Verizon prepay for emergencies about three years ago when the minimum payment was $15 per 60 days or about $7.50 per month. Once everyone was hooked, the minimum became $20 and then $30 per 60 days. I couldn't find anything better at the time so I've had it ever since and now have several hundred dollars and a ridiculous number of minutes available. If I'm a day late recharging it, all minutes disappear. I must check out Virgin.

Re:Prepaid

[Patik]

If I'm a day late recharging it, all minutes disappear.

That's ridiculous. Virgin gives you 60 days after your last recharge date before they cancel your account. All you have to do is call their 1-800 number to get back online. They also frequently have specials ($30 instant rebate on phones, get $5 for signing up, free headset, etc.), usually a few of them at a time. I bought mine through their website, but they also carry the same deals at Best Buy and (I think) Target.

Re:Prepaid

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a prepaid cingular phone, which is $.35 a minute Monday to Friday, between 7am and 9pm, then it's $.10 a minute all the other time. Personally it's the best prepaid deal I've found, cheapist in the long run, mainly if you work nights and sleep during the day, so most your calls are during the $.10 range.

Sprint PCS and weird reception problem

[buckeyeguy]

I've been on Sprint for about 4 years now... not sure why, I barely use the damn thing anymore. But one odd problem pops up; when my dad calls me from his cordless phone at home (one of those 2GHz thingies), the noice-cancelling on each phone seems to be out of sync with the other, and I get nothing but talk-(drop)-talk-(drop)-talk.... any ideas on that one?

Other cell-phone fun... I bought one partially for emergency use while I'm traveling, but good luck getting a signal if you drive to most western US National Parks (esp. Mt. Rushmore and the Badlands)... even analog goes away out there.

Verizon / Nextel / Sprint

[weave]

I've driven all over the southwest with a friend of mine. I have Verizon, my work phone is Nextel, and he has Sprint PCS. Coverage wise, it was Verizon by far, then Nextel, then that POS Sprint. Even in dense areas like - ah, er, Phoenix -- he often had trouble getting a decent signal.

Then there's the entire southeast quadrant of New Mexico. All around Carlsbad, Roswell, and basically anywhere east of I-25 was a complete dead zone for Nextel and Sprint. Verizon was great except for a few isolated areas between some mountains.

Sprint's "all digital" shtick is supposed to be a selling point, but it's actually a disadvantage. If there's no digital signal, I'd much rather fall back to analog (plus not have to pay roaming charges) than have no service at all.

One more thing, modern cell phones pretty much suck. I've had a startac 7868W for years now, works like a champ, great sound quality, and goes ages on a charge. It's basically a very good telephone. OK, so it doesn't have solitaire or allow me to snap photos inside of locker rooms. I'd rather just have a good phone and reliable dependable phone service.

Re:Verizon / Nextel / Sprint

[Aetrix]

I agree with your analysis. I went on a road trip from Chicago, IL to Tucson, AZ with my sister. I had Verizon, she had T-mobile. I had coverage in the most remote, god-fosaken areas of the southwest. She barely had coverage on major highways.

Verizon's coverage rocks.

Re:Verizon / Nextel / Sprint

[arkane1234]

Sprint's "all digital" shtick is supposed to be a selling point, but it's actually a disadvantage. If there's no digital signal, I'd much rather fall back to analog (plus not have to pay roaming charges) than have no service at all.

I have a (company-owned) Sprint SCP4900 dual-band digital phone through Sprint PCS, and I get analog when I get outside of their digital network.

Re:Verizon / Nextel / Sprint

[weave]

I had coverage in the most remote, god-fosaken areas of the southwest.

And if you think about it, that's what really counts. If you're out in the middle of nowhere and stranded, having a signal could be a real life saver. I've done a lot of hiking in remote areas of the southwest and almost always had a verizon signal. If not, I could usually just walk up to the top of some hill or mountain (not always that easy I admit) and grab one!

Re:Verizon / Nextel / Sprint

[uslinux.net]

If Sprint is "all digital", they're all "all digital" now. TDMA, GSM, CDMA... they're all digital protocols, and all the providers use one of them.

Dual band Sprint phones, by the way, support 900MHz AMP (analog), as well as 1800 and 1900MHz CDMA. They don't, however, work on TDMA networks (which is the gist of your comment).

Re:Verizon / Nextel / Sprint

[Zeriel]

I have to wholly agree with the StarTAC props... My 7654 is fantastically robust, goes a week on a charge while constantly on, and nearly always manages to find a signal no matter where I go with it.

Comments about AT&T

[Infernon]

Their customer service is actually pretty good, at least from what I've experienced. The problem that I have with them is that they're coverage areas on the GSM network aren't good at all and that they're not really getting much better.

True

[Andy Dodd]

That's part of why Verizon rocks.

But assuming that one chooses the optimum plan for a given provider, Verizon is significantly more expensive per minute - With other providers, you get more minutes for the same price.

Nonetheless, minutes aren't everything. Having tons of minutes is worthless when you waste them due to dropped calls or can't use them because you're roaming. Per-minute, Verizon is much more expensive, but they are worth every penny.

Re:True

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, Dodd. I distinctly remember you defending PCS for Ithaca a while back.

Anyway, shut up.

-the band

Re:True

[Xrkun]

Yeah I agree. The best part was when Cingular ran a campaign that offered all these extra weekend and evening minutes. It was funny because they offered more minutes than you could possibly use during the weekend and evenings. As if nobody ever slept or something. Most cellular companies use tactics like that to try and convince the regular people that they are getting a better value when in fact they are not. My only gripe with Verizon so far is that their "Off peak" minutes are from like 9pm to 7am.

maybe

[Datasage]

Verizon may be best for the entire country, but not best for every area. When i was choosing a cellular provider i did a bit of shopping around. sometimes by overhearing other customers talking to the guy at the counter about thier problems. Most of them were compaining about the quality of verizon's service. In the end i choose t-mobile.

Quality of service is not the only reason why i would choose a provider.

GSM vs CDMA: Because we in the US always have to be incompatible with the rest of the world we create the cdma standard. Generally i have found that the cdma based networks cant send sms outside of thier network or to very few others. while t-mobile to many of the networks around the world. T-mobile also can be used on many of the networks around the work, but you pay a premium price to do so (anywhere from $1-5 per minute). But if you were in those countries, it would be rather easy to just get a sim card for a local network. The last reason i like gsm over cdma, i can upgrade my handset by just moving the sim card to another phone, no programing needed.

Re:maybe

[uslinux.net]

"The last reason i like gsm over cdma, i can upgrade my handset by just moving the sim card to another phone, no programing needed."

Not necessarily true. If your handset is not quad-band, it won't work. The GSM protocol in the US is, of course, different than the european GSM, so simply changing the SIM won't do it.

Incidentally, CDMA is a far-superior protocol to TDMA. CDMA networks can carry far more people, normally use less power, and are clearer. Right now they're the Betamax os the cellular industry. It will be interesting to see if they or their cousins (SCDMA or WCDMA) take off.

Re:maybe

[tjb]

CDMA is super-cool tech, but it has some issues. The biggest one being that the cell tower needs to receive the exact same energy from every handset - if the power-control on the handsets malfunctions, the whole cell goes down. In fact, this is *the* limiting issue for CDMA - even with decent power control, its still not perfect. If it was perfect, a generic CDMA tower capable of supporting x Walsh Functions* could support x users all on the same band within an area limited only by output signal power, multipath-delay (though Qualcomm's CDMA implementation uses a RAKE Receiver which redues the effects of multipathing), and interfering noise (white or otherwise). And yes, x could go to infinity.

Anyway, despite the problems with power-control, China and Europe are adopting their own versions of CDMA for 3G services.

*walsh functions are orthogonal - by modulating the output signal by the assigned walsh function (different for every transmitter) and then scrambling the resultant signal by a pseudo-random sequence (to improve the average PSD), all of the signals are orthogonal to each other and do not interfere as long as the power is exactly the same for all of them (power differences screw up the orthogonality).

Suncom rules

[freeefalln]

I had Alltel for two years and after tons of billing mistakes and horrible coverage in the Richmond, VA area. I went wtih SunCom/ AT&T. My plan is amazing. 60/month gets me unlimited calling with no roaming. its awesome!

And if you're sick of your provider...

[daveschroeder]

...Wireless Local Number Portability (LNP), meaning you can change to another wireless provider in your service area while keeping the same telephone number, goes into effect November 24, 2003:

FCC press release

Re:And if you're sick of your provider...

[ChrisCampbell47]

...Wireless Local Number Portability (LNP), meaning you can change to another wireless provider in your service area while keeping the same telephone number, goes into effect November 24, 2003.

And you're a fool if you call in on that day, that week, or even anytime this year expecting a smooth transition of your phone to a new carrier. If you do think it should work fine, I have a copy of Windows 1.0 to sell you.

Let everyone else bleed all over the place -- wait until spring 2004.

Customer Service??

[Anonymous Coward]

Alltel the worst uses Verizons network in most places and Verizon uses Alltels wherever there is Alltel AFAIK so I dont see how one can be the worst and one the best..

Sprint call quality etc is ok but has anbody ever tried to use Sprints customer service? I gave up Sprint just because they are out to screw you and the thick cust service people have no clue and talk thru their asses..

I'd wait until November....

[numbski]

So you can keep your phone number when you switch. Just a thought.

Re:I'd wait until November....

[Misch]

My phone number is in a different area code. I'd really prefer to have a local number.

Re:I'd wait until November....

[Nurgled]

Hmmm. Mobile phone numbers in the US have area codes? That's wacky.

Here in the UK, all you can tell from the dialling code is what telco the number is run by, and now that contract (rather than pre-pay) phones are gaining popularity, even that isn't true anymore as people regularly transfer their numbers between telcos.

Re:I'd wait until November....

[drunk_as_in_beer]

Mobile phone numbers in the US have area codes? That's wacky.

Yes, they have area codes. If someone in the area code is calling your cell phone, it is a local call for them (thus costs nothing). How does this work in the UK? Is calling a cell phone (from a land line) always free?

Re:I'd wait until November....

[Gordonjcp]

No. Local calls in the UK aren't free. They usually only cost about 1p/minute though. Calling a mobile depends on what mobile network and landline network, but is usually a few pence per minute. Not free, but pretty cheap.

Don't use Sprint!

[rsheridan6]

Unless you like

1. roaming charges in a major metropolitan area
2. incompetent customer service people who will send your bill to the wrong place no matter how many times you tell them to correct your address
3. a web site that doesn't work half the time
4. sneaky tricks to lock you into a service agreement for a year. Your phone breaks? You better get a new one because you have to keep paying the bill, regardless of whether you actually have a working phone. Got a new phone? You have to sign on for another yearlong contract. Tried a new, cheaper plan? You signed yourself on for a year without even knowing it. Lost your job, like so many others in recent years? This is one bill you won't be able to cut, at least not without the credit bureaus hearing about it.

Re:Don't use Sprint!

[whatch durrin]

On the contract extension subject...

I'd had my Sprint phone for several months, when I discovered that I needed to up my plan (I was using too many minutes). I called Sprint and the CSR assured me that upgrading would not extend my contract. I double-checked, and told them I would not up the plan if it extended my contract. I was told it wouldn't, so I upgraded.

When it came time for my contract to expire, I called Sprint to verify that they kept my original contract date, not the date I changed my plan. They hadn't. I told the CSR what happened, and they agreed to honor my original contract date. Having worked call centers before, I asked the CSR to make a note in my account showing my correct contract ending date, which they said they did.

Right before I changed providers, I called Sprint one more time to make sure they recognized the correct date. I had to go through the same shit with the CSR that I had the time before. This time, they said they had placed a note in my account of the correct contract ending date. I also asked when I should terminate my service - anytime after the contract was up, before the contract was up, etc. I wanted to make sure my last bill was for when the phone was actually used, not after I had new service. The CSR said I could terminate any time after the contract and it would be pro-rated.

I got my new service and went to terminate the Sprint service, and was greeted, yet again, with a CSR ignorant of my correct contract ending date. I argued for 30 minutes and finally got the contract date ironed out. Then I was transferred to the Terminations (?) department. I was then told that my bill couldn't be pro-rated, but that I would have to pay for the next month, regardless of whether I used the phone or not. I was tired of arguing and relented, probably like most.

Fuck Sprint.

Re:ahh..

[Anonymous Coward]

Aww, the long lost art of epic trolling! Here's a +1 Offtopic pseudomod.

Etiquette

[div_2n]

Just as with anything else, there is (or should be) etiquette for use. Sometimes it takes quite a while for the social norms to develop. Smokers still seem to think it is and should be acceptable for them to blow smoke right in a non-smokers breathing area. I don't think too many people would argue it is ok to have sex in public (can't wait for responses to that).

The point is that social norms will develop. It will probably take too long (as in smoking) so establishments will probably have no cell phone policies except in special areas. This makes sense anyway as phone conversations tend to be louder than normal conversation. Whenever I get a cell phone call in a public place I always move to a point where I am out of the way and talk just like I was having a conversation with someone right next to me.

Just as a car shouldn't be driven just anywhere (a neighbors lawn), a cell phone shouldn't be used anywhere and anytime. For example, answering a call while your girlfriend is yelling at you is likely to get it broken upside your head. Strangely if they go down while you are actually ON the phone it is ok. Go figure.

Re:Etiquette

[selderrr]

umpf... i seriously doubt that you're right on this. Social norms are last in the priority line. as soon as personal interest is involved (i.e. cash) people will do as they please.

And then there's the issue of 79.14% of all people being either babies or total morons with no manners. You can't imagine how popular farting on the bus still is. Just when I reach the age where I can control my own flatulence, I put a son on the world who seems to have the same bowels as me. He looks like an angel but farts like a rocket, full bus or empty bus. Social skillz ? Suuuuuure dude...

Re:Etiquette

[arkane1234]

Smokers still seem to think it is and should be acceptable for them to blow smoke right in a non-smokers breathing area.

Uhh.. dude, you need new friends. I (and my many friends who do smoke) take great pains not to blow smoke at a person, out of respect. (much less it's just rude)

So, I'd recommend you relocate to a new circle of friends. Maybe look around for more respectful mates.

Re:Etiquette

[div_2n]

I meant more in general -- bars and such. Recently near where I live a smoking ban was passed for all public places including bars. I have literally heard "smoking is my right if I want to in a bar."

I guess their right to smoke supercedes my right to breathe. But the previous comment really wasn't meant to be about smoking nor a troll for comments on it.

Re:Etiquette

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that social norms will develop. It will probably take too long (as in smoking) so establishments will probably have no cell phone policies except in special areas.

Starting with the movie theaters...

The joys of Verizon

[twoallbeefpatties]

Funny, after putting up with their dreadfully shitty DSL service, and waiting around for help with their dreadfully shitty phone service, who'da thought they'd be able to do something right?

...Right?

Light and Fluffy results...

[kevlar]

I have T-Mobile in Boston. 4 out of 5 calls are dropped, especially while in a moving vehicle. I would also say that 2/3 times that I want to make a call, I have no service at all. And this is in a major city!!!

Now this report has T-Mobile with a relatively high score. What a load of bs.

Re:Light and Fluffy results...

[Gamma]

Just goes to show that it differs where you are. I have T-Mobile in Indianapolis. 1 out of 20 calls are dropped, even when driving from downtown to the suburbs. I would say that I have service everywhere I go except the deep insides of the hospital I work at and in underground parking garages. Sure, their coverage might not be as good as Verizon's, but, I'm willing to not have coverage in the basement at my desk and pay less for more minutes and services.

Re:Light and Fluffy results...

[mczeke]

Word!

Verizon is king

[MassD]

I have VZW and many associates have AT&T, some Sprint, some T-Mobile... Here in northern Mass... Verizon has the best coverage, by far, and the best service. I have a plan that is perfect, and while it costs more... you get what you pay for, right? I have a Moto T720... and recently, the thing wouldn't want to charge anymore and started to act sluggish. I brought the thing in to the VW service desk... guy took a quick look at it and told me that he'll just give me a new phone. No charge (I don't get insurance on it).. Not too long ago, they replaced the screen and keypad on my old StarTac free of charge as well. Best coverage of any provider, good, reliable service... okay in my book.

Surprised people like Verizon

[CrazyTalk]

I had a Verizon cell phone, and eventually had to dump it. I lived in a Verizon "dead zone" where within about two block of my house (I live in a major city!) there was no Verizon service at all. Everyone else I know with a Verizon phone had the same problem in my neighborhood. Once I switched to AT&T, everything was fine. Guess that annoying "Can you hear me now " guy was too busy hanging out at the beach to stop by a place where people actually live.

only decent provider in my area is verizon

[*weasel]

i got my first cell supplied by the consulting company i was working for a few years back - back when i thought i didn't need a cell phone.
(i'm still pretty sure i don't -need- one - but i doubt i'll go without again, excepting post-holocaust)

anyway, it was verizon, and i never had a problem (se MI: detroit and 'burbs.)

my friends/family have tried all sorts of alternate providers. they get crappy service, dead zones, dropped calls, weird roaming locations, bizzare stuff. inevitably when they switch - those that pick verizon swear by the difference. i've never known any differently, but they -rave- about the difference.
as my buddy puts it: Sprint sucked, Cingular sucked, Verizon just works.

and the price is par for the course.

Tower Location

[Duckz]

This site does most of the work for you.
http://www.berkana.com/tower.php3

Todd

Re:Tower Location

[CuriousGeorge113]

Just so you know, most wireless companies don't actually own their towers, they just rent space on them. So searching for Verizon Wireless or AT&T probably won't produce very good results (except Nextel, they own their towers).

Try searching for the tower company (EX: Crown Communications carries Verizon in SW PA) and you'll get better results.

Re:Tower Location

[Duckz]

In Mississippi, where I'm at, Bellsouth and Cellular south owns most of the towers in the state. Im a cellular south customer and so it's easy to use that link to find their towers, since their the owners.

Another thing to realize, is this doesnt carry all towers, just those high enough that they have to be registered with the FCC so the FAA can avoid them.

BTW, for any Mississippians, I'd had cellular south for a number of years and they do a swell job of coverage in rural areas where as some of the big timers don't. Sometimes it's better to go local if you need good local coverage. Cellular south seems to know where to invest it's money, putting towers at home.

I don't work for cellular south, I'm just a very satisified customer.

--
Todd

Don't get AT&T in LA!....

[PincheGab]

That's all I know about L.A. cell service. In finding out which provider to switch to from AT&T, I ran into this ePinions page. Unlike this awful and non-informative article, the ePinions page divides ratings by territory or metro area. Use something like this when choosing a cell service provider, as providers DO vary in service depending on the location.

Nokia 6360?

[Rai]

You mean the Nokia 6340i. That's the other GAIT phone.

Re:Nokia 6360?

[WhiteDragon]

yes that is correct. Sorry about that :-)

Sprint PCS

[Rudy Rodarte]

I've had Sprint since 2000. The only place I had trouble was in my old apartment. Since my building was right beside another one, I got nothing inside. If I wanted to talk to someone, I had to sit next to the window and hope for the best. Since I moved to another apartment with line-o-sight to the freeway, things are a lot better.

Central ME cell service is terrible

[blueworm]

All Cell service in central Maine (and probably northern too) is complete crap, it doesn't matter what kind of plan you've got if you don't live in Bangor or Portland.

Dumb article...

[blixel]

The "best" cell phone service is simply which ever service works best for any given person. I've had Sprint PCS for 18 months and (Orlando/Daytona, FL area) I'm perfectly happy with it. The price is right and the coverage and quality of service is impeccable. So I have no desire to roll the dice with another provider.

No doubt there are going to be others in this same area who will say their Sprint PCS service sucks. That it costs too much and that their coverage is horrible. Thus proving my point.

How bad is last place.

[gelfling]

They make last place sound pretty good with a 93. How fucked up is that?

I'm an AT&T customer and if that's a 100 e.g. pretty good then naked snow virgins are gonna feed me grapes in hell.

I have had every extra service turned off because they simply don't work. For example no voicemail. After 3 months of trying to get it to work. I finally just had them shut it off. Messages could never be retrieved w/o operator intervention. Similarly paging, text messaging both never functioned I could neither send nor receive anything. Caller ID does not work and the stored call logs are all blank all of the time. So again, I had them simply shut it off. The minutes counter on the phone and on each call did not work. It always reported zero. Zap. gone.

PCS?

[Andy Dodd]

Um, I have NEVER defended Sprint PCS in my life. Sprint PCS sucks.

Hell, until my junior or senior year at Cornell, Sprint didn't even HAVE service in Ithaca for anyone to defend.

Re:PCS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go away, Chad.

As a T-Mobile user....

[dmorin]

I have to say that I've been tolerant of their poor coverage, primarily because the rest of plan is so simple. I've been with them for ages (Omnipoint->Voicestream->TMobile) and never wanted to give up my phone number. My wife had Verizon, but when her contract was up we put her on TMobile too in order to get the family plan. But scores like this, coupled with the new legislation to let us take our phone numbers elsewhere, will probably have me switching in the near future.

Doesn't match my observations

[Phreakiture]

I use Sprint PCS, using a 3G phone. It works very well.

My wife uses Sprint PCS using a 2G phone. It works very poorly, with frequent signal drops.

My father uses Verizon Wireless. I get a signal in many places where he does not, and I am surprised his phone hasn't become a projectile yet.

Several of my co-workers use NEXTEL (company issued). They had to install a signal booster just to get the signal into the building. Other Verizon and Sprint users do not have such a need (no, the booster cannot help Verizon or Sprint--Verizon and Sprint use different frequencies than NEXTEL).

My mother uses U.S. Cellular (I noticed they aren't in the article). Her phone is homed in Talahassee, FL, even though she lives in upstate NY (where all of these figures are drawn from) now. Her service seems to be relatively okay, but not great.

My father-in-law uses AT&T. He lives in Tulsa, OK, and when he visits here, his service positively sucks rocks.

For that matter, when I visit him, his service positively sucks rocks. Mine still works fine in Tulsa.

I suspect the worst figures on SprintPCS, which probably clobbered their overall figures, were from NYC and other major metros. They don't seem to do as well there as in slightly smaller metros like Buffalo or smaller. I think it is a capacity problem.

Re:Doesn't match my observations

[zarqman]

could you detail which specific phones you and your wife have? and if either of you have had any other models in the past with sprint that were better or worse?

i've got a sprint 2g phone now and it's alright, but not stellar. have been debating whether to get a 3g phone with them or to jump to another provider, most likely verizon.

i wonder if merely moving to any 3g phone would improve things or whether limiting it a specific model or two would help more. i've got an lg-5250 now.

Re:FROST PISS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, that's gotta hurt. I salute you, fellow first post troll; no suffering will keep us from our goals! Oh, and by the way... YOU FAIL IT!

Love Sprint, Hate Nextel

[xrayspx]

My service with SprintPCS has always been great, I travel a bit down the eastern seaboard and it's always good. My (corporate policy) Nextel phone doesn't even work at my desk.

Nextel is going the Extra Mile and screwing with their towers to provide better signal strength to our building, but that was a promise from two months ago, that we haven't seen the fruits of.

I've yet to meet someone who says "Yeah, my Nextel? This thing is GREAT!" the way I could about my StarTac with Sprint.

My service SUCKS, and I have a NEXTEL

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wanted to share my info and how bad they suck, I live about 5 miles from Chicago.

Everyone has bad experiences with ATT

[acomj]

I think everyone I know whos had ATT and had to deal with customer service knows ATTs is terrible uless you want to upgrade to a more expensive plan.

A friend is stuck with ATT for a few more months. Since its is only phone line I can tell you talking to him is a chore (the phone is always dropping out )

Avoid Avoid!

Any info on Madison, WI service?

[Stalus]

I'm about to move to Madison, WI and wonder if anyone that happens upon this has any experience with cell service there. I would prefer a bluetooth phone and a reasonable data plan, but so far I get the feeling that may not happen - at least if the T608 doesn't come out for Sprint. T-Mobile claims service coverage there, but doesn't offer phone numbers that are local to the area. Any suggestions?

Re:Any info on Madison, WI service?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have SprintPCS, and I don't really like it. Even though I'll be in a signal-strong area, I will lose calls when I switch towers, and the sound quality on most calls is a complete joke (Have tried this with four different phones). On top of that, Sprint customer service is impossible to work with. They messed up my name several times. I tried to have them correct it, but, each time I did, my PCS Vision service would flake out. Eventually, I gave up when they were only spelling my first name incorrectly. It wasn't that big a loss each time, anyway, as PCS Vision is a terrible data service. It's slow, sparsely updated, and unreliable.

Most people with Verizon around here seem to be pretty happy. I will find out, as soon as I can take my number with me.

GSM the disease

[Zane Edwards]

I am going to troll for a moment just because the business practices of the phone companies is going to bite them back. After reading some posts here, I realized that GSM is worthless technology that only is good for plastic toys. I got ATT service because I wanted a cool phone. I got it, along with crappy GSM service, where I couldn't use my phone at home or at work. The entire north side of Chicago, my reception would have little or no service. Yet I still had to pay them money and coudnt get out of my contract. Yet if I didn't pay my bill, they would cut off my service. So, they would not even change my phone. My phone bill is about $150 a month (for 2 phones) which now, they get $10 a month because I suspended my service and went back to Cingular on my good old trusty nokia phone.

Re:GSM the disease

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you blaming GSM, Cingular is GSM too

Re:GSM the disease

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF are you talking about? I just got back from Chicago last month... nearly EVERYWHERE in the city -- even inside elevators downtown -- my phone (Samsung R225m from T-Mobile, which uses GSM) had full service. My hotel was in Evanston (isn't that "northern" chicago?) and i had no trouble getting a signal there, either.

BTW, Cingular is GSM, too!

AT&T Wireless

[applefan]

I have been with AT&T for about 3 years and I like the service. The service is slightly overpriced but I am willing to pay a little extra for not having any dropped phone calls. It is perfect for anyone who travels a lot and goes in and out of cell zones. My friends have cingular and nextel, When they go up to my cottage in Northern Michigan, they can not place phone calls because there is no service up there.

I don't WANT "best," I want GOOD.

[dpbsmith]

Big deal, so Verizon's the best of a bad bunch. Let's see some ratings on an absolute scale.

What do I want from a cell phone? I want it to just work.

Every time I contacted Verizon regarding problems, they implied it was because I had one of those "old" analog phones. So I bought a spiffy new digital tri-mode phone and digital service.

And it still acts weird. People still call me at times when my phone is powered on and showing five signal bars, and get sent to voice mail. And it can take hours for my phone to tell me that I have voice mail.

And sometimes it beeps for no reason at all and I can't figure out why and Verizon's customer service can't tell me.

And if I'm actually walking around with the phone, I hear little bits of garble as if I were briefly underwater--I suppose it's decided to change what tower it's talking to, for no reason.

And when I was on a trip, every time I turned it on, the first call I made would not go through--I'd get a recorded message to the effect that "this mobile unit is not authorized in this area." But the second (and subsequent) phone calls would go through fine. Why? Customer service couldn't tell me.

And all my conversations are strange, because--something nobody bothered to mentioned to me--unlike analog cell phones, which work in real time, the digital phones for some unfathomable reason incorporate a split-second delay of nearly half a second in each direction.

And the thing has a complex, pesky, homebrew user interface that takes me back to the days of character-oriented DOS programs which all had their own UI conventions.

And the "end call" button is also the "power off" button so if you don't have a good sense of timing you can turn the thing off when you just meant to end the call.

And the maps they give you showing where cell service is supposed to exist are just jokes. The coverage areas look like slice of American cheese, but the reality is more like Swiss cheese.

Like so much high-tech gear, it doesn't really work and nobody cares.

Tmobile had a computer coverage map

[acomj]

I remember in a TMobile store the sales guy pulled up a map of my home area coverage on the sales computer. The coverage wasn't good. He sugested I try some other provider (I respect that alot). Ask if you can see a coverage map when you go to buy, if your nice they might show it to you..

Re:Tmobile had a computer coverage map

[AndroidCat]

I was metamoding your post and just had to comment!

The coverage wasn't good. He sugested I try some other provider (I respect that alot).

Wow! I have no idea about TMobile, but that guy is golden! Rather than sell you crappy service that you would have been unhappy about, he did the right thing by you. You may not have bought service from them that time, but I bet you'll think about them the next time. Sadly, this being the world of insufficient light, he probably got reamed by a short-sighted manager.

Ah well, back to metamoding...

UK - no top up required on prepay.

[Moderation abuser]

I've only just used up the original 25 on my prepay mobile. That's after 3 years. Obviously I don't use it all that much for calls or texts.

In fact, prepay sims are being used in GSM enabled devices like alarms.
e.g.
http://www.bikealarms.co.uk/trackin g.htm

You can get same for cars and houses as well, obviously. I think they have to make use of the device once every 6 months just to keep the account active, but other than that, you're only talking a few quid a year.

There must be a lack of competition in the mobile market in the US if they can still get away with monthly charges even on prepay mobiles.

Re:UK - no top up required on prepay.

[Nurgled]

Well, it appears that all of the UK mobile telcos are trying to phase out prepay these days. My theory is that they came up with the prepay idea because it's the only way they could get all of the teens into it at the time, but now those teens have grown up so they can be tempted with a contract in exchange for cheaper calls, which are actually artificially cheaper because they actually increased the prepay tarrifs.

Add to that the fact that it's not just teenagers madly buying up mobile phones these days and the prepay model doesn't seem so attractive anymore. I've still got my first prepay SIM although I just recently changed phones. The only real reason I'm still with Orange is that I don't want to change my number. Fortunately I use my phone so infrequently that their recent tarrif increase hasn't hit me very hard.

These Results are No Lie

[hipster_doofus]

I've been with Verizon Wireless for some time now, and I must say that they are hands-down the best wireless provider out there.

First of all, I live in a decent-sized city, but I often end up travelling out through the country to get various places around here. Even out in the middle of nowhere, I'm able to at least get a good-quality analog signal on my phone (I currently have the Kyocera 7135 smartphone, which is awesome).

As far as price goes, Verizon may be a bit higher than others, but you definitely get what you pay for. My current plan gives me 500 anytime minutes, unlimited nights and weekends, plus 1000 mobile-to-mobile minutes to talk to Verizon customers - all for $50/month (~$60 with taxes). Plus, all of the minutes are nationwide. I make full use of text messaging, and mobile web, and both of these services are nearly flawless.

Verizon's customer service is also top-notch. I've had to call a couple of times with a billing problem and both times, I've gotten more of a discount than I've asked for. One time, they even told me that I could switch to another plan which would give me more minutes for less money. Now that's something that definitely wasn't in their interest.

I don't mean to sound like Verizon's shill, but I really do recommend their service to anyone looking for a cell phone provider.

sometimes, there are other considerations though..

[Mobster75]

Sometimes, it's not possible to just select a network provider based on who's got the best coverage...

I travel a couple times a year to Europe, and for me, having a phone that will work both here in the US and in Europe is a big deal. So, tri-band GSM is the only way for me to go, which means, here in the US I only have one choice.... T-Mobile. (When I'm abroad, I have a prepaid local SIM card, so I'm not paying crazy international roaming)

That being said, T-Mobile doesn't seem so bad to me... I used to have Verizon some years back w/ their dual digital/analog Qualcomm phone and that worked nicely. The fallback feature was nice.. But since I originally signed up with OmniPoint (then bought out by VoiceStream, then T-Mobile), the service in the Northeast (Boston) has gotten much better and the customer service folks are really helpful (Couple years back, when I called up to check on GSM coverage in the western US, the rep suggested I change my plan to a new plan for the same price but twice as many minutes!). I've never had a screwed up billing issue either.

But again, everyone has their own criteria by which they measure their provider. I don't think all the bells and whistles matter either... I never play the cheesy little games included in my Samsung S105, and its painful to use AIM on a phone or browse the net. Just basic phone service and text messaging is all I use..

You are violating Sprint's TOS

[JasonUCF]

Read closely on their Vision website -- using a USB cable with the phone (instead of their 'PCS Connection Card') is a definite no-no.

Enjoy your service while it lasts, eventually you'll get a phonecall from Sprint saying 'Mr. So and So, you have three options, we can cancel your vision outright, you can purchase a monthly service plan (20MB for $$, 40MB for $$$, etc) for business connections, or you can pay a per kilobyte charge on your data.

reference 1 reference 2

Re:You are violating Sprint's TOS

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, but you won't get caught unless you d/l gigs a month...something most people don't do.

Has anyone actually ever take five different phones around and used them to compare?

I did this late last year with:

Sprint
AT&T
Verizon
T-Mobile
Nextel

I really wanted to know what worked best.
I used common model phones, so as to eliminate that as an issue.

Sprint - good overall coverage, some missing spots. Rarely got the network busy.

AT&T - good coverage, but over-saturated
network...lots of "network busy" messages.

Verizon - poor coverage, even at major airports

T-Mobile - Very spotty coverage, unless in metro area.

Nextel - Good in metro areas, spotty in outlying areas.

Overall, Sprint was the best of the lot in terms of coverage. Also, they have the best plans pricewise.

More importantly, voice quality is excellent on Sprint, at least in my testing.

I think Sprint has issue because their cust. svc. isn't the best. But that's because they have a certain SLA for cust. svc. and stick to it.

Again, your mileage may vary, but I was curious and thought this was the way to test it. I expected Verizon to be a lot better, and it wasn't. I expected AT&T to be poor (based on using it 3 years ago), and it (still) was.
Nextel was actually better than expected, but voice quaility was iffy. T-Mobile is.....well, only good for Starbucks wi-fi hotspots. I expected Sprint to be decent, but was surprised how much better it was compared to the others.

Re:You are violating Sprint's TOS

[CuriousGeorge113]

uh, but you won't get caught unless you d/l gigs a month...something most people don't do.
Or you admit to doing it publicly on Slashdot and a Sprint rep just happens to stroll through . . .

Useless information.

[mrtrumbe]

This article is useless to most cellphone users. Why? Because quality of service in one area gives little indication of the quality of service in another.

As an example, I've personally had two carriers which I've used in three locales. The carriers were Cellular-One (now defunct, or absorbed by another carrier) and SprintPCS (my current carrier). The locales were Chicago, lower Michigan and the Upper Penninsula of Michigan.

Sprint has great service in the Chicago area (and it has gotten consistently better over the last few years). It has spotty service in lower Michigan (in the Ann Arbor area I had many dropped calls and lots of static). And SprintPCS service is non-existant in the U.P.

Cellular One (at the time), had great service in the U.P. (in fact, it was the only carrier that had near complete coverage). A little static, but dropped calls were few and far between unless you were on the highway. Lower Michigan had Cellular One service about equivilent to Sprint's. And Chicago service wasn't great (lots of dropped calls in some areas, esp. in buildings).

This leads me to ask the following questions:

1. How was this survey conducted? Was it nationwide? Is there a breakdown available by region?
2. If not, is this survey really worth anything? If the quality of SprintPCS service is high as a national average relative to your local area, you wouldn't know from this survey.
3. Customer support and network uptime are as (more?) important to me as signal strength. (I'd rather have a little static all the time, than network outages. And I'd better be able to get competent support, or I won't even bother with a company.) Is there a survey rating these aspects of a carrier?

I find this survey to be of little use. I'm much more interested in my locale, how carriers in my area compare, and wether or not they are backed by a company that knows how to treat customers. Publish those results please!

Taft

It's a tool

[gidds]

And like any tool, it can be used or misused. Please don't think that there's no point in getting one unless you behave like those kids. It's not just for those very occasional must-haves; there are lots of nice-to-haves that you might discover if you got one. But of course, you may prefer not to have one, which is fine too.

Personally, I'm very pleased with my mobile phone (as we call 'em over here); I don't spend hours with it glued to my ear, and I've never revealed the number to anyone at work so all the (rare) calls I get are welcome. I use the vibrating alert in conjunction with a quiet and unobtrusive ringtone, and I don't shout into it, so I don't disturb people. But many times it's been extremely useful for things like travel problems (delays or getting lost), co-ordinating shopping, or simply contacting people when I'm away from a landline. I've even used it to surreptitiously signal someone (giving 3 rings) when to make a 'surprise' call to wish someone happy birthday! And of course I don't just use it for voice calls - in conjunction with my palmtop, it's invaluable for keeping up with email and CIX messages when I'm away from home. (Got to maintain my geek cred somehow...)

My Experiance in Silly Cone Valley

[mycal]

Sprint, best sound quality, as long as you have a good signal, spotty coverage outside the major citys and freeways.

AT&T, worst sound quality, TDMA, very good coverage even in the fringes.

Cingular, ok sound quality if you can find a signal, worse coverage than sprint.

T-Mobile - you mean you can find a signal with this service somewhere? Maybe if your a teen ager in a big city and never leave.

Nextel - Haven't used it, most people I know that have say its OK with decent coverage.

Verizon - As good or better coverage (with a tri-band phone) as AT&T. Decent voice quality but not quite as good as sprint. I'd rate this as the best overall quality and coverage.

How's MY cell service?

[Lost Engineer]

In a word: crappy. I have Sprint PCS (not this fancy vision stuff) and I can't even receive calls in my house. Not to mention, my phone cuts out on the way to and from work no less than 3 times. Customer service? Yeah right. Voice quality? I sometimes understand people. I have to say though, at least they're better than the local telco, who told me they couldnt get a phone line to my house due to "not having enough cables."

Don't buy Sprint

[Cap'n enigma]

My wife and daughters all use Sprint, because it offered unlimited Sprint to Sprint minutes, meaning they could talk to each other all they wanted without using up their allotted minutes. Nice in theory, but, in practice they cut off their phone service every two weeks for going over their allotted minutes even though they never talk to anyone but other Sprint users. Everytime, it takes hours on the phone with customer service to get the phones turned back on.

why...

[veeoh]

do people still call 'em "cell phones" ~ sounds so last century.

please call them "mobiles"

Come on, catch up US of A

lol

re to all...

[remusrm]

Many of you geek by nature, and attracted to the latest and greatest, are reluctant to upgrade to new phones. I have sprint and I am happy so far. but while changing phones from kyocera 2255 to sanyo 4900 and now sanyo 8100 i must say the coverage is based on the phone, not entirely on the service. I live in cali and so car verizon and sprint have by far the best coverage. nextell is ok, but if you of their range you are f**cked. T-Mobile is ok, but still lacks some coverage, and Cingulair and stupid ATT are the worst. They only seem to work in poor areas, rather where low income people leave, also their stores seem to be located in the same vecinity. MORAL: just cause you think your service and your old phone work where ever you go, does not mean they are actually better. I like the latest and by far I find it to be and improvement each time.

I despise Cingular....

[The Lynxpro]

The only cell phone company that won't offer AIM access on their phones because they'd rather push SMS and Yahoo Messenger (because of SBC's partnership with Yahoo on dialup and DSL)... Their reception stinks here in NorCal... they charge money to access your voicemail from a landline... and if you don't save your contract paperwork, they'll claim you signed up for a 2 year contract when you only signed up for 1... The only good thing they have going for them is they are GSM based, but then again, so is AT&T...

Verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

There's one incredibly hot girl who works technical service at the Verizon Store in the Burlington Mall, MA.

I had a problem with my new Kyocera 7138, and ended up talking to her. After explaining about a day-long bad experience with Verizon support trying to activate the phone, the conversation went something like this:

She begins speaking with a foreign accent, perhaps russian:

"Let me see the source of all this trouble" She says playfully, and looks very much amused.

I hand her the phone.. She has it in pieces in under 3 seconds flat and is looking at some something number on the inside.

"Ahhhhhhhh.." She breaths and flashes me a mischevious smile. "You say a /man/ could not help you?" She smirks with one corner of her mouth, looks up into my eyes and raises one eyebrow, holding the gaze for what seems like a full 10 seconds, then widens her smiles and looks down to type somehing into a computer.

About right now I'm feeling like i need to take off my jacket, and wonderhow far away my wife is. She's on the other side of the store, talking to a salesman.

"There you are..." She says this, leaning over the counter, sliding the phone very slowly into my palm, still gazing into my eyes intently. She then dials my phone's number and it vibrates. She says nothing, just watching me with a very amused smile.

Boy, service like that is almost enough to make me intentially break the phone and brave the mall :P WooHoo Verizon!

The ongoing saga...

[badasscat]

Cellular service in this country is a mess, and urban areas can be just as bad off as rural. Case in point: New York City. I've been with Sprint now for about 6 or 7 years, not because their service is so great but because everybody else is even worse. I live in Queens (though not in the boonies of Queens) and commute to Manhattan - I get 1 bar of signal strength in either place, occasionally going up to 2. A good 50% of my calls are either dropped or just go through to voicemail. This is not just on one model of phone, either - as I said, I've been with Sprint for a while and have used a good 4-5 phones over the duration, all with external antennas, and all have been equally bad. It's the service, not the phones.

Fed up, I tried Verizon for 2 weeks about a year ago, based on their reputation (a reputation confirmed at the linked article). Every single call I made reverted to analog mode despite showing 4 bars of digital strength prior to placing the call. Accessing any data services was useless for this reason, and call quality was atrocious. Dropped Verizon within my 15 day trial period (which I believe is mandated by law around here).

During all this time, Sprint's rates have shot up dramatically, and for my family plan I am now paying a minimum of $95 per month including taxes (taxes are much higher here than anywhere else - YMMV). That's the cheapest plan available with 2 lines.

Just this weekend my wife and I signed up with Cingular, mostly due to their lower rates ($50 plus 17.1% total tax for 2 lines and a reasonable amount of minutes). Was instantly complaining that I was going to cancel the service again after I couldn't even complete a call to my wife's phone in our own apartment. Now that I've had a bit more time to play with the phones I'm starting to think the service is not particularly worse than Sprint (1 bar of strength at home, 1 bar at work, 2-3 bars everywhere in between, some calls dropped, some go through), so at the reduced rates I may as well stick with them. But I'm still not particularly happy.

If any other product on the market (and cellular service is a product like any other) only worked 50% of the time it would be considered defective. Imagine picking up your home phone and wondering whether or not your call will go through. This is the beginning of the 21st century, not the 20th. The top priority of all of these companies needs to be to fix their service. And I mean fix, not "improve". The service as it is is broken.

I have not tried cellular service in Europe but I can't imagine it is this bad. I have, on the other hand, tried it in Japan and was absolutely astonished. Now, granted, I only tried one company's service (DoCoMo) and only in one area (Tokyo metro) but it was full signal strength at all times, even in rural areas (yes, there are rural areas around Tokyo), with absolutely crystal clear call quality. I cannot understand how cellular service in the US could be so much worse.

Re:The ongoing saga...

[hackstraw]

If any other product on the market (and cellular service is a product like any other) only worked 50% of the time it would be considered defective.

But you keep buying them and tell them that 50% is OK!

I had a cell phone for about 6 months, hated it, got a $400 bill one month, dropped calls left and right (Verizon), and once my jobhunting was over, I enthusiastically paid to get out of my 1 year contract and then threw the phone in the trash.

Once cell phones are as affordable (*cough*) and reliable as a land line, I may consider getting one and replacing my land line with a cell, maybe not, I like holding my phone with my shoulder.

Re:The ongoing saga...

[ediron2]

If any other product on the market (and cellular service is a product like any other) only worked 50% of the time it would be considered defective.

Heh, talk about a wide opening for microsoft-bashing... two that come to mind are "If any other product on the market only worked 50% of the time, I'd expect a Microsoft logo." and "Dude, you obviously never used Windows 3.1 or Bob or Word 2.0 or any other fledgling Microsoft products".

Yeah, I know... troll troll troll... still, can anyone else think of some good ones?

Re:The ongoing saga...

[uslinux.net]

"During all this time, Sprint's rates have shot up dramatically, and for my family plan I am now paying a minimum of $95 per month including taxes (taxes are much higher here than anywhere else - YMMV). That's the cheapest plan available with 2 lines."

Either you haven't checked back with Sprint recently, or you're seriously exaggerating.

http://www1.sprintpcs.com/explore/ExploreHome.js p

Two lines, 500 minutes/month: $65.

But you're right - Sprint's pricing is more effective/enticing at higher rates - 1100 minutes/month for $95, or 2000 minutes/month for $100. Hmmm...

Re:The ongoing saga...

[Insipid Trunculance]

I am absolutely surprised to read about the state of service in US.Here in UK teh service is absolutely wonderful.Even the cheapest provider
T-Mobile has very good signal strength whereas O2,Vodafone and Orange often can be used in basements and stairwells.

Great is ok, but Amazing would be great!

[hetairoi]

Sorry, the parent subject made me think of that line.

I do have something relavent to say though. I was one of those people who hated cell phones and people who used them (actually I just hate people, all of them, cell phones just give me one more reason). But when I quit my job over a year ago and just wandered around the country I figured I should have some way of ordering pizza and keeping in touch with family.

I looked at several plans and went with T-Mobile mostly because I had a friend that worked there and didn't charge me the hookup fee. So, I got a free phone, 600 anytime minutes, free nights and weekends, AIM, no roaming charges ever, free long distance and they let me choose my phone number so I could make it a local call for my parents (even though I bought it out of state).

I also got a free earpiece so I can use the phone hands free (Everyone seems to think I'm talking to myself because I don't hold my phone next to my ear). I just kept the crappy free phone they gave me, but haven't had a single problem with it even though I've dropped it many, many times (the case is cracked, but it still works). Yeah, T-Mobile coverage isn't the best yet, but as long as you are in a reasonably sized town or near an interstate you will have service, and did I mention the no roaming ever.

The best part of it is that I've had 0 worry with it. My bill is automagically paid from my checking and all I do is look over the paperwork to see that everything is smooth. They actually bumped up my anytime minutes a few months ago even though I've never come close to going over. Since I bought the service from my friend I have not had a single conversation with any T-Mobile rep, haven't had a need to.

I'm not sure now why I was so against cell phones in the first place. Oh, wait, I hate stupid people that's right. People who simply must have the latest pop tune as their ring tone instead of using the vibrate. And then there are those that seem to want the entire rest of the world to listen in to their half of every converstation.

My cellphone service is PERFECT.

[Beardo the Bearded]

When I want to make a call, I ask one of my friends, "Hey, can I use your cell for a minute?" Either that or I use a pay phone. Remember those? 25 cents gets you a ten-minute call, and no roaming charges apply.

It's that easy. No contract, no phone to buy.

Re:My cellphone service is PERFECT.

[slim-t]

Where are you finding 25 cent pay phones? They were always 50 cents when I used them.

And what are these "friends" you speak of? I thought the /. lifestyle didn't leave room for friends.

Worthless article.

[faedle]

First off, the point spread is like, what.. 10? So, can we infer from this that the "worst" cell provider (Alltel) is only a little worse than the "best"?

Some other problems: they make no differentiation between, for example, AT&T subscribers on the old DAMPS/TDMA network versus the new GSM network. There is also no mention of regional networks like Cricket and metroPCS (and with their all-you-can-eat pricing, it would be interesting to see how they stack up against "real" cellular providers).

Similarly, since cellular service can often vary widely from region to region, a breakdown by metropolitan area is almost a requirement. In Phoenix, SprintPCS was wonderful, while in Los Angeles it's oversold and almost unusable. NexTel also has a wide variance in quality, and I'm sure the pimping out of the service via Boost Mobile in California (a prepaid provider) is pushing their already heavily loaded Los Angeles network over the edge. Also, some of the technologies fare differently in different environments... a dense city like San Francisco is going to be less friendly to some technologies and more friendly to others.

Oh, and a generic note to those who have commented on Virgin Mobile: in the US, it uses the SprintPCS network.

AT&T GSM roaming with T-Mobile

[spectro]

I was in blacksburg, Va. in June and there was no service, I went back in July and had full coverage all over town

I think they got a roaming agreement with AT&T GSM, my T68i started showing T-mobile in areas where AT&T signal was too low a few weeks ago.

This poll makes no sense

[hellfire]

As some people have pointed out, the service that is best nationwide is not always the best region to region.

My mother and sister have Cingular. It is by far the worst I've ever experienced and we can never talk to them because they are constantly breaking up. My father has a Nextel phone which is pretty good. I have a T-Mobile phone which is almost as good, though in some areas I get this bad echo which I believe is in fact my phone's fault and not the network (the echoing problem didn't start happening until they replaced my previous phone with a current phone, and they are the same model).

A good cellular article will be broken down by region, or will be left to regional news outlets. Otherwise its little more than pandering to national phone companies.

AT&T old network vs. new

[Andy Dodd]

AT&T used to have the best network in the country.

But they shot themselves in the foot with the GSM rollout. True, D-AMPS (The true name for non-GSM TDMA digital service in the US) needed replacing, but unfortunately, switching over to GSM killed AT&T's biggest advantage, their GSM network has nothing on their old D-AMPS network coverage-wise.

Worse for AT&T, rolling out GSM when it's clear that it has no upgrade path to 3G technology (UMTS is the "3G" variant of GSM, but requires new phones, basestations, and frequency allocations, whereas cdmaOne phones will work with CDMA2000 basestations and CDMA2000 phones will work with cdmaOne basestations) is shooting themselves in the foot. To roll out true 3G, AT&T must replace their ENTIRE network *AGAIN*, meanwhile Verizon and Sprint PCS only need to roll out upgrades as demand dictates, because as said before, people with old cdmaOne phones will be able to use the new CDMA2000 network infrastructure, and people with CDMA2000 phones will still have the ability to use cdmaOne basestations without the need for adding another frequency band.

You can keep your number when you switch

[Moderation abuser]

It isn't all that difficult. I believe the telcos are actually legally obliged to allow you to keep your number.

http://www.mobiles.co.uk/mnp_pac.htm

Orange aren't the cheapest. o2, t-mobile, virgin, are cheaper, vodaphone has this 3 minute thing which probably makes it cheaper.

Cell Service involves more than just coverage...

[fuqqer]

I think Cell service involves more than just coverage. Cell service is a combination of(not necessarily in that order):

* Services offered.
* Price.
* Coverage.
* Customer Satisfaction
* Phones offered
* Clarity

I'd say the article is a very heavy on the coverage angle with virtually no mention of the other things. My current provider is sprint... in all categories but phones offered, they SUCK! Now to explain why Sprint sucks.

I switched to sprint because it was supposed to be cheap and offer good coverage. Then I found out that voice dialing was $10 per month extra, e-mail was $10 extra, international dialing directly from the phone was $10 extra. Sporadic service on the PCS network and constant dropped calls. One day I'd have great service at my house, the next I'd be flipping between analog roaming and the PCS network.

Customer service blows. I was originally able to place a call via the operator for international calls, but then they disabled that a month after I started. I requested the service be reinstated and they told me it would take 5 days. Calling them to get service is a nightmare. I was on hold for 15 minutes to get a supervisor on the line after I was told my international service would be immediately available. When I got a supervisor and they wouldn't tell me why the prior representative told me my service would be available immediately and they couldn't tell who I spoke to (even after I gave them a name) they told me they didn't have a supervisor I could speak to.

So now my $34.99 service runs me about $70 per month even after I disabled every feature that I could get away with. I have to write a letter of complaint via snailmail to the Assistant VP at a po box in Kansas (like that'll go anywhere).

Nextel reps have always been courteous and kind. Offering services that seem more expensive at first, but I admit the old adage "Cheap is expensive and expensive is cheap," is sooooo right. They offer business class service at a business class price. Their phones aren't the best but they're damn good in terms of reception and features right on the phone. Now they're doing nationwide DirectConnect walkie talkie feature, all I can say is badass!

Consider this post a glowing endorsement for Nextel, and a warning from a former customer of Sprint who is Irate with their service, coverage, price, and features.

Sigs are like birthmarks, some people have 'em, others dont.

It looked like there was an antenna on the roof

[caveat]

I was in Murren a couple of months ago hiking the North Face Trail, beautiful view and all that jazz. anyway - it looked like there was an antenna or two on top of the Schilthorn (being the highest constructable point for miles and miles around id imagine), that might account for the reception. any idea what the reception was like down in the valley?

Re:It looked like there was an antenna on the roof

[mirko]

The reception was also fine elsewhere. The only moment I did not check was during the elevation.

This study disregards the most important factors!

[LilMikey]

Data Service and price. $15 for unlimited data on Sprint PCS is a steal and works well. T-Mobile and Verizon also have good data plans. I could care less if I drop a call or 2 as long as I can surf the net on my next camping trip... not to mention ringers, games, etc. Who wants *just* a phone.

Quick question for anyone please.

[bogie]

I just singed up for Cingular National yesterday and yes its GSM afaik. I know jack about cell phones but now I'm hearing TDMA has much better coverage and that GSM might be having more trouble insides building and everywhere else in general. I guess pretty much like the parent stated.

Any truth to this? Are all networks going GSM now, and that is just a transitional thing? Was signing up for Cingular a mistake?

Thanks for any who reply.

Anything in Maine is awful

[flicken]

My Mom did hours of research to try to find a good cell phone for Maine. My sister hiked the Appalachian Trail there this spring, and she wanted to have a good cell phone with her. No luck. In the boonies of Maine, there aren't nearly enough people to make it worth the cell companies while to erect towers.

Decide.com

[_ph1ux_]

I used to work for a co named Decide.com - we were an online retailer of cell packages and phones. We gave you the ability to rate cell phone features side-by-side and determine which carrier had the best package for your needs.

In order to give you the full gammut of info - we had vans that were equipped with cell phones from almost every carrier, and it would drive around and the banks of phones would make automated calls from the van, play a pre-recorded message and then rate the quality of service.

You could then put in a commute path - or an address and see which carriers had the best service for that area - based on actual call data. all nicely overlayed over a neat little map.

The company obviously went under - but since I left before the final sinking - I am not sure what happened to the technology for doing these ratings...

it was cool though.

C331t not a GAIT

[Rai]

Motorola C331t is not a GAIT model. It's TDMA. Currently, Cingular uses no Motorola GAIT models...only the Sony Ericsson T62u and the Nokia 6340i.

Does Motorola even make a GAIT model?

Re:C331t not a GAIT

[spicyjeff]

Whoops, my bad...mean just plain ol' TDMA. AndI don't think Motorola does make any...

Cool, but not that useful

[Anonymous Coward]

This only has data for "Antenna Structures" with a height over 200' or near an airport. Most of the smaller cell cites won't be listed.

Fly Over Country report

[scoove]

five different phones around and used them to compare?

We've gone through about as many here in our corner of the central US and have been equally disappointed (Verizon has the best network? Maybe everywhere else in the US, but not in the central states!).

- SprintPCS: Wonderful when you don't leave the metros. Useless outside. Dual-band for roaming gets you buy at a nasty price. Good customer service in our experience.

- Verizon: Has a real problem with sensing its digital network when it's too weak to use, and refusing to try analog. Verizon was rock solid for us until a software update a year ago January where they apparently attempted to shift to "try a digital signal at any cost." This isn't an issue in the metro areas, but when you're constantly on the outskirts, it makes the phone worthless. They have what appears to be some real cell transition issues in our metro as well and can't seem to fix them. Customer service is rather poor as well.

- Alltel: Actually had the best signal coverage and reliability. Unfortunately, they have some unusual billing practices. After billing the wrong service plan for the company cellphones, they were to credit the overcharges that were paid. Instead, they BILLED the credits. They continued to bill credits for three more rounds (i.e. they owe $2300, so they would label the bill with a credit memo, and then charge us an extra $2300 rather than giving it back, putting us a net $4600 off!). After six months of billing hell, we found an accounting person who figured it out and was going to fix it. They laid her off before she could get it done. What a disaster of a company.

*scoove*

...your "mother's" cock

[Anonymous Coward]

N/T

Odd...

[Andy Dodd]

I had nothing but pleasant experiences with the in-store staff in Ithaca, NY, and also with their customer service number both in upstate NY and central NJ.

Every Verizon phone I have had has been rock-solid. Admittedly my first phone (LG/BAM 330) sucked accessory-wise, but it worked fine. The Kyocera 2035a that followed it was a great phone, and my current Kyo 6035 Smartphone is simply incredible.

I'm actually surprised you had problems with a Verizon phone - VZW puts all of their phones through VERY tough QA testing, which is why their phone selection is usually much smaller than Sprint's - Some Sprint phones just didn't make the grade quality-wise, even if they might have had sexy new featurs.

Wireless Technical Mumbo-Jumbo

[uslinux.net]

For those who actually care, here's a summary of the networks and protocols:

AMPS, also known as analog: Runs in the 900MHz range. Pretty much every company has analog coverage, though you may need a dual band phone.

FDMA: Frequency-division multiplexing. Each user gets a portion of the available spectrum (eg. Bob gets 908.24MHz and Joe gets 908.30MHz. The users occupy the frequency whether talking or not. Also, there are sidebands to each primary frequency that nobody can use. Inferior to TDMA and generally not used anymore.

TDMA: Time-division multiplexing. Each channel is split into three subchannels. Each user gets a channel, effectively tripling FDMA capacity. Although this is similar to only talking for 1/3 or a second, the phones compress and expand the data, so it sounds like a constant conversation. If you call a landline with your TDMA phone and speak, you'll notice an audible delay. AT&T, Verizon, and Cingular are TDMA.

GSM: I don't quite understand GSM that well, except that (a) european GSM is different than the US GSM - so unless you buy a quad-mode phone, it won't work in both countries, and (b) it uses a noisy TDMA protocol underneath. VoiceStream (T-Mobile) and AT&T are GSM.

CDMA: Instead of picking a channel, everyone "talks" at once. The phone and tower decide on a "key" ahead of time, and are able to pick the spread spectrum signal out of the background noise. The beauty is that there is an essentially unlimited number of people that can use a CDMA tower, provided there is enough power to go around. It's similar to putting people in a room - in a small room you can whisper, but in an auditorium you need to speak up. CDMA phones use less power when the network isn't busy, so they tend to have longer battery life; however, if you're far from the tower, your calls may get dropped as other people sign on if your phone is already at it's maximum power (remember, the phone increases the power as more people get on the tower because there is more background noise). The call clarity on CDMA is like a landline. SprintPCS is the only major carrier I know of that is CDMA (I'm not sure if they're CDMA or CDMA2000). CDMA is the Betamax of the wireless protocols - far superior, but it's too early to tell if it will die off.

SCDMA or WCDMA is probably the best protocol in the future - able to carry much more voice/data *and* with better clarity and signal fade/obstruction capabities. Nobody is headed this direction yet, though (AFAIK).

I've had Cingular (very briefly), Verizon, and now SprintPCS. It might've been the (free) Ericson phone, but Cingular was absolutely terrible - people I called couldn't understand a word I was saying. This was ~4 years ago.

I had Verizon until recently. They had good coverage, but I couldn't get a signal in my office frequently (downstairs) and they're quite expensive.

My wife and I recently moved to SprintPCS. The clarity is amazing and it works in my office, though our home is on the fringe of their coverage area. My big gripe with SprintPCS is that their data and voice services aren't fully integrated - eg, if I use their X1RTT data service on my Samsung i330, I can't accept incoming calls (VM alerts and outbound calls work fine, though). In order to reply to an AIM, I need to make a ppp wireless web connection. T-Mobile has better integration with their Sidekick, but THEY control the apps you can install on it (thanks, but I'd like to know that the program I installed to track my appointments will actually *be* there tomorrow - I've heard a lot of gripes recently about them removing lots of applications.

If you need a cell, you really just need to find a plan that seems to suit you and buy the phone. I believe the federal government requires a 14 day return policy, so if you're not happy, you can return it. If the Sprint coverage was a little better at my house, I would completely get rid of my landline. Personally I don't care if Sprint has poor coverage in Lincol

Not to Jump to Nextel's Defense but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Their coverage is excellent.

I was at a party in the woods, on the outskirts of the outskirts of a college town on the outskirts of my home town. Out of 1000 or so people, MINE was the only phone that worked. It's a Nextel i1000plus. I was getting full signal across the entire campground.

Don't get me wrong, though. Other than the excellent coverage, I can't stand the POS and wish it would die. Makes speakers crackle at 10 paces when in use. And then there's that annoying two-way bleep-bleep. Whoever invented this feature should be dragged out into the street and shot 4 times in the chest, once in the head, and once in the groin.

Posting anonymously just in case I decide to implement the above plan at some point in the future.

Who wants just a phone?

[Zeriel]

Me, for one. My StarTAC through Verizon does pretty much everything I could ask from a phone--text pager, good signal strength, CDMA/AMPS, never drops calls, tells me within 5 mins of voicemail/page...

No ring tones, no color display, no data. But who needs that crap anyway? It's really kinda moot when compared to the grail of reliability.

It occours to me that enough people are complaining about service, coverage, etc, that maybe US cellular companies ought work on getting the basics of a reliable cellphone right before they go charging off into 3G/data/fancy tones and camera phones land.

Funny you should say that...

[ZxCv]

I've yet to meet someone who says "Yeah, my Nextel? This thing is GREAT!" the way I could about my StarTac with Sprint.

Hi, my name is Pat, and I love Nextel the way you do Sprint.

I used SprintPCS for about 3.5 years up until late last year. My only major gripes with it were call quality and a major customer service snafu that ultimately led me to cancel my service with them. I switched to Nextel, and have never been happier with a cell phone. Instead of having a phone with games and Internet, I have a phone that lasts longer than a day on the battery, never ever breaks (something all 4 of my Sprint phones could never achieve), and is built like a brick without being heavy or bulky (yet another gripe with 3 of my 4 Sprint phones). Beyond that, the call quality compared to Sprint is so much better its hard to describe. The first time I used the Nextel phone for an actual call, I was so surprised I had to call 3 or 4 other people to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

As with everything, but seemingly moreso with cell phones, YMMV (and does, obviously). You can now say you've met someone that says "Yeah, my Nextel? This thing is GREAT!"...

Nextel.com

[SuDZ]

What is kind of funny is nextel is rated one of the highest on the list. As of right now I can't even get to their site because it seems to be down.

SuDZ

gotta love my cell service

[ph1nn]

Works great everywhere i got... best possible deal for a working college student, i pay $20 a month, get 800 anytime minutes, Unlimited Nights/Weekends, Free Long distance, unlimited web and text messages.

Yea its cause i work at RadioShack and the service is Verizon, which RadioShack sells.

Verizon is the best, using the best technology (CDMA) far better than anything else out there.,

Re:Prepaid -- $3.33/month!!!

[e4liberty]

Prepaid can be a great way to go. CallPlus uses the AT&T network, and can be had for as low as $3.33 a month!

See: CallPlus and Pharos for $10/25minutes 90 day expiration.

CallPlus works great with my Nokia 6360, and can be used with any AT&T or unlocked TDMA (D-AMPS) phone. Roaming is included at the usual per minute price on the AT&T roaming network. You can get a phone number local to somewhere other than your billing address (which only matters for your callers since all long distance is included in the usual per minute price).

Compare quality without comparing price...

[macrostiff]

Three phones, three numbers
First incoming minute free.
2000min/mo. +
3500 off peak (N/C) +
1500 cell to cell (N/C)
and it works in every city I visit,
and no LD charge,
for $120/month!

Sure, I'll settle for the company with a lower
'quality' score. They still get the job done leaving more money for other stuff.

Indoor signal strength

[rhfrommn]

I have a T-Mobile phone. The reception in my house is pathetic, I often can't get any signal at all. I called to complain and they claim my house is in a covered area. They said that "construction materials" used in my house must be interfering.

I thought that was total B.S. But I went outside and while the signal strength still isn't great it is enough to connect a call. Has anybody heard of this before? What "materials" are causing the terrible reception? Other people can use their phones even in my basement, so I'm inclined to think even if my house causes some of the problem the main issue is their weak signal in the first place.

Thanks for any suggestions/information you can provide.

Re:Indoor signal strength

[forkboy]

It's a bunch of BS. I had the same problem, so I tested my phone out on my roof. Still no reception, leading me to believe it was either a) a dead spot or b) the power lines.

Either way, AT&T told me to play "hide and go fuck myself" when I called to bitch. I moved, but I still get shitty reception all around town (Denver) any given trip of approximately 2 miles having at least 2 points where my service cuts out.

I'm getting rid of the phone when my contract is up. I'm not working a job where I need it anymore (school full time now) so screw em, I'm going low-tech. If anyone needs to reach me on campus, they can either drop me an email or develop telepathy.

7 text messages a month? :D

[Dakkus]

Where on earth did they do the comparison? Sounds a bit stupid to compare quality of companies by sending about 5 to 20 times less messages than a normal user would.
Other interesting thing is that although I speak a lot less in phone than average people, my cell phone's statistics tell that I've spoken 96 hours, 42 minutes and 58 seconds since May 2002. That makes about 6,5 hours/month. If a person who doesn't his phone much can come to such numbers, then how on earth is the average number supposed to be even less?

I'm sure that the mobile owning people use their mobiles more than the numbers stated in the article.

To me it sounds that CNN has done the article with far too small amount of test subjects. Or maybe they're all some sort of shy and quiet housewives. Who knows.

Free and Clear America plans

[Yet Another Smith]

I was just poking around looking for this on the sprint website. In the 'my plan' or 'change my plan' section they don't mention 'Free and Clear America' just 'Free and Clear' which does NOT allow off-network roaming (or more accurately charges $.50 to $.75 per minute for roaming!). I did find reference to it in an ad off to the side. Looks like they want to cut it off by August 10th. No real info on whether current sprint users could really jump on that particular bandwagon.

I really need to try this out and see if it solves my Incredibly Frequent Dropped and Missed Calls Problems. These IFDMCPs are about to drive me to another network, especially when I can port my number over. If I can just roam to another network when Sprint's majick ebbs from my house, that might solve things.

By the way, anybody heard of a software change that sprint can do on phones that changes its threshold for jumping to a different tower? I remember hearing or reading somewhere about someone solving IFDMCPs through a software fix at the the Sprint Store. I'd go to a sprint store and ask, but its a 20 minute drive, and I don't really trust the high-school graduates behind the counter there. Of course that implies that I trust John Q Slashdot, but where would America be without unreliable internet hearsay?

By the way, Sprint's coverage in east Richardson & NW Garland (Dallas suburbs) is piss-poor. Not holes, per-se but just incredibly bad call quality/reliability.

GSM on AT&T Wireless

[adamjone]

I recently signed up with AT&T Wireless for cellular service when I was required to get a phone. AT&T had the lowest priced service plan with the most minutes: 300 nationwide minutes for $29.99, plus free nights and weekends. I ordered the Sony Ericsson t68i phone. I live in Indianapolis, IN, and I've found the service in the metro area to be pretty good. Unfortunately, my job requires me to drive to northern Indiana quite often, and as soon as I live the I-465 belt, I lose service. Service along I-69 and I-65 is so-so, but I've had several dropped calls for no apparent reason along these interstates. If I'm not on the interstate, I have no chance of getting reception. I've read that the t68 is notorious for poor reception. It has an internal antenna, which doesn't help matters. If I walk outside my house, I get two bars of service, but none indoors. Call clarity is excellent, when I have it. It seems that it is an all or nothing ordeal. A coworker of mine is on the same plan with AT&T, but has the Motorola t720. He is able to get reception in areas that my phone won't.

If you have no need to travel outside of the Indy area, I would recommend the AT&T service, just with a different phone model.

Wireless good, lack of good phones is the problem

[Zed2K]

My biggest problem isn't the cell phone provider (I have AT&T and it works fine). My problem is the lack of decent phones. I'm tired of the el cheapo phones they try and push and the ultra expensive ones that look nice, but are built like crap and have all kinds of crappy features that don't work right. But I guess thats more a problem with the phone makers and not the providers.

Cell service in Europe vs USA

[ThufirHawat]

Dear folks,

it would appear that you are reaping the benefits of "no regulation", which only bring profits to big corporations, as every two-bits economist will be happy to explain.

Look what we have in Europe:

- one (not four) technically advanced (at inception) standard (GSM) now being migrated to 3G, which ensures hassle-free roaming over all the territory of the European Union Member states and more;
- regulatory authorities which intervene to bring down prices by monitoring tariffs;
- one central authority (the European Commission) that will prevent all attempts to move toward price fixing and lower down cell-to-landline abusive charging;
- transparent bills, instead of the ridiculous 7-pages bills of US cell operators, where charges are clearly and intelligibly listed in an itemised fashion.

Results: for the same mix of calls (i.e. home and roaming), a European cellphone bill is 65-70% if not less than the equivalent US bill.

Now take a deep breath, sit back and enjoy your land of "(corporate) freedom", where the FCC is a ball-less body run by political appointees.

Would it not be high time to try to regulate at least standards (think of TV standards...) and then rights of passage, to cut down the incredible US roaming (with a US cellphone) charges?

Cheers from "Old Europe"-I am afraid I am quite happy to be here rather than over there.

Re:Cell service in Europe vs USA

[tjb]

Results: for the same mix of calls (i.e. home and roaming), a European cellphone bill is 65-70% if not less than the equivalent US bill.

Talking with my European colleagues (French, Belgian, Dutch), they seem to think that Uservice in the US is cheaper if you know how to pick your plan.

For example, for $39.95/month, I get virtually unlimited calling (inside the US) during business hours (400 minutes/month) and unlimited minutes (again, domestic) at any other time. My home area is virtually the entire North East US (NJ, DE, NY, PA, all of New England and I think Maryland) and outside this area (roaming) its 10 cents/minutes. My cell-phone bill only ever exceeds the minimum (around $44 after taxes and such) when I travel outside my home area, despite having around 500-1000 minutes/month of calls.

My company's field engineer in the Netherlands, on the other hand, pays a reasonable rate in the N.L. (I forget exactly what, but it wasn't too bad), but when he travels to Germany or Belgium, its 2 Euro/minute. Anyway, he says that his phone bill is usually over 100 Euro/month.

Tim

Bastards!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got off the phone with my provider. I have to call every month b/c of charges that they slam on me. Granted that I never drop calls and I get my messages right away, I would like to not have to pay for "INCOMING" long distance when I have "FREE" long distance. I also have $1.20 charge every month for roaming when I have NEVER used my phone 20 feet outsied my service area (I drive to work, I drive home both of which are 30-45 miles within my area!). I hate Cingular but they got me by the toes by signing another two year contract (They offered me a free phone but after all of this I would rather use two cans and some string).

Thanks for the vent!
-Josh Athens, GA USA

ATT

[oOo Shiva oOo]

Id find the research far more valuable if they had broken the services up based on their digital and GSM networks. I have ATT and when I had a digital phone its safe to say that I found them nothing short of terrific. Unless I was crawling through the hills or something I had almost full bars on my meter. I now have the GSM service, however, and with the same provider it'd be complimenting it to call it anything better than terrible. My reception wanes based on what room in the house im in, not only that... where I am in a given room. One spot will have almost full bars, the other spot will disconnect my calls... which happens quite often. Sometimes even when I do have a few bars or almost full bars the phone call is still choppy. The phone is new so I know its no problem there. I even returned the same phone for an unrelated defect and recieved a new one that had the same connectivity problems. I'm quite dissatisfied and I don't have the money to go network hopping from phone service to phone service, digital to GSM at a whim or carry two phones. Unfortunately almost all the new, fun to have phones are on the GSM service. I'm on a contract so I can't just drop my service, but maybe its time to start looking at Verizon when my service does end....

Sprint: OK service, last year's phones

[mbstone]

I've been with Sprint PCS for a few years now and I have to say the service works pretty well from coast to coast, incl all of the I-40 from Nashville to Barstow except (inexplicably) between Amarillo and Tucumcari. But they don't offer the latest phones. They only offer a very few dated models. I would love to be able to get a Kyocera 7135, and I may have to switch to Verizon to get it. Even better, I would like to see the FCC force these companies to accept any brand of PCS enabled phone (not just Sprint PCS Phones). It's like being back in the dark ages (1970s) when you had to use AT&T (Western Electric) landline phones.

Keep phone, drop service

[bluGill]

Sounds like you wife needs to drop service on the phone, while keeping it around. By law All cell phones will work to call 911 even if they otherwise don't have service.

Avoid CIngular

[jchristopher]

Whatever you do, avoid Cingular. They've recently decided that it's okay to spam customers via SMS with their marketing garbage... even if you "opt-out". Life's too short to be PAYING someone to spam me.

Anyway, once number portability is here, I'm gone. Which providers DON'T spam their own customers?

Re:Avoid CIngular

[spike it]

I am a Cingular customer, and I have never received spam via SMS. The one gripe I had at one point against Cingular is that too many users abused the free nights and weekends plan. More cellular towers have been built since then, and the problem has been solved.

SprintPCS Bluetooth petition

[iendedi]

Sprint was set to release the t608 bluetooth enabled phone (a dream come true for powerbook owners), but something happened. They are not releasing it... Voice your support at the following web petition if you, like me, would like a bluetooth sprint pcs phone: http://www.petitiononline.com/sellt608/petition.ht ml

dave schroeder spreads hepatitis

[Anonymous Coward]

this motherfucker has severe comminicable hapatitis and spreads it in resteraunts where he lives.

you FUCKER YOU RUINED MY LIVER. im jaundiced and i hate you, and if you ever cross my path, i dont know how i can stop myself fomr killing you. why did you give people hapatitis? why did you do it?