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

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

[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.

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

[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: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.

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

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

[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

[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.

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: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: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.

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.

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

I'd wait until November....

[numbski]

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

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: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.

Tower Location

[Duckz]

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

Todd

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.

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.

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

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.

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: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: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: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.