Need help picking a cellular service provider.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Just to illustrate how little I use the service:

  • I still have analogue phones the oldest of which is almost 5 years old.
  • I have yet to exceed 30 minutes of air time per month
    But I am fed up with my current provider (Cellular One) and am thinking of switching to either Sprint or AT&T.

It looks like I’m going to have to switch to digital no matter what I do so two new phones are in the cards for me for sure. It also looks like Sprint PCS free and clear is a good plan that does not require a minumum commitment. That’s good in my books.

Anybody have reason to warn me off of one or the other of my choices? Any other suppliers I should be considering?
I don’t expect to have my usage rise/change dramatically in the forseeable future.

thanks much.

2

Ok heres the LOW DOWN from and EX RadioShack and CELL ONE EMPLOYEE

CELL ONE = THE DEVIL

they are being bought out by at&t in my market, so I would stay away from them too.

At&t, BellSouth, Cell One whoever the two carriers that have been around forever are going to get you, they are going to be into high fees, contracts, etc.

PRO: COVERAGE
CON: HIGHER PRICE, CONTRACTS

Sprint, PrimeCo (Verizon), PCS in general, the actual service you are going to get is the same from anyone of these. Be careful they only cover certain areas, Meaning if you are in TIMBUKTU only your analog At&t phone are going to get you service, same if you are in BFE. So as long as you work, play, sleep, etc inside the PCS coverage area you are fine, and it seems to me that you arent Mr Talkative anyway so i wouldnt worry about that.

PRO: LOWER PRICE, MORE FREE SERICES, CID, Call waiting, forwarding, three way, voice mail, all that stuff is usually free free free on PCS, Little or NO contracts
CON: SMALL COVERAGE AREA
Weigh the odds, you shouldn’t be spending more than 25 bucks a month on 30 min, 20 bucks is more like it before all your 18% TAXES n all. I hope I helped
Cell one works this way, if you are a good customer ($$$$$) and an old customer, you can have whatever you want, corporate pricing, free this free that, but if you are average JOE, they are going to screw you up one side and down the other KAPISH?*

3

I’ll add my two cents.

I started cell service with sprint about three years ago. They suck to high heaven.

A sampling of my complaints- their yearlong contract is a bitch to cancel. Their roaming fees are some of the highest in the country. They are often so overloaded with traffic that calls are frequently dropped. During peak times calls can and often do ring once on the handset and boot the caller into voice mail. They round the calls up to the nearest minute (This, to me, is the biggest scam of them all). Their customer service is laughable.

As soon as the year was over I called and canceled their service. While I was trying to cancel the service, my call was dropped once, sent to the tech department another time, had two operators argue with each other as I sat on the line, and finally was point blank asked by the operator why I would want to cancel my service. Ingrates.

I went with Nextel. Clear sound, rarely if ever dropped calls, no set contract, decent customer service, and to the second billing.

I’ve been with them since and have been very pleased.

4

Whoever you get for service, make sure your phone is a Nokia 6100 or 5100 series phone. They have the best performance and the longest battery life you can get in the US.

5

This looks like a perfect topic for IMHO. A nice blend of facts and opinions. I’ll just send it over there for ya.

6

Nextel, which offers Nokia phones. The best.

USWest (now Qwest): sucks eggs. If you’re in their area, avoid them like the plague.

7

I’ve found http://www.point.com useful in interactively comparing service plans, phones, etc. available. You can specify which criteria are important to you and it’ll dynamically update to show service plans or phones that meet those criteria and are available in your area. They accept advertising from providers, and it’s possible that they give certain information more prominent play based on who’s paying them how much, but in my experience the information has proved reliable.

8

Before you pick a cellular provider, ask a bunch of people you know who have cell phones how satisfied they are with their company. IMHO, the most important question is coverage and signal strength! Does your signal drop out? Where? Basements? Elevators? Shopping malls? Does the signal indicator go up and down without you moving an inch?

Urban question: Do you frequently ride the subway, or some other train or bus that goes through a tunnel? Because in some cities, the transit authority has given one cellular company BUT NOT THE OTHERS franchise to put up repeaters in the tunnels. For someone who commutes that way in a city where only one provider has service in the tunnels, that might be a factor in their decision. :slight_smile:

[rant]
One of the most frustrating things is when you’re in a place with a terrible signal – or no signal at all – and someone else is standing in the same place yakking away on their cell phone. I can’t get a signal worth a damn in the lower level of Chicago Union Station or at Woodfield Mall. (I REALLY don’t understand poor signal strength in a two-story shopping center at the junction of several major highways with excellent coverage.) Yet every time I’m at these places staring at “No Signal” or one fading bar of signal strength on my phone, I inevitably see someone else making a call, and without the “can you hear me?” calling-from-Mars crap. And they seem to have the same model phone I do (is every company giving out Nokias nowadays?) so it has to be the provider and not the phone itself. Yes, my cellular provider is Cellular One.
[end rant]

9

John-

You might be surprised to learn that most service providers do not share their towers with competing companies.

It is financially more efficient to build a new tower than try and negotiate a deal with a competing providers to use their towers. Explains the multitude of towers popping up each day.

So your advice to the O.P. to check with friends already in the area and check their availability is right on the money.

10

I would definitely ask people who live in your area what there opinions are. As an example, BellSouth may be great in your area while Sprint is horrible, but in some areas the opposite may be true. I know that where I live, SunCom (affiliated, but now owned, by AT&T) has the best coverage, while pretty much everyone else (Alltel, Nextel, BellSouth, Sprint) is horrible. SunCom’s service, on the other hand, isn’t as good as some of the other carriers. It all depends what your needs are and what kind of facilities the different companies have in your area.

11

Yuck! By “there”, I mean “their”.
And by “service”, I mean customer service.

12

Thanks for all the advice folks.

I have spent far more time than I ever wanted to spend trying to pick the right provider for me. Here’s what I’ve discovered:

a) The industry is still in it’s infancy. They seem to not understand that they are simply another utility company rather than some kind of miracle workers on a mission to solve human communication problems.
b) Most help desk people are of absolutely no help at all. The carriers come up with so many complex packages, rules and exceptions to the rules that even their own employees are hoplessly lost.
c) Almost all of them try to nail you down for a minimum of 1 year service contract. Why? My I’m not required to sign long term agreements with any other utility company.
d) Everyone claims to have nationwide coverage but they ding you with roaming and long distance charges the minute you drive out of your 20 mile radius home area.
e) Canada may as well be the moon as far as coverage. No clue among US providers as far as long distance charges should you dare cross into that exotically foreign land. Never mind that most major cell providers ply their trade in Canada as well.

Bottom line. They are virtually all useless tossers and always try to cell you far far more than you need. But who can blame them? Eight out of ten customers in this industry are equally immature and ignorant about what they really want/need and how much it is worth to them. Most view the cell phone as some kind of magical device that they suddenly cannot not live without. I mean, how can one possibly drive across town without calling everyone they know and informing them about the trip while in transit. My mother in law was in sheer amazement for two years when her self important pantload of a son would call en-route in his car and ask her if she needed him to pick anything up on the way to the country. Never mind the the idiot should have thought of calling her from his home in the city where he would actually have a chance to pick up something useful instead of a tank of gas and junk food when he stopped for a re-fuel on the highway. A couple of times I even heard him call her from the car when he was just turning the corner onto the consession road, exactly 3 miles from the house. Why? Just to let everybody know, of course. But I digress…

Don’t mind me. I’m just ranting at this point because now I’ve got to go out a pick new digital phones. I can think of nothing more useless than trying to decide if I want the Nokia 5180 or the Nokia 6150 or maybe I want a flip phone. Oh, and which battery and, of course, the accessory kits. Mustn’t forget the damned accessory kits with the fashion designer face plate and a charger for every occassion and location in the home, car, boat and office. I’ve got two perfectly good analogue phones now which I’ve never had a day of problems with. Why do I need new digital phones you ask? Well, they’ve priced the analogue services right out of sight despite that 95% of the country is covered by analogue service and most of the time you “roam”, your digital phone switches to analogue anyway to give you that reported nationwide service guarantee.

All this fucking work so that I can stand in a grocery store and call home to ask if they’d rather have the Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia or Caramel Crunch ice cream for desert this week.

At this point, becoming a Ludite has a certain appeal to me.

Thanks again all of you who tried to help. If you hear on the news tonight that a crazed man shot up a cellular services store earlier today, please try to empathize and think kindly of me.

13

Hmmm… I’ve got AT&T Regional Advantage, SO has AT&T One Rate. Although we do sometimes experience some staticy areas, we pay one price per month for all the long distance we need, no roaming charges, etc. So far, I like it!

14

Okay, thought I’d bump this up instead of starting a new thread. Its not a hijack, as I’m in the same boat. If it is, apologies, QS.

South Bend is getting Sprint PCS in the next week or so. The Sprint store is offering a $100 discount on a phone (I’d end up paying $30 for the one I want), free activation, extra minutes - 500 for $29.99/month, free long distance (is taken from the 500) and it all comes with V-mail, pager, etc.

I’ll be moving to Indianapolis in January, which is in the same cell region, so I don’t have to worry about renegotiating. I’m thinking about using this as my primary phone.

Do I do it? The downside is that I get the 500 minutes/month only if I sign on for a year. If I don’t, the 500 gets turned to 180 minutes. Thoughts?

15

Make sure the phone works inside your house before you cancel your landline service. My wireless phone works great until I step inside my front door. Then I have one bar of signal strength. Also, if you make a lot of long distance calls, you should make sure the wireless rate is competitive with your long distance company. I use my wireless for all my long distance calls because I get free long distance from my wireless company for the areas that I call.
Most companies have a 30 return policy. Make sure you ask your company about this and are clear on the terms. Then you can at least test out the call quality from your house.

16

Crap. I don’t know where I’ll be living in January yet. Damn. Great suggestion though. Any other thoughts?

17

Sprint blows. Transmission quality isn’t bad, but they have screwed up every billing and service activation event since I signed up with them this summer. I have yet to get a bill which accurately reflects the deal we made.

18

Being originally from Kansas City, my family has always had Sprint, and has never had a problem with billing and things. Money and billing issues are the least of my concerns. But thanks, I have heard that.

19

My experience with Sprint is similar to Random’s.

Every bill is wrong and we (my BF & I) have to call them and explain the deal we signed up for and go through the bill to get the extra charges taken off or credited.

We have been using Sprint for three years and this is an ongoing problem. I don’t know why we are still using their service…