Cell Phone Help

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Laing_Lies_IHB

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<p>What's the best cell phone provider in terms of coverage for South OC?</p>

<p>I currently have an old AT&T plan and phone (from before they went to Cingular...then back to AT&T, again).</p>

<p>I get a lot of dropped calls around the Spectrum area and pretty crappy reception in San Juan (future home). Don't know if it's just because I have an older phone or a crappy provider.</p>

<p>Anyway, since I cannot upgrade my phone simply by re-newing my plan, and since my parents' plans are up, also .... I'm shopping for a new Family Plan.</p>

<p>What do you guys think of Sprint?</p>

<p>Also... Blackberry vs. Treo? iPhone? </p>
 
<p>Both my husband and I own Treos.</p>

<p>His just died after two years (turns itself off). They want him to pay $175 to repair it. (He researched it, and found it is a common complaint.)</p>

<p>This bugs the crap out of me, but is unfortunately, widespread in the electronics industry. </p>

<p>It p/o's me to no end that companies do not stand behind their products - no matter how expensive.</p>
 
I have a bb (blackberry) 8800 with ATT. They are very bad in irvine and Laugna Nignuel area. I was told by my friends that Verison is the best in Southern Ca. They have the world edition of the blackberry 8830 which is very good.
 
<p>I'm thinking of switching back to Verizon. My family share plan would include my sister and parents. I like my current plan because it has early nights at 7PM.</p>

<p>Verizon would worry me because my sister is like that cheerleader commercial chatterbox thingy. </p>
 
<p>Well, I have friends on many different plans, carriers and phones... we all agree Verizon is the best service provider for OC in terms of clear connection and less dropped calls. A good friend of mine just switched so he could have the iPhone... and is very unhappy with the quality of the carrier. The phone of course, he likes.</p>

<p>Personally I have a Treo... it also turns itself off, my plan is up next month and I will be purchasing the Blackberry. Now, I've reasearched a bunch of phones and the only negative I've found to the blackberry is that it does not have a camera. I know I know, seems odd to me too, since it's such an inexpensive thing for a manufacturer to add. But, I was told government, attorney's, and any other place cameras are not allowed love this feature. In my opionion they should offer the exactly same models with & without cameras included... give the consumer the option.... "would you like fries with that?"</p>

<p>Hope I was some help!</p>

<p> </p>

<p>GITOC</p>
 
<p>I'll go with Chocolate... but hey, the customer's always right! </p>

<p>By the way - the model Blackberry I will be getting is the world edition as mentioned by irvine123. </p>

<p>GITOC</p>
 
GITOC, true about camera phones not being allowed inside some court buildings. I can't remember how many times I've been at the metal detector, only to realize I had the phone. Sheesh. Back to the car to put it in the trunk.
 
<p>Okay - </p>

<p>I better go and look at the Verizon family share plans again. Just wish they had an option to start their nights earlier.</p>

<p>My current plan is totally perfect - 1350 minutes with nights starting at 7pm for $59.99/month.</p>

<p> </p>
 
<p>Troop-</p>

<p>yep! I had it happen in court just a month ago... tried to show them the camera was non-functioning (I cracked my display) but NOPE! Back to the car I went too!</p>

<p> </p>

<p> </p>
 
Verizon has the best service that I have had but they are also the most expensive. I wanted to get a phone that had email so I ended up switching to t-mo because it was cheaper than Verizon plus Amazon had a deal for the crackberry pearl. With VZ it would have cost $45 a month for the data service but with t-mo I could get the same plan I had with the BB service for same price I was already paying. So in a sense to me the BB service was free. So far the service has been good. A few dead spots here and there but not like Cingular. The crackberry is really easy to use and almost too easy. You literally have to dumb yourself down because it is so easy. Their customer service has been the best of them all and I have had them all.
 
If you follow the family tree of wireless carriers going back to the 80's, Verizon is a direct descendant of one of the two old-school analog cellular carriers. They have the best tower locations as they got their infrastructure in-place before the NIMBY's went wild.
 
Verizon has the best technology. CDMA has more capacity than GSM per cell power, and CDMA has dynamic power control that allows the coverage area to change according to demand. On the other hand, once AT&T build out their 3G network, the advantage of Verizon will disappear.





Eff:


Regarding cell tower location, analog tower has more power compare to either GSM or CDMA, and the goal in analog era is maximizing reach rather than capacity. Today, the goal is almost entirely geared toward capacity, especially with the coming 3G network, so the old tower location does not play any significant role.
 
<p>As a former Cingular employee, I'd highly recommend you avoid them like the plague. While they switched back to the name "at&t", they are still using the same crappy Cingular network. The old AT&T Wireless network was sold to T-Mobile to get the original purchase past the regulators. Aside from the network quality issue, they intentionally peg their plan pricing to be the highest (on average) of the national carriers in an attempt to attract people who equate "quality" with price. The core of their subscriber base is at the Enterprise level, they don't care about their own customer service ratings, and they intentionally restrict the access of the Customer Service reps and Store personnel to prevent any "unauthorized" changes to contract or rate plan terms. The only company widely known for worse customer service is Sprint.</p>

<p>This leaves T-Mobile and Verizon. The differences between them is two-fold and your preference will determine the ideal company for you. T-Mobile uses a GSM network, like at&t, but they have made it abundantly clear that they have no plans to invest in the High Speed Data part of that network technology. Don't look for video or song downloads on their network or phones, but the GPRS data they do use is the same as at&t's which is why you can hack an iPhone to work with T-Mobile. However, GSM is also the standard in most of the world. China, Europe, Korea, Australia, and most of the Middle East all use GSM band cell phone networks. The GSM phones use SIM cards to identify and gain access to the network, allowing you to use the same handset with a different SIM card on another network provided the phone itself has been "unlocked".</p>

<p>Verizon and Sprint/Nextel use differing variations of CDMA networks. CDMA is the other technology used outside of America, but primarily in Central & South America. The precursors to Verizon went with CDMA after Analog became prone to cloning, and Verizon stayed with it as they nibbled up the regional CDMA cell companies. It doesn't use SIM cards, so phones are forever locked to the network they were designed tom be used on. While there are some CDMA networks outside the Americas, the standard is GSM. Verizon has spent the last few years investing heavily in the High Speed Data portion of their network (and to be fair, so has Sprint) and will continue to do so as technology progresses.</p>

<p>I hope this helps. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. My NDA expired a few weeks ago </p>
 
Nude


3G networks, regardless of carrier, all are CDMA based. The main reason for deploying 3G, in addition to the ability of downloading multimedia content, is the increased capacity. In that sense, AT&T will do better in the long term. China and Europe are all moving toward 3G, I believe Europe is more or less finished with 3G deployment.
 
The newest Blackberry pretty much comes in two flavors, one aimed at corporate use (san camera) and the other at consumers. The 8100 aka Pearl is the consumer version and does have a camera. The 88x0 is pretty much the same device, minus the camera but with a larger screen and keypad (using one key per letter instead of the doubled up keypad on the Pearl). From my experience, you can't go wrong with a Blackberry. Had a Treo before and that was a great phone for its time. Unfortunately, they haven't been able to keep up with the march of technology. The iPhone is likewise superb and now $200 cheaper! :) It does feature an unconventional virtual keypad that may not be everyone's cup of tea.





imho, the choice of carrier is very critical. AT&T's service is just not up to par in SoCal right now, so I'd steer clear of them for the time being. :(
 
<p>tourbillon:</p>

<p>a slight correction to your post. Analog has more "power" because the wavelength it transmitted on was lower, 800Mhz, therefore travelling farther. GSM and CDMA transmit at much higher frequencies,1800-1950Mhz, so their effective range is 3-5 miles, compared to 15-20 for analog. The power used at the tower is identical per FCC regs, however the handsets have drastically reduced the power needed to transmit since switching to the digital networks.</p>

<p>edited to add: the term "3G" is like using "Coke" to describe all soft drinks. The voice side of at&t is GSM. Since the voice side determines network compability, I use it to differentiate between providers and technology. I don't want to get mired down in technological details to answer a simple "who is better" question. As for at&t's future... they can buildout their data network from here until the next decade and it won't do squat to improve their voice coverage: all they care about is ARPU.</p>
 
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