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Truth Or Dare — What Is the Best US Cell Company?
Epsilon Eridani writes "I am returning to the US after an extended time overseas and upon my return I need to jump head first into the data enabled phone bandwagon. I have to admit ... I am lost as to what is the best company to choose. Before I left the US I used a Sprint HTC phone running Windows with the 'simply everything' plan to communicate and stay organized and a Sprint Wireless Card to connect my laptop to the world. Coming back several generations of technology later, what is the best set up technology-wise to link phone and laptop or two to the Internet? (Open source solutions accepted too!) Can the Slashdot community verify some of the claims on quality of service before I give my first born up when I sign a service contract?"
Does which phones you are allowed to choose from matter?
wouldn't this be best done as a slashdot poll?
.
.
(the correct answer, by the way, is Cowboy Neal Mobile)
moox. for a new generation.
It's AT&T.
With that in mind, I fully expect nothing but a torrent of complaints about them.
Unfortunately, I need to use AT&T for the iPhone's 3G.
For a list of entirely subjective replies.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
What are the best options in the US & Canada for somebody who visits and wants just a prepaid deal? (just voice & sms or also one with data). With an option of getting only starter SIM card (some phones cover also US frequencies)
One that hath name thou can not otter
From a pure technical perspective, Verizon will get you the best coverage. But the sales people are vicious.
AT&T has iPhone obviously, but shitty coverage. I lend my phone to friends on AT&T in a couple different cities.
T-Mobile is worse coverage then AT&T. But has more open phones.
If you've got nothing right now, I'd go Droid on Verizon, pay 40 bucks for the unlimited data and use Google Voice for routing of your calls and LD service.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
This is like asking what is your preferred way of being tortured. They all have negatives and are would not exist if they had the competition that Europe does. AT&T doesn't care to increase their network, T-Mobile doesn't have real 3G, Sprint and Verizon are still CDMA so you'll have to get a really expensive world phone if you want to go back overseas... Better off sending telegrams.
If you're in a major metro area, T-Mobile is by far the best and cheapest. They also let you tether with all their smartphones without an additional tethering charge. If you're in the boonies, it seems Verizon is the only way to go.
Verizon just topped Zagat's survey, won nielsen baseline, and a few others.
Polls are to get very general opinions, choices.
This is about discussing the options. And since the vast majority of cell phone service providers are considered evil somewhere around that of Lord Sidius with their locked phones, deplorable customer service, and preposterous early termination fees, I expect there to be a great deal of negative comments relative to a very few positive ones.
There is no "good" cell phone service provider - we're here to work out the "lesser of the evils" question.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Dare
"Which cell phone company is best" really depends on your location, and on your definition of "best". In some places, Sprint will be best, in others it will be Verizon or T-Mobile, and it's even possible that AT&T is best somewhere. I personally have been happy with Sprint for both voice and data. If you live in an area where they have implemented high speed data, they might be the best choice. I have not experienced the constant data drops or poor customer service I saw at Verizon (people seem surprised when I say Sprint customer service has been good, but it has). T-Mobile supposedly rolled out high speed data across the country this month, but I haven't heard any reports of how well it works.
Where the technology hasn't advanced as much as you think and phone plans still really suck and are designed to lock you in to contract deals that are almost impossible to get out of.
I think your best bet is to stick with Sprint - Great phones, good service, great wireless for the PC. The prices are not as high as Verizon, and the Customer Support is better. AT&T is good too and Tmobile is good depending on where in the US you are, ie California is great with Tmobile...NJ is not.
Depends on what your priorities are and where in the country you are. For instance, AT&T absolutely bites if you're in NYC, especially if you want to use data; but isn't so bad in some smaller cities. Verizon has great coverage (especially if you travel a lot in the US) and reliability, but cruddy customer service (not that anyone has good customer service), mediocre data options, and a history of crippling the discounted phones that come with their plans. Etc.
Where are you headed? The USA is a big place, and not all areas are served equally by the cell phone companies. If you're in an area where there's good coverage for all carriers, then the question is which network are your friends and family using? Mobile-to-mobile call rates will drop your usage of "anytime" minutes.
Once you have used T-Mobile and UMA at $0.10 per minute, you will NEVER go back to standard plans.
UMA is basically "GSM over IP over 802.11g", and it allows you to make GSM cellphone calls [billed at a standard $0.10 per minute] from any publically accessible WiFi hotspot.
I'd buy an older UMA phone off of eBay, and purchase a $50 [$0.125] or $100 [$0.10] prepaid plan from T-Mobile, and say goodbye to monthly fees forever.
The only winning move is not to play.
Seriously, all of the carriers suck.
Your only real choice is to choose things that are important to you and find the carrier that sucks the least in those things.
Of course, you have to put up with the extreme suckage in the other areas...
... before I give my first born up when I sign a service contract?
You are not ready for the US American cell phone companies. Packets are transported by the souls of the damned who sign service contracts. Your firstborn is not payment enough; you must provide the souls of all your friends and family.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
One issue with Sprint and Verizon is that they are CDMA and generally not compatible with systems in other countries. Sprint is advertising a phone that does both CDMA and GSM, though I have no experience with it.
I can't comment on plans as my employer deals with that end of things.
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
Coverage varies waaay too much to flat out say one is better than all the others. In any given location, any carrier could give the best coverage depending on your needs.
One thing none of the big boys want you to know is that almost all of them have a 30 day escape clause in their contracts. If you are not satisfied, you can cancel (you'd have to give back the shiny phone or whatever they subsidize) and you won't even have to give up your firstborn to do it.
Just read the contract and ask the salesman to get the details, but they all should have something like that, so try them all out and see what is best for YOU.
The world's fastest 3G network
But see here for some caveats.
AT&T has fairly good 3G coverage in all major US cities. And the best performance by far, where you can find coverage.
If you're a traveller who frequents many areas (esp. small towns) or live in one of those small cities with spotty ATT coverage for 3G, then you will probably want Sprint or Verizon.
Although their networks are generally slower, and the experience is generally poorer (on average), they have a lot more area covered.
So again: ATT is clearly the superior choice if you live in a well-covered area and don't go too far from home.
Verizon is a superior choice for most other areas.
For a moderate number of areas, Sprint will give you a better service, and there are a small number of areas where T-Mobile will be the best service.
Now service/coverage might not be the only you are concerned about, you may be interested in price too... you might pick a T-Mobile service based on price, even though it's not the best service for your area.
You might pick ATT, because they don't lock down features on your blackberry or other smartphone like Verizon does.
Then again, you might not want ATT, because of them restricting tethering on certain phones, Verizon may be the best choice there, depending on your needs.
So without knowing, how particular you are about what phone and what features you really need. It's a toss-up.
However, with ATT and the iPhone it's hard to go wrong (except on price, and except if you frequent relatively unpopulated rural areas...).
Get a cell phone without a plan that has VOIP capabilities. Someone said they run around 200$, some sort of Nokia. This will let you make home calls assuming you have broadband and a wireless internet.
Then buy trakphone minutes to use your phone when you're not home.
This will easily save you hundreds of dollars a year... Unless you make a large number of calls on the road.
God spoke to me.
I've been a Sprint customer for quite a few years. My family has three phones on a family plan w. "unlimited" texts and data. I'd rate Sprint as follows:
Pros
1) Price - best pricing for the family plan of the major wireless carriers.
2) Network coverage - good. Good coverage everywhere I need it (home, work, daughter at university). Gotten coverage in some surprising places - like camping and hiking many miles from a major highway.
Cons
1) Customer service - horrible, truly horrible. Any time I have a problem, I can expect to make multiple calls, to get incorrect information, to be lied to. ALMOST as bad as AT&T.
2) Phone selection - AT&T has the IPhone, Verizon seems to be getting more interesting smart phones (like the Droid) before Sprint.
[Insert pithy quote here]
You also have to add in that Verizon enjoys screwing with their customers phone far more than AT&T, T-Mobile or Sprint does. Their "dumb" phones are locked down to where you can do almost nothing more than call, text and take pictures with almost no customization and they replaced Blackberry user's search engine with Bing (see http://jkontherun.com/2009/12/17/verizon-bing-make-google-go-boom-on-blackberry/ ).
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
There’s your answer. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
...if you're coming back from overseas, you'll find there is no 'best'.
I've been back and forth for the last decade, and it is always a disappointment coming back into the US and trying to get decent cellphone service. The US is a backwater of customer abuse and services gone wanting.
When living/working in Japan, South Korea and China, I learned not to discuss one countries offerings versus the US unless I was looking for laughs...
I worked for Samsung in SK and for a major domestic telecom in China, so I had ample opportunity to see things from both the corporate and consumer sides.
These days in the US I carry a cellphone only for emergencies. I don't text, don't use mobile banking, internet, etc. I make maybe one call every month or two, and those are usually from my car where the phone is coupled via Bluetooth to the head unit and everything is hands free. I can't bring myself to accept a locked in contract and the high fees are best spent elsewhere... For me, the whole cell phone experience in the US is a bust.
Cell phones I brought back from Asia are going on 2 years old now and still have features that were ubiquitous there that aren't yet common here.
From listening to everyone complain, the grass is always greener elsewhere.
Simple truth is, all of them seem to do some things better and some things worse than others. It's more about figuring out which things you actually care about and which ones you don't. Then find the provider that does what you care about and fails at the things you don't care about anyway.
"It's complicated."
Signal quality and coverage depend on multiple things - the carrier's infrastructure vs your (common) locations, and your phone. Verizon's coverage, say, in one city, can be completely different than in another city. There is also the difference between voice quality and data, and then there's data SPEEDS to consider. You also want to look at future upgrades. Verizon will be the first one going to LTE (the next big jump in data connection speeds), though Sprint has already rolled out WiMax in some cities (a competing 4th gen spec), noone is likely to be coming out with any WiMax smartphones until the second half of the year, by which time, Verizon will be on the verge of their LTE rollout. You can get WiMax cards for your laptop now, though, if you just can't wait.
There's also the issues of phone selection and plan pricing to consider, and whether you're going contract-free or not. We're in a period of transition this year on more than one front - the impending switch to LTE in the second half of the year, and the decimation of Windows Mobile-based phones by Android-based phones, oh, and the now 'superphone' type phones - ones with 1ghz-class processors and WVGA screens (like the Nexus one and HTC Bravo).
So, I guess I would start by thinking about finances. Can you afford to outright buy a phone? If you can, I'd suggest that so you can go contract-free and increase your choices for switching in a year if you need to based on how the industry shakes out this year. The beginning of 2011 is going to look VERY different from what it looks like now. Android will be matured, LTE will be available in most major cities by Verizon at the very least, Sprint's WiMax infrastructure will possibly be starting to switch over to LTE if it is, indeed, as simple as upgrading network tower software, and we'll see how mature Android is, how much Microsoft bribes the cellphone companies to put out WinMo 7-based phones, and whether the iPhone finally upgrades to 'superphone' status and becomes available on networks other than AT&T.
If you can't afford to outright buy your phone, then go with Verizon or Sprint for the 3G coverage (for now), assuming 3G is a big concern. Verizon vs Sprint is a matter of network quality/phone selection vs price. Verizon (currently) has the better phone selection and network quality over Sprint, but Sprint has those Simply Everything plans (I'm on the Simply Everything 450). Verizon is officially going to be carrying the Google Nexus One phone later this year. Sprint was completely silent during CES on what phones it's going to be carrying. If they get the HTC Bravo (the hardware that is essentially the Nexus One), I may stay with Sprint, especially if it has the Sense UI on it, which the Nexus One does not. Verizon seems to have made the biggest official commitment to the Android platform of any of the major US carriers. I just wish they'd match prices with Sprint. If I could get an HTC Bravo on Verizon at Sprint's prices, I wouldn't hesitate to sign a two-year contract.
I wouldn't consider AT&T or T-Mobile because of their 3G coverage and network reliability issues at this time, but those AREN'T issues for many people in many locations. You'll want to find out from people where you live what those networks are like there.
It depends on where you are based, how much you will travel, are you a business or personal user and whether you like sim cards or closed platorms.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
They all stink.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
It really depends on your city. I would tend to choose sprint for speed and coverage, but it really depends on your area. In many cities people will glare at me when I say sprint, but in others (like this one), everyone just nods.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
If you are willing to put a bit of time into talking to their sales people, you can bargain your contract terms and prices a bit more than they would have you believe. I have personally done this a lot with sprint. For instance I have never signed a 2 year contract, and refuse to. I can usually talk down the price a bit and get a 1 year contract rather than 2. It just takes a little persistence. (not the annoying bitch at them til you get your way kind either). People are more willing to work with you when you are friendly.
Can't address your data card question as I have no experience, but I can address your phone.
Go online, and buy a Sprint SERO plan transferred from one of the fools selling theirs online. Nothing beats it.
Use your old HTC phone, or get a new HTC WinMo phone (unfortunately Palms and Android phones are blocked from SERO since it's too good a deal).
Enjoy your unlimited data, texts, nights and weekends from 7, and 500 voice minutes for 30 a month. All on what is widely perceived to be the fastest 3G network, all while roaming freely onto Verizon's network, which is widely perceived to be the best voice network.
Really. I am not joking. It really depends on where you live, work and play and what your budget and credit is like.
Sprint service is non-existent where my family lives, but several other providers have good service there. I use T-mobile because I don't have a contract, so any phone I buy I can get unlocked and I am not paying extra money for not having a contract. And, they have decent service where my family is.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
True, you are in a situation similar to choosing something to watch on TV late at night on Saturday. (Who, Me? a Life?). Its the old "least horseshit selection process".
But Features and Capabilities do matter to anyone who wants to do anything other than make phone calls.
Since TFA mentioned "data enabled phone" you now have to consider coverage area, bandwidth, multi-tasking, data-caps, and a few other things.
The device becomes more important than the carrier. Once you pick your device, your carrier choice may be limited or non-existent.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I'd like to take this opportunity to steer the conversation towards discussing some phones in general, regardless of the provider (So some of us non-us folk can have a bit of a discussion).
Mainly because it's somewhat related and because I, personally, lost interest in the mobile device market some years ago (Around 2003 or 2004) and am quite out of touch. There's been many big changes, devices like the iPhone have changed the game and now Google has Android I feel I'm even more misinformed.
I was thinking of getting an Android phone, but all I've heard lately are teething problems (mostly with the Nexus one). What do you /.ers think of the current smartphone market? Are there genuinely any great phones out there worth investing in? Anything on the horizon worth holding off for? Just your thoughts and opinions on the best phones to check out now and in the future.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Rather slow? Most of the bay has horrible quality of service.
I'm up in Alaska and no national carrier works outside the three major cities. Up here AT&T is the only national carrier that works at all. The question asker needs to look at where they are going to be and research locally what is right for them.
I had T-Mobile in Portland and it worked great, in Seattle/Everett it had meh coverage and sucked down by Tacoma/SeaTac.
I've been w/T-Mobile since they started in the US. Here's why I like them:
* Avid supporter of Android. First one to introduce the G1, and now the first partner w/the Nexus One.
* Support advanced android features like visual voice mail for free and auto-notification when you near your minutes limit
* Reasonably priced, as cell phone companies go.
* Customer service has been shockingly fast/friendly whenever I've needed them (which admittedly, hasn't been often)
* Great coverage in US. Every city I've been to has had solid coverage. I've only been to fairly large cities though.
* After 3 months of service, they give you unlock codes for your phone.
* GSM network so most phones can be used overseas-- successfully used my US G1 in US, Mexico, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, etc. T-Mobile's parent company is Deutsche Telekom.
* They are not AT&T.
* As far as I know, they did not spy on Americans when Bush asked them to.
And no, I don't work for them.
...if you can put up with the crappy AT&T network. If you're in a major metropolitan area and won't travel much you'll be fine. The sync features of the iPhone, including the camera/photos, are really nicely implemented.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Sprint has excellent customer service. Much better than att and t mobile. If you know how to talk to people and be polite, Sprint is by far the best. They are very reliable. It really doesn't matter who has the best service, because they all offer free roaming now so it doesn't really matter. Sprint's customer service is by far the best. I have delt with all of them.
Doctors do Massage in Longview WA now, who knew?
They all suck.
-David
Don't buy your phone or plan straight from the carrier unless you absolutely have to. I've had great luck saving as much as $150 off buying a new phone/plan combo from Amazon or Fry's. Try Fry's first if you have one in your area. If you can't save $100 from the carrier's price, you're not trying. Also, Sears Wireless seems to be the place to buy Verizon Droid and Droid Eris phones. Much less money, with no MIR needed. FYI.
Get the Consumer Reports on cell phones plans form your local library or buy it online.
Look for your metro area and compare each of them.
Heads up. they ALL suck. Your just going for the least sucky.
The Cell phone industry in the US is a bunch of crooked assholes who rip everyone off. But the really sickening thing is most Americans use them anyway....
If you've been living overseas, then you may need your fancy new phone when you visit friends or coworkers overseas. If so, Sprint and Verizon are NOT options. T-mobile and AT&T offer GSM coverage, but you'd need a tri-band phone.
p.s. AT&T are more evil than T-mobile. Sprint is probably less evil than Verizon too.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Well if you Slashdot daily you will have heard GSM encryption has been hacked and the code is in the wild. The fact that the major GSM providers continue to downplay this is a good reason to steer clear. That leaves you with Sprint, Verizon or a local carrier.
Both Sprint and Verizon have good deals on plans and they have decent phones. I am an unrepentant crackberry addict and will tell you why. It lasts more than 5 hours on push and I can change the battery my damn self if needed, (haven't had too except while camping).
Sprint's everything plan is good and Verizon has followed suit with something similar. My preference for Sprint is that they discount their already low price by 25%. I have been with them for over 10 years which also means I get full upgrades on all my phones every year not two years. I pay $150/mo. for three phones with 1500 shared minutes, weekends and evenings starting at 7PM (not 9PM), any network roaming in US & Canada (quad band phone required), and everything data (including BlackBerry service). Minutes to me wasn't as big an issue as the data. I send and receive over 100 texts and emails a day.
Verizon has a better pick of phones in my opinion, something I don't hesitate to tell Sprint as often as possible, especially when I want them to knock another $100 off a new phone. Verizon has wider coverage where Sprint seems to have stronger signal in Cities. I can often get in the elevator and keep my conversation going while friends drop off. As I said my Sprint signal fades faster though when I get away from the city. Having a quad-band phone is handy I can jump over to another network and I'm up and running.
If your're dead set on the iPhone and you don't care about its limitations I say go for it. If you need a serious work phone that is rugged and long lasting I recommend a Blackberry. Keep in mind there are two families of BB, consumer (Pearl & Curve), and industrial (Tour & Bold), not sure where the touch screen one fits in since it seems to have features of both families. Android phones are getting better reviews every time I look at them. At the moment they seem to lack the finer polish of the iPhone but they perform just as well and they are an open platform.
I am not sure where to come down on the Palm Pre and Pixi, they seem to suffer from the same lack of polish that Android phones have but they are also a closed platform meaning they will likely evolve out of that phase slower. Palm was great back in the day and if the Pre came out 3 years ago I would have said it was a game changer now it's like a relief pitcher brought in too late to win the game and is only there to keep the run lead down and salvage as much of the team's reputation as possible.
My final opinion avoid the iPhone and AT&T or any other GSM carrier. Pick an Android phone if you want fun and a BlackBerry if you need a serious workhorse.
"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most." ~Ozzy Osborne
then the question is which network are your friends and family using?
Land lines from the phone company or the cable company, in my case. If you're in the same situation, "friends and family" may be more apropos than you may have thought.
I've settled on AT&T. I've spent a lot of time on the road and have been to nearly every state, and AT&T has been generally okay for me (certainly not good, but okay). But with that said, Verizon and T-Mobile both sucked for me, with both coverage issues and serious billing issues (the kind that get you red in the face and ruin your day, then your week, then your month, until you're telling people how ridiculous it's getting).
So I've been with AT&T several years now and am uninterested in switching at this point (and I live in NYC, where people [usually not AT&T customers] are sure AT&T is at its worst).
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
T-mobile is the only option for urban areas. If you're not in an urban area, Verizon has the best coverage, but it's CDMA format, so if you plan to go back overseas or travel frequently, you'll need to keep your old phone for swapping SIM cards.
Also, if you switch to a CDMA carrier, you'll need to buy a new phone. I would recommend T-mobile for the reason you can just swap out the SIM card, but if you're not in an urban area, ATT is the only other GSM carrier, and they are only slightly better than two cans on a string.
After being on ATT for 7 years, my bill started fluctuating wildly from $60 to $100 even though I wasn't doing anything different from previous billing periods.
After I called ATT and sat on the phone with them for two hours, a representative told me they were "singling out my blackberry plan" and could do nothing about the issue. I gave up, walked into T-mobile while I still had an ATT rep on the phone and let them know I was going to get more minutes and a cheaper plan.
This was three days ago and i think I'm going to call ATT and waste some more of their time while officially closing my account.
On a similar note, my roommates all have ATT and hate their coverage and service. Another friend goes so far as to call her phone an imnotaPhone. ATT service is so bad, they have a piece of software that allows customers to help map out and complain about where the service is bad. They also claim that an 80% success rate on connecting calls is good. Cricket, AllTell, T-Mobile, MetroPCS, smokesignals, homing pidgeons, and morse code all beat ATT. Do yourself a favor, go with anyone but ATT.
What's the best kind of attack to have, heart attack, or stroke?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
... the best two are Verizon and US Cellular. Verizon gets the edge for variety of cell phones to choose from and nationwide coverage, but US Cellular gets the edge for better service although their regional coverage is just as good if not better than Verizon's.
Sprint and T-Mobile only care about getting customers to sign a contract. Their service is atrocious and cellular coverage is spotty around the city and really crappy in the rural areas.
The only thing going for AT&T is the iPhone. If it weren't for that, they'd be down there with Sprint and T-Mobile.
"Happily lived Mankind in the peaceful Valley of Ignorance." -- Hendrik Willem Van Loon
It really depends on where you will located the most, like 30 people before me have said. I know everyone likes to bash AT&T but in my situation its the only major carrier in the Dayton-Columbus-Cincinnati area that will get coverage around where I live. I went out four wheeling with a friend into the middle of nowhere and had 3G coverage west of Dayton close to the Indiana border on my iPhone. I also travel back and forth between Dayton and Columbus all the time and have mostly seamless coverage. Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint don't get coverage at all and I had horrible customer service issues and phone hardware problems several times with both Verizon and T-Mobile. I have a few friends who had Sprint who had to get boosters from the Sprint store in order to even use their phones at their house. Its all about location, just do your research and ask peoples opinions around where you will be located the most.
Sprint, for sure:
Almost the coverage of Verizon, but cheaper plans. World phones available, and great smartphones with WebOS or Android (I've become a huge Pre fan after having tried out a Droid and Droid Eris on Verizon).
Let's look at the competition:
Verizon:
Best network, by far. But screws you up the ass, sorry, nickles and dimes you whenever they can.
AT&T:
OK network if you happen to live in a Top 50 metropolis with Senators that can make your life miserable (I'm looking at you, awesome AT&T coverage in the DC to Baltimore corridor.)
Deutsche Mobile, I mean T-Mobile:
Seriously? I guess if you're paid to use their shit in NYC or LA or are a typical jackass American and never leave your top 25 metro area.
For the record, I switched to a Pre on Sprint after happily having a Razr on Verizon for years. I love my Pre and I love Sprint. This from a guy who regularly travels the backroads of the country where AT&T and T-Mobile (and the iPhone and 3G) are myths.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
why are you paying incoming call fees again? imagine getting billed on your landline for some fools that call you? people get double billed, and they still bend over with a smile .
Dont Judge The situation by the Misfortunate. Goga.
iPhone w/ATT: My opinion hands down: Listened to an audio professional this morning note he specifically queried 100 iPhone owners over the last year, and not one was unhappy. The exception is a friend who works in a hospital and ATT doesn't have coverage in that hospital area (Kent near Providence). Cell Card/Verizon: My opinion: Always works (which ATT did not).
Sprint is about the same price as Tmobile (and until recently, were cheaper), has better 3g coverage by far than Tmobile, and roams on Verizon's network in case you *are* heading for the boonies. Sprint has a bad reputation they can't seem to get rid of, but have made vast improvements in customer service under their new CEO Hesse. That having been said, all of the carriers suck....
Sprint. Seriously.
If you were happy with Sprint before you still will be. Your hardest decision will be choosing between Web OS (Palm) and Android (Google/HTC) phones.
For the record, I chose the Pre and am very, very happy. Especially after having all but stolen my brothers Verizon Motorola Droid and Mom's Verizon HTC Droid Eris.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
The question is clear and other people's answers appear to have the same problem I do -- namely that it's unclear WHAT kind of service you want (good voice quality, good data quality, good SMS, pricing, etc.) and no criteria for "Best."
At this point I could stop having criticized the question, but instead let me offer you some answers, and you can pick and choose.
I have a Nokia N900 on a T-Mobile "all you can eat" plan. The plan is great. The phone is great. In my area T-Mobile can't hold a call.
I have a Motorola Droid on a Verizon "don't eat very much but enjoy your meal" plan. The plan is so so. The phone is almost great. Verizon coverage for voice and data is awesome here.
I have a Treo 700wx running Windows Mobile 5. I believe it's three years old. It was my Verizon phone prior to the Droid, and while it was annoying in requiring reboots and factory defaults, it was reliable. I did not love it very much tho, as I'm not a big fan of Windows Mobile. Here it works on SPRINT or Verizon, which are good.
If you go 1 hour north, there are totally different carrier coverages. However, on their respective maps they all appear to have equally good coverage here or there.
SO: When asking what is the best US Cell company, realize that
1. There are different companies throughout different parts, regions, and even cities in the same country.
2. Some companies (e.g. Cricket) resell limited services of some other companies (e.g. SPRINT or Qwest or Verizon within a limited geo. area where I am)
3. Some companies (e.g. Verizon) are an amalgamation of other companies, and their services vary greatly. (Verizon *in this area* formerly Cellular One formerly Bell Atlantic)
4. Data services and voice services are a function of many different things including how they provision service to the cell sites. Literally moving two miles away may get you 700Kbps on 3G data and good phone service, but the other way no data and decent phone service.
5. SMS is something I consider critical. Others do not.
So, in sum, to wind up this post, Voice Coverage, Data Coverage, SMS Coverage, and availability of phones are what can be used to judge the best US Cell company -- in my little neighborhood. Your conclusions 5 miles away will vary.
Good luck with your quest.
E
I switched from AT&T to Sprint in 2004 because of coverage, and recently switched to Tmobile to get GSM and the Cliq. Now I'm trying to figure out the cheapest way to get a Sprint backup phone so I can at least have phone service at home (the cellular repeater I got isn't working out too well, though a directional antennae may help).
I like Tmobile as a company, and Sprint was fine too, but I've heard too many horror stories with Verizon and AT&T to even consider either.
What is this, a Jr. High Blog?
Who has the best coverage?
- Verizon
Who has the best coverage, and is not run by nazis?
- AT&T
The company that offers this phone.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Best phone plans, data plans, and SDK for phone development I've seen.
J2ME etc.
T-Mobile is basically the only US carrier that seems friendly towards folks with unlocked phones just looking for a SIM card. There's also been some rumblings that they might start offering the first prepaid data service in the US; how likely that is, I don't know. I do know that they used to let iPhone users use their prepaid data plan for Sidekicks, but that is no longer possible. They only blocked port 80, though, so you can still check your mail via IMAP, or SSH to a remote sever somewhere! I've even used Opera before, by passing my traffic through an Opera proxy server. Also, you can get $100 of prepaid credit for $70 by utilizing Bing.com cash back (YMMV) -- and that credit is good for a year. Not bad if you don't do a lot of talking or need port 80.
If you'd prefer not to give up your first born with a contract, you can actually do so cheaper with T-Mobile ("Get More Plus" is the plan) than if you had signed a contract with them. You'll have to buy your phone at full price, but typically the plans are about $20/mo cheaper if you do without a subsidized phone. And as a bonus, there's no contract and it is cheaper over 24 months. It really gives you some visibility into exactly how much you're paying for that "free" phone elsewhere. But coming from Europe, I'm sure you understand.
two tin cans and a piece of string?
Sprint will be getting the iPhone in February.
Sprint undoubtedly and unfortunately. nothing has changed in the last 5 years.. same lame coverage. sprint being the the lame winner in both data and voice range and clarity.
Sprint will be getting the iPhone in February.
IF true, that'll make a lot of people happy. I won't care much, as the iPhone isn't high-tech enough for what I want. I'm wanting something more in the hardware class of the Nexus one (gigahertz-class processor, WVGA resolution, very much prefer an AMOLED screen). Plus there's all the iPhone app store nonsense these days. I'm waiting for an Android phone, though I know all the non-techies will be happy with an iPhone, and that would certainly help Sprint's bottom line, which is in trouble lately.
Well, T-Mobile has a much cheaper service plan.
Especially, in my case where I don't need the data plan. I pay $100/year for pre-paid w/o data versus AT&Ts $100/month with data. So, that is $1100 less for me right there.
You can move to a either $50 or $30/month WITH data plan for T-mobile which would still be a sizable savings over AT&T.
Also, for some weird reason T-Mobile has good coverage at my in-laws house, which normally no-one but Verizon has coverage there.
First, you need to find out how the coverage is in your area for each service. And by "area" I mean at your home and/or work because you could see the service working fine down the street at the store where you buy the phone and then get home and not have any signal. Second, never sign a contract. It really is worth buying the phone out right and not dealing with the bullshit. Here's my experience so far: T-Mobile: Not very good coverage but data is fast and getting faster, 21mbps by mid 2010 they say. Price is unbeatable. Customer service is very pleasant and helpful. AT&T: Coverage is better then T-Mobile but data is weak at best. Price is high but not the worst. Customer service will make you want to punch babies and kick puppy dogs. Verizon: (Disclaimer! The place I work uses them, but I have my own phone so have not used them) Coverage seems to be very good and data seems to be consistently decent. Price will make you shit bricks, especially for data tethering. Customer service is helpful. One last thing to note is that CDMA phones seems to drain battery faster then GSM phones. Lots of people were I work got Verizon's HTC Touch Pro and the battery would last less then 8 hours. I had the HTC Touch Pro (they call it the FUZE) from AT&T, which is the same phone only with a GSM radio, and my battery would last 2-3 days with very similar usage.
I switched over to Page Plus. Their offerings are contract free. I'm on a $30 for 1200 min, 1200 text, and 50MB data. They have an unlimited plan, albeit with less data, for $10 more. The lease off the Verizon network, and I've experienced no difficulties with coverage.
Before you pick a carrier, you need to answer some important questions - mostly about what you want and expect from your carrier and what you think they'll be expecting from you (typical sales-y questions - sorry): ...? re: voice what level of coverage / reliability / quality are you willing to settle for?) 2) how much are you willing to pay 3) how long do you want pay that company? (expect 2 yrs unless you bring your own hardware), 4) what hardware do you want to use? (Carriers all are trying to get you to buy phones that ONLY work on THEIR network to lock you into their services.) Once you answer these simple *grin* questions, you can then ask if there is a carrier in your area who offers a fair compromise between these items. What I've typically heard is: Verizon makes you pay for everything but has the best voice coverage (I don't believe their 3g coverage argument - maps or not). AT&T and T-Mobile have spotty 3g coverage (I can attest to this in upstate NY and I *believe* this about coverage in NYC). Sprint has spotty coverage and crappy customer service (that was my experience when I jumped ship from them and their coverage w/Virgin Mobile phones sux IMHO also.) Unfortunately, there isn't (to the best of my knowledge) any unbiased evaluation of cellular service. I will also tell you that depending on whether you are purchasing a SINGLE user plan or a FAMILY plan, you'll need to balance those issues as well. Hope this helps. A. C. (Anonymous Coward *grin*)
1) what type of service do you need (re: data, is Edge OK or 3G or 4G or
For you guys in the US saying T-Mobile, did they ever get their data plan sorted out to the point where you can tether a laptop to a phone with bluetooth and browse the web with it? And if so, is there any guarantee that the functionality won't be broken within a couple of months? If that works, I might grudgingly reward T-Mobile with "Sucks least" status for US cell carriers, import a new Nokia communicator from Europe (Just to piss in Apple's corn flakes) and go back to them this year.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If you're an HTC WinMo man and you want to be able to tether uninterrupted with multiple laptops (uninterrupted by a call that is, incoming or out), to be able to do that together, just like Luke Wilson keeps whining about (Jesus I hate that guy), gotta have GSM 3G/WCDMA/HSDPA/UMTS/etc not CDMA. Your two options are TMo and AT&T for that.
Now if you want to be able to use data on your phone when you're in a department store or midtown Manhattan during business hours or Frisco, major metropolitan areas, and you want to minimize the risk of not having zero data as much as possible, Verizon. Go with Verizon and either tether or get a card thingy for your laptops. But I wouldn't have even mentioned AT&T if you didn't allude to tethering. It's worth adding that even without a tethering plan, I've tethered my ass off without ever having had a problem with AT&T stinging my ass with surcharges. Verizon's more anal, I believe.
If you're going in rural areas then, though you may still get EDGE with AT&T, firstly it's slow as balls data wise by design but with EDGE you won't get simultaneous voice and data. And data over EDGE, especially if you're tethering, man it's slow. So you might as well have Verizon then as its coverage, in case you haven't seen any of those ads, of "3G" speed over the States is much much better. So you're more likely to get reliable coverage with Verizon, but with AT&T, in the event of being within range of a 3G tower that just happens not to be congested and saturated, then you get to pop in your earpiece, go crazy tethering, the works. Again however, such events with AT&T are often intolerably rare.
Check your coverage maps obviously. Whichever way you swing it, for your tethering needs I strongly recommend wmwifirouter, no question.
Calling out bogus battery capacity claims.
If you need coverage in rural areas, then you have one choice. Verizon.
You want "cool" phones... then you can take your pick pf any other than VZW, and LOOSE COVERAGE.
The two carriers to avoid at all cost:
TMobile
Sprint
In that order. TMobile - NO COVERAGE, Sprint CDMA next to no coverage, nextel(Sprint iDEN) - limited covea
If you want to get decent voice and data (3G) data coverage, then your choice is clear, and ONLY: Verizon.
Want crap service, crap coverage, pick any of the others.
1311393600 - Back to Black
Uh, dude, have you ever seen a Slashdot poll? That "suggestion" did not rate (or desire) a serious response.
USPS.
They are more reliable. And you'll probably get your message through faster.
My UID is prime. Hah!
You said that you are coming back to the states but maybe you will still be travelling abroad once in a while. If you want to use your phone abroad you should choose a GSM-provider. Either AT&T or T-mobile and combine them with a quadband phone. That way you will be able to use your phone during your travelling for speech, SMS, and EDGE-data service.
The 3G bands used in the U.S. for higher speed data service differ from the ones used in rest of the world. So someday we are going to need phones with five or six bands...
What you read here should be taken with a grain of salt (except for my post of course).
Opinions are like assholes; everyone has one and most of them stink.
When I was stationed in Italy from '99-01, I used Omnitel, and even had a pc-phone cable hookup so that I could get about a 1KByte/sec net connection (slow as molasses, but it worked, hehe). And in Spain, during '02-04, I used Amena. Both carriers offered (only?) decent pay-as-you-go rates, and the credits didn't expire after only 1-3 months, like they usually do here inconus. I remember using my Amena phone with credit on it that was more than 6 months old. Sigh.
I've been with Sprint for over a year now, using their new incarnation of the SERO plan (employee referral) and have no complaints.
$69 and change a month after taxes and fees, unlimited everything except minutes (500 "anytime" unlimited nights and weekend). I have the HTC Hero, and somehow I'm eligible for a full upgrade every year, not 2. I still have to sign up for another 2 years, but it seems once a year they change the contracts allowing you a free out anyway (if I had a reason to leave)
Before my Hero I had a Blackberry Curve. The calls on the Hero do sound a little echoy on my end, but that's a phone issue, not a service issue. I'm rarely in a place without signal here in Washington State, and I'm not in the Seattle Metro Area (thank god).
their customer service has always been good to me, if I need to ask them anything related to my account. Just like anywhere, if you're respectful, they'll help you out, or get you to someone who can. For question about hardware, I never go to them, I look on the phone's related forums instead, so I don't know about their help there.
For info on how to get on their new employee referral program, just Google "Russ.s.mcguire@sprint.com" and it should take you to his site, where you can find the last 3 of his employee number (383 i think...)
They also offer an Employee Referral program for the internet cards.
What exactly do you have against thin small outline packages, anyway?
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Consumer reports has looked into this, and says Verizon has the most coverage. I am a Verizon guy, not because I like their technology, and certainly not because I like their phones. But I almost never ever don't have coverage. Others borrow my phone because I always have coverage with they don't. The 'there's a map for that' adds are true, I have had AT&T before, and their coverage is not dreadful, but certainly not trouble free.
Instead of signing up with a cellular service, why not just start shooting up bootleg chinese anabolic steroids?
You'll end up feeling the same rage, but you'll save several thousand dollars and will end up with an awesome body.
Your nuts will shrink though, which I have found also happens with all the major cellular carriers.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It is complete and utter B.S.
AT&T = dropped call central........
They don't fit in freakin' prototyping boards.
I would propose that he consider the difference in price between buying a phone outright and buying it on a contract, and compare that to the cancellation fee, and see if the cancellation fee is pro-rated. It could very well be cheaper to have them subsidize your phone and pay the cancellation fee in a year than to buy it outright.
--
Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
If you don't live in BFE and don't visit BFE very often, AT&T is superior in every way.
Verizon has better coverage. That is its only advantage. Everything else goes ATT's way.
I'm curious, why no mention _at_all_ of uscellular? Are they like the aol of phone companies?
They were the only provider available in my neck of the woods when I first signed up several years ago. The price is reasonable, coverage is pretty good (I have the unlimited roaming though, so I don't pay much attention), and they offer a blackberry if that's what you like.
there is no best cell provider, they all equally suck,
if you want a blackberry or iphone with data, you pay out the ass GTA and Docomo provide these
if you want a nextel style phone (ripped off boost mobile phones) you can get cheap service, but no data whatsoever, i Connect provides this
and text messages to mainland u.s. are between 5 and 10 cents on each provider with no unlimited text plan available.
you can of course use your phone from mainland U.S. but get ready for a hefty bill at the end of the month.
If you want unlimited everything including web, get Straight Talk. It's only $45 a month and it's at Walmart everywhere. It runs on the Verizon network so the reception is good.
The coverage is the most important item. IF you get the best phone, and find you have poor coverage it won't matter. I have been with sprint for 10 years, and have good coverage here in Las Vegas, NV. I LOVE my Palm Pre, but in the next few days Verizon is getting a updated version of the Palm pre and Palm Pixi with tethering. This might be the best solution. The Sprint pre does have a unofficial tethering option. I gave up on winmo after having lost too many calls when the phone range, and the telephone app crashed while trying to answer. Winmo is Windows fist, a Phone 2nd. My Pre has been 10x better if you can live with the smaller apps list. Look at www.precentral.net for more info.
As a reference in case you want a comparison sitehttp://www.cellphones.ca/
Not saying it is the greatest site, but as a quick guide it's decent enough.
Of course take a look at the ratings of the Canadian carriers. Looking at getting a Smartphone here is really scraping the bottom of the US barrel it seems. Your probs in the US would be huge improvements compared to what crap we get.
I had a VX6700 phone with Verizon with winmo. I tethered it, had excellent reception everywhere, except 3G was lacking in rural areas that I frequent. I paid out the wazoo for this plan. I switched to Sprints Everything plan and share it with my wife. Service has been good. Excellent EVDO coverage. I'm now running a Touch Diamond. Again, I am able to tether this phone (winmo) at no charge (minor registry hack), requires no driver on host pc. I've been a Sprint customer once before. Customer service has much improved (although I think with customer service, its all in who answers the phone). Obviously coverage will vary, I'm in the midwest.
Coincidentally, I recently came across this independently surveyed coverage for the big 4 across the U.S. It's done by a group called Root Wireless, who I'd never heard of before, and can be interactively viewed here:
http://reviews.cnet.com/coveragemap/
It looks like they are going use users/customers to gather data for them (I sure would participate) but for now, the voice coverage map is pretty thorough while the 2G/3G ones are a little light (this is in the part of Los Angeles where I live that I looked). It jibes pretty well with my experience in the area, and it better than any coverage map that I've seen from the carrier themselves (that always shows excellent coverage :p ).
Don't believe a single wanker on Slashdot. None of us know where you are, or what you're interested in. Someone could show you some graphs that show how Verizon has the best service nationwide, with the highest bandwidth and fewest coverage holes, and maybe you'd buy from them.
Verizon "can't" get through the walls at work. Distance from a tower, or whatever, nowhere in my complex at work (a site of 4000 people) can get Verizon except occasionally at a window. AT&T is flawless, and I've even see people keep a conversation going in the elevator. Rude people, but the point stands. In my neighborhood, again, people with Verizon are always angry, but AT&T has us covered. My wife loves her iPhone, and never complains about it, aside from a little EDGE related derision. My parents came to visit us in Austin from Phoenix a few years ago. Wouldn't you know it, but Verizon had zero network coverage in the little town where their car broke down. I couldn't tell you if AT&T had the town covered; I can only say they had a cell phone for emergencies and the #1 network in the nation failed them. Now mom won't go more than 90 minutes from her house. Thanks, Verizon. (Mom always had "issues", but now she has another.)
In NYC, I understand, AT&T blows. I'm sure there are plenty of other cities where their network is poor, or maybe even just inferior to other providers. Maybe my tiny little insight into the Verizon network has found the only three weaknesses. Whatever. Talk to your neighbors and coworkers. Don't get what the angry people have, go with the happy people.
I too will be coming back to the States in June. Currently, I have Vodafone India service, and the difference between it and US service is astonishing -- Friday after Thanksgiving, I was in the middle of the Thar desert on the back of a camel. It occurred to me to see if I could call my Mom in the States and wish her a happy Thanksgiving. Yup, four bars. No electric lights in sight, but when the sun came up I could see a cell tower on a distant mountain. That 15 minute call cost me about $2. We have service *everywhere*, it costs six rupees per minute (1.5 cents), and data is cheap and fast. Note that this isn't a government-subsidized plan, it's Vodafone -- they're making money at this. I currently have about $20 worth of minutes on my Corby, and will probably not be able to use it all before we leave.
I'm making several points.
1) UMA gives you the flexiblity of using EITHER a cell phone tower OR a WiFi access point - whichever is giving you the stronger signal.
2) T-Mobile has outstanding prepaid plans for as low as $0.10 per minute.
With 1), you have VASTLY more options for connectivity to insure usability - if you are way out in the middle of nowhere, but the Forest Ranger's Station has WiFi, then you can make the call; if you are deep in the bowels of a large building, with no cell tower penetration, but plenty of WiFi hotspots, then you can make the call.
And with 2), you don't have to invest in some obscene monthly phone plan [e.g. (12 X $100/mo = $1200 per year) X 2 years = $2400 commitment]. Instead, you just get a TMobile SIM card, purchase some minutes, and start using the phone when and only when you want to use it.
And your GSM [cell phone tower] minutes are charged at exactly the same rate as your UMA [802.11g WiFi] minutes.
You can get older UMA phones on eBay for as little as $25, a TMobile SIM card activation kit costs $6.99, and you can get 400 minutes for $50 [$0.125 per minute]. So for much less than $100 [including S&H], you are up and running with the most modern & redundant phone technology in the world, and you haven't made any commitment to some ridiculously onerous monthly plan.
UMA is not quite the same thing as VOIP.
UMA is GSM over IP over 802.11g.
So the signal is broken down as:
[GSM packets encapsulated within IP packets encapsulated within 802.11g packets] -> WiFi Hotspot -> Some other Medium -> IP CLOUD -> POTS/PSTN bridge -> POTS/PSTN
It's similar to VOIP in that you go into the IP CLOUD and then cross over a bridge into POTS/PSTN, but the UMA network keeps track of you as a cell phone, and [* if everything goes well *] allows you to transtion [* fairly seemlessly *] between an 802.11g WiFi hotspot and a cellphone tower, depending on which has the stronger signal.
You can think of UMA as being roughly the same as VOIP, but with the added on-the-fly mobility of a cellphone.
This guy nailed it.
As far as buying unlocked phones, I haven't seen a setup where they have a non subsidized billing rate. You get out of the two year contract/early termination but it isn't like they have an unlocked phone rate. You still pay for the handset subsidy whether or not you need it. So yeah if you like giving extra money to the phone company, by all means, buy an unlocked phone and pay their unlimited data plan rate.
In general, the UMA phone will attach to whichever "medium" gives it the stronger signal [either the cellphone tower using true GSM, or else the WiFi hotspot, using UMA = GSM over IP over 802.11g].
And TMobile charges EXACTLY the same rate for GSM [cellphone tower] minutes as for UMA [WiFi hotspot] minutes.
Went with T-Mobile in 1998 when they came to Hawai'i.
1. Excellent customer service.
2. Flawless billing. Never overcharged once.
3. Outstanding customer service for military personnel. (They'll put your account in 'military suspend' for the duration of your deployment.)
4. Best. Prices. ANYWHERE.
5. World-wide service. Best of all, their phones are all SIM chip-based, so if you've got a quad-band phone, you can slip your US chip out and put in one from the country you're visiting. Voila! No overseas billing charges!
6. Not the fastest data service on EDGE/GPRS, but it works. No personal experience with their 3G just yet.
7. Always have a signal, no matter what service area I'm in. I can be out in the middle of East Bumhick, but if there's a tower out there, it doesn't matter whose tower it is, I've got connectivity.
T-Mobile compensated for their lack of initial coverage by signing service agreements with every single non-major and semi-major provider in the US, meaning you could be calling on Mom&Pop Telco, but NO ROAMING CHARGES!!
I haven't paid roaming charges since Verizon in Hawai'i got bought up by T-Mobile, and I've been a loyal customer since then.
I still have the Hawaiian number, and will never give it up. :)
[End Of Line]
I've had US Cellular for something like 9 years now. At the time I picked them because they wanted the smallest deposit on a new phone contract. In my experience, I often will still get a signal in a lot of places where Sprint and AT&T phone users do not. I don't travel all that much but I've been all over the state of Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, Vegas, Phoenix, Miami, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame area, New Orleans, Southern Mississippi, Mexico, Memphis, Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Washington DC in the last few years and have never had any problems getting a signal.
I consider their prices to be pretty reasonable. My phone bill is somewhere around $90 a month with two lines, around 1000 minutes (we never really go over that), 750 texts per month, and one phone with Internet service (my wife doesn't really want or need a smart phone). If you don't intend to frequently travel, they offer "Wide Area Plans" instead of "National Plans" which are significantly less expensive.
The downside is that they are a CDMA carrier and have a very limited selection of phones at any given time. Currently they are offering the Blackberry Curve, Pearl, and Tour and on the Windows Mobile they have the HTC Touch Pro 2 and HTC Snap. I personally have an HTC Touch Pro and find it be a pretty nice phone in general, although I am hoping that some droid model makes it to US Cellular.
Curious to note that of the first 200 comments, none mention the choice of phone over equally-bad-on-different-dimensions carrier.
I second everything that Tubmleweed mentioned since it's dead-on accurate. The real debate is between Verizon (great coverage) versus Sprint (great 3G speed), with AT&T and T-Mobile being runners up.
Be aware that if you plan to "tether" (connect your phone to your computer to let your computer have wireless Internet access over your phone) then Sprint will allow you to do that for free as long as you have an existing unlimited data plan ($15 for base plans or included in new plans), but Verizon will try to charge you per-megabyte costing you hundreds of dollars a month once they find out. Also be aware that Sprint also includes "Any Mobile-to-Mobile" add-on in many of their plans calling any of your friends on any mobile network completely free.
The iPhone is no longer a booster to AT&T's service since there are other alternative phones out or about to come out this year to rival the iPhone. T-Mobile is a company that has changed names three times already always hiding from a bad rep but trying to make money on we-cut-our-own-throat prices.
Some HTC phones that are are out already for Sprint and Verizon networks (both CDMA based) and are also GSM six-band phones so you have international usage, or additionally if they are Hard-SPL flashed, Secure Unlocked, and flashed with a custom WU World Unlocked Radio they can use US mobile carrier SIM cards letting you use AT&T, T-Mobile, or other carriers with regular or pre-paid SIM cards. You simply let the phone choose the network automatically by availability or manually by switching between CDMA and GSM only modes on the phone.
This CDMA & GSM access makes these phones almost universal in usage since they are carrier independent. On top of this you can flash them with tons of custom ROMs giving you access to all versions of Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 and 6.5 already including tons of custom applications written for these operating systems. You can even build your own custom ROMs from "kitchens" customizing the settings, drivers, and software available on these phones. They sell for $325-350 on eBay and can be activated with either carrier without a contract. Be sure to only by the Sprint or Verizon (CDMA & GSM enabled) HTC Touch Pro 2 phones and not the AT&T or T-Mobile (GSM only) since you won't have access to both wireless network types and the GSM only phones have a slower processor.
HTC Touch Pro 2 (aka RhodiumW) - 2 x CDMA, 6 x GSM, 480x800, 528MHz, 288/512 MB
Sprint - HTC Touch Pro 2
Verizon - HTC Touch Pro 2
Websites that you must visit.
XDA-Developers.com
PPCGeeks
If you can wait a bit longer and wish to spend $750 or more then you can consider this phone.
HTC HD2 or wait for the predicted but not confirmed HTC HD2 Pro (with keyboard and CDMA later this year).
I'll tell you when you tell me what the best console is. Also the best OS, car, pet, and musical genre.
I switched jobs in December and had to get my own phone for the first time in 3 years. Started with Sprint, ended up on Verizon due to the shitacular coverage and service from Sprint. If you're interested in a comparison of the Samsung Moment vs. Motorola Droid, here's my writeup:
http://morgajel.net/2010/01/16/642
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
Sprint-Nextel International Phones
Verizon International Phones
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
Sprint still has well-priced plans, being the cheapest of the AT&T, Verizon, Sprint triumvirate. Given that, AT&T and Verizon just dropped their prices. I'd go with a Palm Pre on Sprint and just homebrew a tethering app. If you want another option, Verizon will have Palm Pre Plus which includes built-in MiFi hotspot software (plan of undisclosed price still, I think) for up to five devices. With Verizon's new prices and possibly a buy-one-get-a-Pixi-Plus-Free, the MiFi and their coverage that's a pretty tough combo to beat. Again, it's all subjective.
Author of Enyo: Up and Running from O'Reilly Media
I use Sprint, and I've never had any problems with service or coverage, except that where I live the only available data service is EVDO. But I can live with that, since I use my DSL most of the time anyway. I do a significant amount of travel to various US cities, and my phone always works.
A few weeks ago I went into a local Sprint store to get a phone for my mom. I explained that I already had six lines on my "Family Everything" plan, which technically isn't allowed (s'posed to be 5 max), but I was grandfathered in from an older plan and had been a Sprint customer for like nine years. I explained that even though I was already over the line limit, I wanted to add mom's new phone as a NEW LINE to my EXISTING 3000-MINUTE PLAN. "No problem", said the sales droid. "Cool!" thinks I.
One month later I get my Sprint bill, and it's $250 higher than the previous month. WTF????? Turns out, they added a totally new account for the new phone and gave it a shitty 200-minute pool. And mom -- whose idea of high-tech is a toaster oven with a timer and was practically peeing her pants in fear when I presented her with the phone -- had apparently overcome her reservations and burned up the freakin' airwaves to the tune of 800 minutes.
So I called Sprint "Customer Care" and explained the situation. AMAZINGLY, the service person promptly moved mom's phone into my Everything plan, and told me she'd submit a refund request for $220. "Great!" I said. The other $30 was what I'd been expecting to pay for the new line anyway.
Next day, I get a call from a different layer of the Sprint customer service hierarchy. "Sorry," she says, "We can't process your refund because your plan is invalid -- you have seven lines on a 5-line plan, and the computer just won't let us issue refunds for invalid plans." I was welcome to keep my seven lines, she said, but, oh dear poor us, our computers just won't (sniffle) allow us (sob) to audit your account for a refund.
"That is the stupidest goddamn thing I've ever heard," says I. "The provisioning system will allow low-level service-trons to configure plans that the accounting system can't audit? C'mon, pull the other one." But she was immovable on this point. And I immediately made plans to switch providers as soon as I'd got my soul out of hock from the three recent phone upgrades I'd done.
One month later, I get my Sprint bill, and lo and behold, there's a mysterious $219 credit.
So now I am happy... but I'm not sure why.
I do not know which is best, but AT&T sucks. I am in Anderson, IN, and in these parts I lose calls all the time, and never have 3G service available. I have several friends and work associates, in this area who use Verizon and are generally satisfied.
Slashdot can give you answers on customer service nightmares and the like, but that's only one part of the picture. What you really, really, really care about is coverage, and that varies from location to location, not company to company.
For example, where I lived in CO, Verizon had crappy coverage. AT&T had great coverage.
Where I lived in NC, Verizon had great coverage, and AT&T had crappy coverage.
Ask your local friends & coworkers, 'cause the best customer service department on the planet isn't gonna help much when you can't get a signal.
If you are planning on being in areas under T-Mobiles footprint, they have unlimited plans for very cheap without contract if you own the phone.
The N900 is the ultimate open source phone for geeks. (notice for geeks, although it is getting better for everyone)
It has built-in bluetooth tethering.
The plan is cheap also, no need to give up any family members or body parts and if you leave the US, the phone will probably work in your mother land.
Purchasing a 500-600 dollar phone and using t-mobiles non-contract plans are far cheaper within a year of service payment than most other options.
Plus it has everything you need in it and then some.
ABIWORD was recently ported for it.
It doesn't look like anyone has recommended BillShrink.com. You tell them what type of plan you want, if you want to get a new phone or not, where you live and where you work, and it will give you a list of possible phones and/or plans from each provider, along with a rating of how strong each carrier is expected to be in the areas where you'd usually want to use your phone.
Of course if you want to be really safe you ought to find some coworkers or neighbors with different kinds of phones and see what kind of coverage they get. Combined with the list from BillShrink, all you have to do is decide how to balance how much you want to pay with what kind of coverage you're willing to deal with. (And maybe you'll even get lucky like me and find that the cheapest company (T-Mobile currently) also has the best coverage in your area =)
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Gavron makes an excellent point - I recently got a Nexus One with T-Mobile, and on the map I had solid service at home and at work. When the phone arrived I found a very different reality - roaming everywhere. Don't trust the maps - ask users - when I mentioned T-Mobile to my colleagues at work (too late!) they all knew it didn't work in our area. I could have saved myself a lot of time just by asking a local.
I look at American cell phone service as an astoundingly overpriced emulation of the past century's plain old telephone service.
But I have kids and a wife with cell phones and I occasionally need to track them down or find out what she wants from the grocery store.
Their three phones are billed at $120 per month from Verizon. The entire family plan is justified by my 16 year old who sends 400 text messages (otherwise 20 cents each) per month.
A friend gave me a Tracfone specific Motorola W175 (they are $20 retail) and I bought a 90 day prepaid phone card. Customer service as described on the Internet is poor, and the credit card portion of their website requires a browser not running Privoxy.
My costs are: About $12 per month and $.13 per minute. I have voice and text but I still use the home phone for long calls.
So I mention TracFone as another option in the range of services mentioned here.
I criticize cell phone service like this: Except for phone calls and brief text messages, all the other data transfer processes are bottled up in proprietary bundles of hardware + software + carrier + 2 year contract deals.
Just like every other cell phone, on my TracFone every voice sounds the same. The small audio bandwidth is matched by an equally small "meaning bandwidth".
As a curmudgeon, why the heck can't cell tower operators sell the huge bandwidth and instant connection switching for $.02 per hour instead of $ .13 per minute?
Retail cell service provides a tiny fraction of the raw potential of the system. Look at it like this: A cell phone tower may consume 2 kw, that is about $.30 per hour for hosting 100 to 1000 connections. Double that price to pay for the hardware. The result is the basic cost of a cell phone data link is only a microscopic part of the amount charged at retail for the link wrapped in what we call "cell phone service".
Also as a curmudgeon, lets call conventional cell phone design crummy: If I didn't sit in a closed car, you would hear me from 15 feet away just like every other cellphone user. Uhh, not enough sidetone so everybody bellows robustly.
Who is best? Verizon, they have the most 3G coverage (if you go on a road trip you'll REALLY notice having EVDO almost everywhere even on some highway), have pretty good speeds, and are reliable. I have service with them.
But they charge A LOT for it. If you had Sprint before, and they had coverage where you need it, it's not like they've lost any coverage; they have 3G over their footprint, have some 4G (Wimax), and roam on Verizon outside their footprint. And they are MUCH cheaper than either Verizon or AT&T. What I'm saying is Verizon is "the best" but if you get sticker shock and Sprint was good for you go back to Sprint.
Okay, breaking news from Engadget about a very interesting HTC Touch HD2-size phone with Android and AMOLED screen ... and WiMax?! That's very surprising, but it would be very welcome news. I hope the thing about it only being in white is false, because, DAYUM, that'd be a big mistake. I guess I could always get a black cover for it. The article is here: Engadget.
Boy was THAT the wrong link. My bad, folks, Here's the Engadget article: Engadget
It's been said before: "All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less." -me, circa 1995
All cellular carriers suck. Find the one that sucks less.
I have a cheap Samsung slider phone that does tethering on my $15/mo data plan. My bill (with corporate discount) is about $85 for two phones (700 mins + rollover), 200 texts each, and data on one of them. It's expensive, but we're starting to see the beginnings of a price war, so we'll see how that shakes out.
There are places the service is not so good, but that's true for all carriers.
SWITCH.
Anybody have experience with ALLTEL wireless and internet access?
When it comes to which company is the BEST, there are several things you need to look at:
For the area you live in or spend the most time in, how is the coverage map? I am not talking about 2G vs. 3G or anything like that, but more, do you have dead spots on the various networks?
How much traveling do you do? The more you travel, the more important the overall service coverage area is. Also, 3G, while it speeds things up quite a bit, it may not really matter to you as long as you have data service that works.
Do you want to TRUST your cell phone service provider? Verizon is probably the company I would trust the least when it comes to a bill(land line or cell phone). Will there be a random $10 that they will take off if you complain, meaning you MUST check your bill in detail each month for "strange" fees? This is what I hate about Verizon, they have a long track record of just throwing random fees at customers, knowing that a very low percentage will be checking their bill and catch it. How about the sudden bump in early termination fees that Verizon just put out there that doesn't specify which phone you have? So, a cheap $50 phone could hold the same early termination fee as a $400 Blackberry(unless the new fees specify based on phone what the termination fee will be).
Now, with those questions in mind, AT&T for overall areas of service may be just a little smaller than Verizon. In general, for overall quality of service, Verizon is probably the best. Keep in mind that the AT&T commercials are correct, the data service will generally not work while talking on the phone. With a speaker phone, this IS a key weakness for Verizon. At the same time, Verizon service does tend to be a bit better in many or possibly most areas. Considering they are also the local phone company for many on the east coast of the USA, this makes some sense since they have local crews everywhere for servicing the normal land lines. Third is Sprint, and their coverage area as a whole is a lot worse. They are good in many places, but in rural areas, it is hit or miss how good or bad the service will be. T-mobile is also short on coverage area, with many areas not able to get T-mobile service, and I am not just talking about little towns in the mountains, but in areas with over 10,000 people living in it.
If you travel overseas, GSM is pretty dominant, so AT&T and T-mobile phones can easily just have a sim chip put into them to let you use a local carrier while you are there. If you have a locked phone(which most are), regulations in the USA require that the provider provide an unlock code so you can use it while traveling.
When it comes to 3G coverage, Verizon clearly has the better network, but as I mentioned, for most people, 3G is nice but isn't necessary for most things. I use my phone to get traffic updates for my GPS, and others use their phone as a cellular modem(bluetooth connection on their laptop). Just keep in mind that not all phones will let you use them as a way to get data for other devices, and it can also cost more per month from your cell provider(they give you unlimited bandwidth on the phone, but if you use tethering to use that phone as a modem, you have to pay for bandwidth usage).
Blackberry services...they are different from your average smartphone service when it comes to data. As a result, you get some benefits from a Blackberry, but you may run into other headaches with that Blackberry service.
So, consider, but just keep in mind you will probably be stuck in a 2 year contract or subject to an early termination fee.
On a related note, the iPhone for all its functionality and apps and such is very much locked into AT&T(with a Verizon version due in the next few weeks from what I have read). With all the hype, I have not heard enough about comparisons of how it is as a phone compared to other phones on AT&T. The dropped call issues on the iPhone COULD be service related, but it could also jus
I'm pretty amazed nobody seems to have mentioned Metro PCS as a real option. If you happen to live and move in areas that they support, it's by far the cheapest alternative out there.
I've been with Verizon for just a little over a year - which means my LG Dare's warranty just expired. Well it died. Speaking with Verizon, they ran me through some encantations, and gave me the bad news. Then they asked me if I wanted to upgrade - No. Then they asked if I would pay $50 for a refurbished (same unit) - No. Then they just sent me a refurb for free. I don't pay for their insurance, BTW
Another story is the time I was about to go over my minutes. They called me and offered to move me up to the next plan for $20, instead of sending me a bill with $100 of overage charges. I'm sticking with Verizon.
Some years ago when the Blackberry 8830 came out, I switched from Verizon to Sprint because Verizon refused to enable the Blackberry's GPS. For me, GPS driven Google Maps is THE smartphone killer app. I switched to Sprint. The salesman assured me the GPS worked overseas, in Barcelona for example. Before leaving for Barcelona I called the salesman I bought the phone from to enable international voice and data. When I got to Barcelona the phone was not authorized for GSM. Sprint did not have a customer support number in Spain. I had to purchase a local cell phone to call Sprint to get the Sprint phone working. These calls used up about $100 worth of minutes. Eventually voice, data and tethered modem started working but not the GPS. Upon returning to Oregon I sent Sprint letters demanding credit for the expenditures they forced on me but never got a reply. Sprint did manage to get the phone authorized on subsequent trips but the built in GPS never worked. I was able to use a Bluetooth GPS but the connection had to be reset often. The tethered modem feature did not work on the last trip, and Sprint claimed it never did work overseas! The nice thing about Sprint is that you can get "all you can eat" data overseas for about $70 per month surcharge. Too bad the menu is shrinking. The other carriers I've checked charge an astronomical fee for data overseas.
I'm currently with AT&T. My plan spans back to when they were AT&T *prior* to them becoming Cingular, then AT&T again. So with that said, I have an "old" voice plan, ($29.99) + their "unlimited" data plan ($19.99) and the 200 text plan ($9.99) basically $60.00 / month... When I went for a new phone, and they wanted to jack that up to 90.00/month, I bought my HTC device online (paid almost 900.00 for it) but I still keep my cheap plan. I can also tether, use GPS w/TomTom etc.
My advice, fine the cheapest service you can find, then buy a phone that has the features you want and can leverage their network. (I'd recommend HTC, I've had 2 and loved them both) They're all going to $cr3w you... it's just a question of how much lube they'll use.
I'm still waiting for the ideal phone service, and I hope that Google will offer it when they finish integrating Gizmo5 into Google Voice.
I want a phone that combines the benefits of traditional cell phones with the cost savings of VoIP.
This plan would allow people who make most of their calls from home to save hundreds of dollars on their annual bill. Currently I use a combination of Skype and a pay-as-you-go phone to keep my bill low, but having multiple phone numbers is a pain.
Someone offer this, please! Whatever happened to competing on price?
Anybody have experience with ALLTEL wireless and internet access?
Alltel was acquired by Verizon Wireless in 2008.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
"...them is Dixie cups"
Isn't this question a bit like asking "Which turd is the best in the punch bowl?"
I mean... sure there might be one that outclasses the others, but they are still turds and they are still in your punchbowl.
Don't you mean ' which one sucks the least ' ?
I'm not in to government intervention, but i do think the cell market is one place we need some regulation of some sorts.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Check out this link for a horror story about Verizon customer support. The recording of his conversation with customer support make be cringe link finger nails on a chalk board.
http://xkcd.com/verizon/
A survey by J.D.Powers showed T-Mobil and Verizon pretty much tied in customer satisfaction. TM is cheap, friendly, and competent, VZ has best signal quality. Another survey checked top plans and top signal and had similar results. I fear before you can find the best, you will have to define best for you.
To muddy the waters, it seems that Sprint and Verizon struck a deal to let Sprint customers use the Verizon data network. I'm not sure how that plays for you, clearly people who value call quality now have another way to get it.
I'll save a spot in my address book for your mobile number! With that much anger about not having a fone pent up inside -- it shouldn't be more than a few months!
The most ground-breaking discovery for mobile enterprise has been the MiFi®. It's a portable device that connects to 3G/1X wirelessly and creates a small WiFi domain that you control. Kind of like a tiny router, but with just a power supply and a USB cable. IIRC, you can have up to 3 WiFi connections going at once and up to 10 unique devices using it.
In other news, Verizon has a shiny new line of Android phones (also by HTC, but their "biggie" is by Moto) and attractive plans. I'm still waiting for something competitive to the new $50 T-Mo "unlimited" plans to appear at VZW, but time will tell.
It's always a good time to be a newcomer into the US wireless carrier market; free- and discounted devices abound with rate plans that fit almost every lifestyle.
At some point, you will find yourself regretting your decision... no matter which one you choose.
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
Sadly most men are embarrassed by a "thin small outline package", resulting in sad hyperabundance of commercial for male enhancement...
By far, the best of the bunch (reliability, customer service, and price) has been T-Mobile.
MetroPCS is good if you live in one of their areas, don't mind the handset selection, and don't travel much. Otherwise, T-Mobile is the best. By far.
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Do yourself a favor and don't listen to anyone on here. Scope Craigslist or www.ppcgeeks.com "Bargain Trader" forum for anyone selling a SERO Sprint account. More pop up all the time.
What you get is:
500 minutes a month
Unlimited Data
Unlimited SMS, Picture Message, Video Messaging
for $35/mo (after tax). ...and I don't care what anyone says. Sprint has the best coverage, pure and simple. GSM coverage in the US is a joke. AT&T is overloaded with iPhone fanboys. As mentioned earlier, Sprint roams on Verizon so you get the best of both worlds. There is no comparison.
Nab yourself a WinMo or Android based HTC phone with WiFi. Again, head back to ppcgeeks.com and get yourself a internet sharing fix cab as well as HTC's own WiFi router app for WiMo. Secure and pretty darn quick, turns your cell phone into a mobile wireless router. Your speeds should be comparable to high-end residential DSL accounts. ~1/1.3Mbps downstream.
On your laptop, use light weight browsers on your computers that have a mobile user agent and multimedia disabled. Essentially, avoid using a ton of bandwidth and basic web surfing will never get you flagged for data abuse.. If that isn't for you, add on their tethering package or consider one of their 3G router packages. This will make you future ready because Sprint is one of the only early adopters of 4G networks (new routers are usually 3G/4G combo), and if rumors are correct, will be putting a 4G tower in every Walmart within 2 years which means you'll be sitting pretty with your little device.
Then, combine Google Voice, AntiSip, and IPKall and get yourself a totally free phone number that you can use to make and receive calls totally free from your cell and both your laptops for 100% free, then use Miro and ditch your TV provider. There, I made your life awesome by telling you how to ditch every single entertainment and telecom provider except for Sprint for $35/mo. It works for me! Cheers!