What Is the Best Cell Phone Company?

As for cellular service, it's all about LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. One man's success is another man's failure with respect to cellular companies. This holds true for locales within the same general area. Choose one that works well at your home and equally well at your place of business. That being said, I have had the best luck with Cingular here in Los Angeles. I split my time between the SF Valley and Hollywood.

I have two phones on Cingular, one on T-Mobile, one on Verizon, and one more on Swisscom. The T-Mobile isn't too bad in the LA area, but I'd have to say that Verizon simply sucks. The battery life on my Verizon phone(s) have been dismal and there service policies suck too. My Swisscom works well during my travels to Europe. But the cool thing about my Cingular service is that it works just as well in Europe, Asia as well as North America. I also like Cingular's rollover minutes.
 
i am relatively satisfied with cingular, although the network goes busy and inaccessable every so often (examples of this include when UofM has a football game, new years, etc.) for the most part cingular service is outstanding.


positive points go for their easily understood and accessable online statements, customer service department, overall coverage.

negative points go for their lack of decent phones. i really, really, REALLY want a motorola i530. as soon as my contract ends (still got like 16 months left :mad: ) i'm switching to nextel.
 
i currently have verizon

excellent but expensive coverage

they do not have the latest gadgety phones..generally just well proven models...but since all i do is make phone calls on mine that is just fine with me
 
bandaidman said:
i currently have verizon

excellent but expensive coverage

they do not have the latest gadgety phones..generally just well proven models...but since all i do is make phone calls on mine that is just fine with me
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Yeah...I wish they had better phones. I got a new phone last spring (May) and next to getting a pal-pilot phone I had to go with the samsung a610. It's a great phone, but the variety sucked. I wanted a non-LG camera phone w/speaker phone and there was no chance of getting it.

I will have to say that I like verizon's coverage and coperate customer service...their individual stores blow. I have filed 6 formal complaints with my local store, with three of them being at one time. When I walked in to renew the contracts for myself and the rest of my family, they didn't give me the time of day. THey handed me a sheet of paper and walked away...so I screwed one of their snobby-ass employees out of their goal of renewals and did it flawlessly over the phone with verizon customer service. they were very polite and prompt, and gave me a stellar deal. They also gave me a discount on a new phone.

When I walked in the verizon store later that day for the second time, I got the eye from the employees. I went around to look for my new phone, picked it out without any help, and told them what i wanted. When I told them i renewed my plan 20 minutes earlie and had a discount they didn't beleive me, and I made them look at my account and verify my discount and new plan.

Since that day they have given me a little more respect in the store, and I am still happy with my phone.
 
Midget said:
negative points go for their lack of decent phones. i really, really, REALLY want a motorola i530. as soon as my contract ends (still got like 16 months left :mad: ) i'm switching to nextel.
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You're kidding right? Almost any GSM phone will work on the Cingular network. You can buy a non-branded GSM phone and it will work right out of the box with Cingular. That being said, of the four cellular services I have, Cingular offered the best phone I have ever had.... I just picked up a Nokia 6230b and this phone rocks. Bluetooth so I can tether to my PDA, world phone capabilty, a built in camera, FM radio, and video recorder, and also a built in MP3 player. There is a removable Multimedia card (MMC) and I can load it up with my favorite MP3s and play it all day. The sound is astonishingly good right out of the speaker (no headphones required). The battery life on the 6230 is incredible.
 
From the Nextel website:

December 2004
Sprint and Nextel announce that their boards of directors have unanimously approved a definitive agreement for a merger of equals.

Nextel’s youth lifestyle brand, Boost Mobile, signs up its one-millionth customer.

Nextel offers Direct TalkSM, a unique service that provides a back-up off-network walkie-talkie service for use when customers are outside Nextel network coverage areas. Nextel is the first national carrier to offer this type of off-network service integrated directly into a cellular handset.

I have Sprint, call clarity is good, service blows chunks. the woman in India did not what the "fair and flexible plan was. Anyway, I hope this means I can get the i530 too.
 
They all suck. Every one of them has terrible coverage . I am amazed that consumers have settled for the abysmal level of service all the cell phone companies "provide" - dead zones, "shadows", dropped calls, no service areas, the list goes on and on. they also can't handle the capacity and you will not get any service at all during some peak times. In an emergency - forget about it - during 9/11 the cell phones were the first system to fail. My prepaid TracFone ($7.95 per month for 30 minutes) which used to lease time on the old analog systems was working long after everybodies high tech 2-gig phones had crapped out.

Watch out for hidden charges too. My two "free" phones from verizon cost around $230. The $59.99 family plan with two lines and 400 minutes actually costs around $70 after you pay all the state, local, and federal taxes, fees, access charges, surcharges, 911 fees, support charges, service charges, etc.

They are a technology that does not have the infrastructure to support its own weight.
 
I just switched to Cingular. I got the $29.99 per month plan I added the data services for another $10.00. It still cost me almost $50.00 per month. But I must say that so far the service has been fine. I got the Sony Ericsson 637 and it is probably the best phone I've ever had.
I was with Alltel which is a small regional service that uses the same network as Verizion. Thier service area was great. But thier phones where crap and thier customer service was worse. So I dumped them. And as soon as my wifes plan is up, we are switching her too.
 
As a fellow Los Angeleno, I can confirm what your friends told you about Sprint's local area coverage. It was horrific. They tried to be the first kids on the block to offer GSM service. Unfortunately they rolled out the technology long before the infrastructure was ready and stepped right into a disaster. Admittedly the clarity of the connection was excellent when it was working, but you had to be standing directly under one of their towers for it to work at all. I too jumped ship the second the "number portability" rules went into effect.

I now have AT&T service and am about as happy as you can be with any cell phone company. I can't vouch for the quality of their customer service because I really haven't run into problems which required their assistance. I suppose that should count as a positive on some level. Dropped calls are still a problem, but I haven't heard of any SoCal provider that does appreciably better. AT&T really shines when it comes to national coverage area, so if you do any traveling at all, it's something to consider.
 
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