Cell Phone Carrier

[Jerry Simon]

For what seemed a good reason at the time, I switched from Verizon to AT&T about a year & a half ago. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I am now out of that personal hell (43,568 dropped calls) and back with Verizon. Wondering if this is true about the country?

[Ben H]

Not sure I understand the question....

Are you asking if AT&T is bad everywhere? If so, no. I've been with them for 12 years, way back in the Cingular days. I've had bad phones in the past, but my latest I've had for nearly two years and I bet I haven't had more than a dozen or so dropped calls in that time. I'm been happy with them, and every time I've called with an issue, they handle it quickly.

[Tom Raymond]

I had a horrible experience with AT&T. I had phones that were completely useless, the maps showed 3G coverage but the phones indicated 'emergency calls only' almost everywhere. After 8 days of arguing with their customer service morons I returned the phones, canceled my contracts, and was promptly sent to a collection agency to recover a full month's service, a prorated month of service, and the early termination fees. That fiasco took months to fix.

I have Verizon now and I really can't complain about my service.

[AmeriSpecguy]

I have been with AT&T for the last 15 years or so, even prior to Cingular. Never have had any issues. Dropped calls are almost nonexistent except for calls with my father. I've heard complaints about them for years but I've never personally had a bad experience with them but then again I've heard complaints against virtually every carrier.

[Marc]

AT&T tried to screw me for $400 several years ago. I had purchased two I-phones but returned them well within 30 days. Big posters set up on every sales counter in the store on the day I bought them advertised that I-phones could be returned without penalty if done so within 30 days of purchase. They were tenacious about collecting the $400 and when it was over with them, I had to deal with a bill collector that AT&T put on me. Never, ever again.

Marc

[Nolan Kienitz]

Been with AT&T/Cingular and before. Never any major problems. "T" provides very good service for me in the D/FW market and elsewhere in Texas where I travel.

Was with Verizon for a short spell and had to deep six them in a heartbeat after I had their engineers do coverage studies in my prime areas and they confirmed lack of adequate coverage and no plans to change. That was six years ago so it may have changed since.

I used to fly all over the US when using AT&T and had the spotty coverage problems in NYC, subways, tunnels, street-corners, etc.. But that was also 10-12 years ago when I was still in the corporate world.

[Steven Hockstein]

I switched from Verizon to Sprint last year. I have unlimited downloading. Four I Phones cost me $200 a month. Verizon would have been much more expensive and there are data limitations. My Sprint service is about 99.632% as good as Verizon (there are a few weird dead zones but not worth the difference in price).

[Robert Jones]

I think it really depends on where you use the phone. In my area, where I venture into rural areas quite a bit, Verizon is hands down the best as far as coverage goes. If you are near the main freeway or hanging out in downtown Seattle, AT&T etc has good coverage.

[Scottpat]

I think that all are equally bad! It really depends on your location and your expectations. In our family we have a phone on Verizon and three phones on AT&T. I have noticed that depending on your location one brand will have better service than the other, but more than often they both have just about the same signal strength. What I have noticed is that with the Verizon phone the service slows down during peak morning and late afternoon times; when more folks are using the service! I do have better coverage with AT&T in rural parts of state. It might also be due to Nashville being AT&T headquarters..

I have had AT&T going back before it was Cingular, I think it was called MobleCom or something like that. I have never had a problem that was not resolved.

I also only deal with the company stores and not the resellers. It has been my experience that the problems usually start when you work with the resellers and not the company owned stores.

[Garet]

A friend used to carry cell phones from two carriers (I don't know which ones). One didn't work at his house, the other didn't work at his office. I'm sure it varies locally.

[kurt]

Compared to all 3rd World and developing nations, our cellular service is uniformly lousy nationwide. We're the most expensive, and rank 37th (or worse) on the indexes that measure connectivity.

We invented it, and now have an industry model predicated on ringtone sales and bundled services instead of phone calls.