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What are the Best Cell Phone Services in the US?
James Hewfanger asks: "Cnet.co.uk has run an article on the five best cell phone services in the UK. These include a text-based service that gets you the number of a licensed cab company in London, Google Maps and Gmail on your phone, a service that can tell what artist and song you're listening to, an online service that backs up all your cell phone contacts and a text-based service that answers any question you can throw at it. What, however, are the five best cell phone services in the US?" Wirefly's cell phone plan comparison tool gives a good up-to-date look of all cell phone plans on the market.
Cingular has the most customers. This means that chances are highest, than with any other cell provider, that when you call someone's cell they will be on network which doesn't eat minutes since on network minutes are free. The only reason I would switch from Cingular is if I moved to an area where I received poor signal. I used to work for Cingular, all be it in their network security division that had little to do with their cellular products. While working there I learned much about how cellular companies operate in general.
A good example of this is expansion of cell sites. When a cell provider puts up a new tower or rents space on a tower they only provide the latest communication protocol from that tower. The justification for this is attrition. They are making the older signals obsolete. This will have you buying a new phone and committing to another 2 year contract. Luckily I have an HTC 8125 world phone that supports all the frequencies from 900 Mhz to EDGE. So, when I am in areas with older cell tower deployments I'll get signal, maybe not the latest and greatest but signal none the less. And until they start using a more advanced protocol beyond edge I benefit with all the new infrastructure (increased coverage area).
What I see as the biggest problem in cellular communication is redundancy. Cingular builds towers and T-Mobile builds towers along with all the major carriers. Even though there may be towers within a few blocks of each other. What I see as the solution is to separate the development, deployment, and management of the towers and their respective cell areas from the service that you choose to use. This way you choose a provider based upon features and cost rather than coverage since every service would have the same coverage. If all the cell towers in the US were brought under the control of a single company and a single communication protocol was agreed upon. The towers could be redeployed in such a way that there would be no gaps in coverage nationwide. The only places you would have trouble getting a signal would be if you were somewhere truly remote like say Mt. Whitney (the tallest mountain in the continental United States).
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
"None of the above."
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
I just want to clear up a small misunderstanding here. ZYB https://zyb.com/ that Cnet lists in the article is not a UK service, it is a world-wide mobile backup service that also works in the US. ZYB is absolutely free (forever), but your operator will charge you for the data-traffic you use. For the first synchronisation of 80 contacts an 60 calendar events the data amount should be below 100kb. Subsequent synchronisations use around 10-20kb of data traffic depending on the amount of new information added on either the phone or on ZYB.
Runar Reistrup, ZYB
are handy for people like me that don't have a 'smart' phone, or if you can't/don't want to text message:
Google Local: 877-520-3463. My favorite. You give it a city, category, and/or business name. It speaks or texts you the results, and connects you to the business.
Tell Me: 800-555-tell (8355). I mostly use it for driving directions, but it has myriad other features.
511: Traffic, public transit info (only handy if you're in the SF Bay Area or around Sacramento).
I use a train time info service quite a lot.
Basically I text them the name of a local train station (local to which ever pub I am in usually) and they text me back the list of trains on the departure board and what time they leave.
So I can leave the pub at the last possible moment and still miss one and wait an hour.
I dont read