Help -- Considering New Plan in Atlanta -- Verizon, Voicestream, Cingular?

I realize that by asking this quesiton I will probably get a lot of confilicting errors that may make my decision more difficult, but I thought I would ask anyway.

I live in metro Atlanta and am planning on starting a new cell phone plan in the next few weeks. I have had Sprint PCS in the past and was not happy with their service of call quality so I am not considering them.

I do travel quite a bit to Virginia, California and Arizona so considering this the 3 companies I am considering are Verizon, Voicestream and Cingular.

Right now I am leaning toward Verizon because of their extensive coverage area. Voicestream only has roaming in Viriginia and California and I have heard bad things about call quality and customer. Cingular only offers roaming in Arizona and I have also heard bad things about their customer service and call quality.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Thanks!

[Matt]

VoiceStream's national plans have free roaming. However, coverage in Virginia is limited to Northern Virginia near metro Washington DC, and parts of Richmond (which is not on their maps). Coverage to most of the rest of VA - Charlottesville, Richmond, Willms burg, Va Beah, Norfolk) will come online this summer.

[Dukedog]

If you are going to travel that much, Cingular have some of the best National price plan than any other carrier, I don't know how good Cingular service is in Atlanta.

[TNDan21]

I'd go with Verizon if you plan to travel to Virginia often. VoiceStream has very limited coverage in Virginia so I would highly recommend against them. Cingular also doesn't have much coverage in Virginia and most of it is in SouthWest Virginia which is GSM anyways so in most of Virginia you will be roaming on SunCom (Triton PCS) and AT&T although Cingular's Nation Plans do include roaming its always preferable not to roam.


Verizon Wireless

[ATLguy]

I live in downtown Atlanta (near Centennial Olympic Park) and have had Cingular for over a year. In general, I have found their service (reliability, call quality, customer service, *pricing*) to be significantly better than AT&T Wireless. I recently "upgraded" to one of their Nation plans and traveled around to several states (California, Washington DC, Dallas) with my cell phone in regular use -- I didn't have any problems whatsoever.

I will say that I have had some recent problems (past 2-3 months) with outgoing calls. Instead of getting a "fast-busy" when a tower is overloaded, they'll pass the call through without any voice. In other words, when I call someone, their phone will ring but there's dead air when they pick up. It's kind of annoying, but their technical support office is working very closely with me to get the problem corrected. Aside from this, I really haven't had any problems...

Good luck!

[roamer1]

EVERYONE else is better in Atlanta than AT&T...

I recommend Verizon above everyone else here; Nextel, VoiceStream, and Sprint aren't too far behind them. Cingular has an excessive amount of analog roaming on national plans compared to other carriers, and (as I just said) AT&T sucks.

-SC

[RH]

As for Arizona I live here in the Phoenix area and use Verizon, have never tried Sprint so I cannot comment same with Voicestream. I used to use ATT but between Verzion and Alltel they cover the most areas in AZ. The only probelem with Voicestream I can say is limited coverage outside Phoenix same with ATT. If you did go with Cingular since they do not have service here you would roam on ATT if if is Cingular TDMA.


RH

[Frito]

I beg to differ! On the contrary Verizon has by far the best call quality and customer service i have ever expiernced! ALthough i do not live in Atlanta i live in Florida. I have had had both Sprint and Cingular and i still have AT&T and i can say that i had bad time with all 3 of them in those departments but that was a few years ago so they may have changed for the better. But i can say that Verizon has the clearest calls ive ever made and thier customer service is supieror to any ive ever delt with. Id say give Verizon a shot, they have a 15 day period were u can cancel with NO termination fee.

[aiwapro]

Voicestream got the JD Power award for the Atlanta area this past year. The Voicestream service in the California is coming along just fine, and should be ready in July. The hard launch is scheduled to be July 18th. As for Arizona, my Mom & Dad were in Pheonix Monday, and they called me from inside the airport, and the call sounded crystal clear. I don't know how the rest of the area is, but to be in an airport with thousands of people using their phone, and not to have any problems, that makes a GOOD statement to me. She also called my grandmother and aunt aswel without any problems.

She also called when they arrived in Las Vegas and the call sounded fine than too.

Echo anything but AT&T Wireless in Atlanta. They are terrible .

[Jack]

go with voicestream there had to be a reason that they won the jd power award

Jack

[larry]

I agree with Jack. I think the JD Powers awards are the most reliable out of any.

[IdiOTeQnoLogY]

i was going to say voicestream as well based on the jd power award for atlanta.....but after reading further that this user is going to travel often to areas where voicestream does not have coverage yet (though will soon) id say go with verizon until voicestream gets coverage in those areas densely covered.

also with verizon you'd get a 15 day trial with the phone compared to a 72hr with voicestream so you may as well try verizon first.

[aiwapro]

Well, Voicestream doesn't have much coverage in Virginia yet, but they do have California and Arizona.

[roamer1]

Also if data is important to you at all, skip VS for now -- they are having severe technical problems with all aspects of data in the Atlanta market right now. (Best for data are Nextel, Sprint, and Verizon in that order; Cingular is a very distant fourth, and AT&T has no data/web services at all in Atlanta right now.)

See this newsgroup post for an explanation of all that's wrong...

-SC

[aiwapro]

This is only one person's experience with Voicestream data problems in Atlanta, and I'm sure it is only temporary, and besides that, the person even said that it wasn't Voicestream fault.

We all know that the 1900 MHz PCS frequency doesn't go through buildings well. Both Sprint PCS and Voicestream Wireless operate 100% on this type of network. It is something that you just have to deal with. I think in all of MY experiences that the 1900MHz frequency delivers better call clarity.

[Jack]

give voicestream a try they offer a 72 hr trial period

Jack

[TNDan21]

Nope, I would not even consider going with VoiceStream considering the very limited coverage they have in Virginia. Stick with considering Verizon and Cingular.

[aiwapro]

They are currently building-out their Virginia network. Many people have reported having Voicestream coverage while traveling through Rochester.

[Matt]

Richmond, not Rochester in Virginia [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img]

[aiwapro]

Yeah that's what I meant. Rochester is in New York.

[TNDan21]

That still leaves a lot to be desired, I use to have a BellSouth Mobility DCS phone and I traveled a bit in Virginia and for the most part GSM phone's were useless around there. Go past Gate City, VA up in SouthWest VA and you won't get another signal until you get to Northern Virginia, even coverage in Gate City itself was spotty. On the other side of my area too once you go past Marion, VA GSM coverage is gone until you get up around the DC area. GSM coverage in Virginia is piss poor at best. With no analog roaming in most of Virginia your phone is going to be nothing but a 5 oz paper weight good for a door stop. Even though VoiceStream is working on Richmond, What about Virginia Beach? No coverage there. What about the Roanoke area? nope none there either.

[aiwapro]

Ok TnDan, why do you keep repeating the same thing over and over. We know there is not much Voicestream coverage in Virginia, that's why Voicestream doesn't advertise coverage there. You can't even buy service there on there website, not anywhere in Virginia.

They are working on more than just Richmond. They are working on other areas in Virginia that would bring them the most revenue, what would be the most worth-while.

[TNDan21]

Sorry, Aiwapro I was in a bad mood when I posted that message so I was a little irritable with that post I apologize.

[aiwapro]

That's ok, we all have days like that.