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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.
More like what are the only five cell phone services in the US. There's Verizon, US Cellular, Cingular, T Mobile, and Sprint and that's about it.
i don't know... the one that lets you call other people wirelessly?
I'm personally a fan of my current cell phone plan. It may be Verizon, but it has its perks. The part where my company picks up the tab makes it the most desirable plan on the market to me. Saves me bucks and allows work contacts to call me at 4am if they so choose. I believe that's what the ancient Greeks called win/win.
I have verizon, I've never been anything but happy with their service. In my area I tend to get better service than cingular does. I'm not too sure about sprint. At this point unless you're in the middle of nowhere whatever plan out of sprint, verizon, and cingular meets your personal needs the best is probably the best option. Coverage in most areas is probably going to be rather consistent. If you're in a rural area, though, there's going to be a difference. I visited Nebraska last year (don't ask my why... there's nothing to see there) and I was roaming the whole time.
For national plans, there aren't but about 5 that I can think of... Verizon, Sprint, Cingular (ATT), Alltel & T-Mobile .... so wouldn't that mean they all can claim "top 5" status by default?? Telecom consolidation FTW.
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket!??
The confluence of provider-provided phones and 1-2 year contracts makes it hard to switch. Networks have a useful life of around 5 years so the best we can do is take a survey and hope it's not biased. I'd love it if contracts went away and if phones were decoupled from providers but I think that'll happen right around the beginning of porcine aviation.
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Almost easier to make a worst of list since none of them are impressive. The worst experience I had was with Sprint. I was with them five years ago and found that in the San Fernado Valley, LA, half the valley wasn't covered. That's pretty miserable for service. Every service I've used has had holes in service and dropped calls. I'm often calling from one cell phone to another so it's tough to tell whose service is causing the lousy connection. Service has gotten cheaper but quality hasn't improved over the years. In some senses it's gotten worse. I think most people would prefer better service than more features.
The FCC won't release cell carrier reliability data, remember?
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
Do you realize that some phones will give you cancer more than other phones. I know for a fact that if you send or recieve a call on a Cingular phone near a speaker(like your PC speaker), it uses such a high frequency that it sends electrical impulses through the speaker and you can hear the speaker play even though it's turned off. Try it sometime.
God spoke to me.
When it comes down to it, you have a number of things to look at:
Coverage area: Both Verizon and Cingular have a large coverage area, along with Spint/Nextel. There is no "best" because all three of these leading providers have gaps in their service, and where you will be at any time might make one or the other a better choice.
On the south fork of Long Island for example, Verizon has the most reliable service, but has more gaps than Cingular. So, if it's better to get 1 bar in 99 percent of the south fork than it is to get 3 bars in 80 percent, Cingular is the best choice. If you don't find yourself in the Verizon dead areas, then Verizon would be the better choice. The Nextel push-to-talk is a great feature, but out where I am, Nextel has a LOT(and I mean a LOT) of dead areas and is generally a bad choice. I am sure there are other places that have that situation reversed, but you get the idea. For those who will be sticking to the major cities or suburban areas, then pretty much any provider will provide decent coverage. I will note that T-mobile has a lot of AREAS where they just don't provide service, which is why they can't be considered one of the leaders in the industry.
Then you have services offered. Verizon is probably the best when it comes to multi-media services on your phone. To be honest, I've never felt that a cell phone is the best choice for music and such. Buy a dedicated MP3 player if you want to take your music or shows with you.
For more business type applications, Cingular seems to get the best deals from Blackberry and Palm for devices if you want/need to upgrade your phone, and the data services are pretty decent. I don't think that Verizon has as good an implementation on some of the data services for those who need them. Keep in mind that data speed is only one part of what makes a data service good or bad, it's also in the implementation of the service. As with coverage area, you need to look at where you are to decide which provider is the best. The key is that if you can't get a signal, it doesn't matter what services you may have or how good they are.
GPS is an area that more and more people look at as a feature on a phone. TelNav is a service that may sound like it competes, but it uses the data service to download the maps, which means it will be quite a bit slower than something like TomTom(which uses a SD card or can be transfered to your device if you have enough memory).
One thing people in Europe don't think about when they hear about gaps in service area is that some states in the USA are larger than most countries in Europe. In addition to this, Europe as a whole has a higher population density across the board, which makes it more cost effective to put coverage EVERYWHERE. There are towns in the USA that have a population of under 50, and if they are in a valley, there may not be cell phone coverage at all if there isn't a tower on a hill/mountain near the town.
So, look at what you want or use from your phone, because that will change which is the best or worst. We have three big providers, T-mobile is growing but still not a great choice for coverage areas, and then you have a bunch of smaller companies that only have coverage in major cities.
Cingular has the most customers only because they ATE other cellphone companies to get there. They have the WORST coverage and the crappiest policies. Want to know how they get rated "fewest dropped calls"?? they configure the towers to NOT release and give up on the connection until it has lost you completely for 30 seconds. guess what, you will hang up way before then, so they dont have any dropped calls. Their customer service is incredibly bad, they have nasty contract rates do not offer a standard 1 year but only 2 year and up contract lengths.
Honestly the BEST cellphone service is Verizon, way more coverage and towers. Problem is their customer service sucks way more than everyone else, use incredibly crappy non GSM technology so you cant get unlocked phones or switch phones on your own, etc...
The real truth is that all cellphone companies in America completely suck as a whole. either they have crap policies and good coverage, or bad coverage and good policies, or crap and crap, etc... I dont know anyone that is happy with their cellphone company, everyone has one thing they despise about what they have.
Oh and the BS that is creeping back in lately of getting charged for incoming and outgoing SMS is incredibly sucky. Cingular just started that again.
The one incredibly part is, many of the prepay phones are ending up to be the best choice. I get unlimited data service for $9.50 a month by using a boost mobile phone SIM and a iden pcmcia modem. (all data service where I live is dialup speeds anyways so who cares) for when I am out and about and not near someone's open accesspoint. Yes it's abusing their plan, but who cares.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.