Recommendations 4 TX, NY, CT

[zotie]

Hi

I'm trying to purchase my first cell phone....and I want to do it RIGHT. I live in Houston, TX but i go to school in Connecticut and I move around to NY alot. Therefore i want a service with nationwide free roaming, lots of free nights and weekends, and honest honest services ( NO LIES)

What would you suggest. I was advised by almost everyone to not take Sprint. So I'm considering AT&T, verizon or cingular. Which would you recommend for the houston area, especially since i will be using my phone alot up north...

HELP ME

[TNDan21]

Cingular is suppose to have good service in Texas from what I hear. They also have a set of plans called "Cingular Nation" that is no roaming or long distance while in the US with 3,500 bonus night and weekend minutes. You should check them out.


Cingular Wireless

Zotie,

Cingular is _the_ telephone company in Connecticut (SNET -- Southern New England Telephone is owned by SBC who owns Cingular). Cingular is the 'B' side carrier statewide. Their wirreless service is good in most parts of the state (all carriers have trouble building enough towers in CT -- the NIMBY's!) and western Massachusetts. Not so good if you wander in to New York. There you'll roam on ATT in the City and on whoever -- mostly USCellular -- upstate. But your phone should still work -- even if analog -- everywhere around here that you can get a signal.

SBC/Cingular is also a major player in the Texas market. They started out life there after all!! So if your home town is served well by Cingular, I'd say they are your choice at both of your locations.

[Jack]

I would agree with the previous post but would also consider sprint what are the negatives that you are hearing

Jack

[Frito]

Check out Verizons Americas Choice plans. They include long distance and roaming, depends on what plan u get i think. New York and CT i recieved GOOD coverage with my Verizon phone when i was up there last Year. i have driven though TX but never realy stopped anywere so i cant vouch for that except that while driveing the phone worked great just about everywere in TX. I know Verizon owns some TX markets but iam not sure if its the one ur going to be in.

[Jack]

Frito- what do you think of your 270C

Also wayne is from texas maybe he can be of some assistance

Jack

[Frito]

Jack,
I think my 270C is an AWSOME phone all around. Great VOice CLarity and COverage, easy to use, realy well thought of and desinghed and the speaker phone feautre is awsome. I mean people dont even beileve me when i say iam on speaker phone and i can back that up cuz iv heard it myself. I think that RIGHT now the 270C is in my view the BEST phone to purchase for use on Verizons Network. Its the best phone i have had ever since i got my first Motorola on Bell South Mobalitys AMPS system WAY back in the day! WHat about u Jack how does ur 270C do on Alltell and what do u think of it?? Is Alltell CDMA??

[roamer1]

Cingular covers most of upstate NY.

-SC

For Roamer1,

Cingular service in upstate New York is somewhat scattered and is a mixture of 800/1900 TDMA with some 1900 GSM.
Since all of their Connecticut service is 800 TDMA, you would at the very least need GAIT or similar TDMA/GSM phone to routinely travel between CT and upstate NY and stay on Cingular. In NYC and eastern MA they roam on ATT 800....
I'm sure they are going to solve this problem (maybe by merging with ATT!! -- certainly when they finish their network conversions).

I don't use Cingular. I DID, but found it less than ideal for my purposes -- and their signal is weak in my neighborhood.

Correction : Cingular is 800 Mhz in eastern MA (A-side carrier) with its own excellent coverage, AT&T is 1900 Mhz there. Although Cingular does not have TDMA coverage in all of NY state, with the National Plan there will be free roaming and long distance on other TDMA/AMPS carriers everywhere, anyway. GSM coverage is irrelevant to the original poster. The National Plan (with TDMA service) available in TX or CT is an excellent choice for him.

[Jack]

Frito

Yes alltel is cdma 800. (verizon phone and alltel phones are the same)

Alltel was the first provider that had the phone. while I think that it is a good phone I have had some problems with mine.

Jack

[aiwapro]

You should try Voicestream Wireless. Cingular will be using Voicestream's network when they move in anyways. The whole contract is for Voicestream to share their network with Voicestream. I'm sure that Voicestream won't loose any customer to Cingular though, because all of the people that I know in New York that have Voicestream, think that they are great. One friend of mine said they are "perfect."

Voicestream also serves Houston and Conneticut. They don't currently have free weekends, but they do have UNLIMITED weekends, and all of their plans include FREE Roaming & Free Long Distance. Voicestream is however testing out UNLIMITED nights in some markets, Chicago and Milwaukee. I think that they will soon have Unlimited weekends nationwide. Voicestream gives you more 'anytime' minutes than anyone alse though. I pay $39.99 and get 700 Nationwide anytime minutes, UNLIMITED Weekends, and all the other features like caller-id, voicemail, etc.

Here is a zoomed in map of the areas that you specified:
New York/Conneticut Area
Houston, Texas
(This is not the only places that they have coverage in the entire states above, it is just a zoomed-in map of the areas that you specified)
Here is the Nationwide Map/

Voicestream service in CT it`s ok, it`s great if you take I-95 to NYC but if you take 684 or going upstate NY get Cingular or Verizon

[Frito]

Jack,
Yeah same here i had to change the phone out to a New one THE day i got it because of recption problems. WHat kind if problems did u have???

[zotie]

hey guys

Thanx for the info

I think that my best bet is either Verizon or cingular. I looked into voicestream and though they have good competive prices they dont have a nationwide plan.

Cingular has free long distance and roaming but not unlimited weekends and nights. They offer 3500 weekend/night minutes.

Verizon has free long distance, roaming and unlimited nights and weekends. However the free roaming and long distncae does not over all of the US...it does cover sme of NY and all of CT nad NY...

I was told that cingular has pretty good reception in CT and TX but not that good in NY. NY seems to be AT&T's territory. What about Verizon?? How is their recperion in all those areas?

Zotie

[SirIsaacNewton]

Zotie,

I live in CT. I carry a Verizon StarTac with a National plan.
Cingular in CT is the successor company to SNET Wireless. SNET (Southern New England Telephone) is our local phone company. They were bought by SBC, Cingular's parent, and their wireless service was rebranded. Cingular service within CT and Massachusetts is very good. It is rapidly increasing its service in nearby New York, although it is not yet in the NewYorkCity metro area. Their service in the Eastern Massachusetts/Boston area is good.

In my view, and that of others on this forum, Verizon "owns" the Northeast. However, there are places throughout New York and New England where they have little to no service. You will roam there! The same is true of all the carriers, but I think that Verizon has fewer such places. But anyway,

Whether you are "roaming" in New England will be a function of the cellular plan you choose to purchase. If you are going to spend most of your time in CT, you would probably be better off getting a CT based plan and a CT phone number. Then your friends at school could phone you without having to pay LD charges to TX. Verizon offers several NorthEast plans that include LD to anywhere in the US.

The biggest question in my mind would be whether you would be best served by a fully National plan or by America's Choice. There are places in NewEngland/New York (large parts of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, as well as the Adirondack area of New York) where you would be "roaming" (ie you would be paying extra for the call) with America's choice. In depends on how much traveling about the region you plan to do (go skiing?? mountain hiking??) In addition, there are large parts of Texas where you would be roaming with the AC plan. (You should check whether your hometown is included in Verizons network area, else you will be paying extra everytime you go home.) But I would hate to recommend the full National plan unless your roaming charges became significant. Mainly, the full National plan offers you only 1/2 the minutes for the same money and NO free weekend/evenings. Since you insist on the free weekends, the National plan wouldn't do for you.

Let me clear up one of your misconceptions: Verizon allows you to phone TO anywhere (in the USA) for free if you are within your 'free area'. You only pay for LD if you are also paying for airtime. So if you're not "roaming", then the LD is also free.

Hope you enjoy your stay in CT......

[IdiOTeQnoLogY]

from living in the NY/NJ/CT area i can give you this advice.

verizon and sprint are top notch in these areas. however if you are going to go off the beaten path in ny state you should go with verizon. for nyc both sprint and verizon are excellent choices. ive been to connecticut a few times and my sprint phone worked excellently however i was in mostly medium to larger towns and on the highways i did not go in the sticks u can always check the coverage map to see if some of the smaller towns are covered.

at&t is not so good in northern nj or nyc from what I know and people i know.
cingular doesnt sell its product up here in nyc/northern nj yet but will shortly.

as far as texas i have heard from users like dukedog and others that all the four major national carriers do great there- at&t, sprint, verizon, cingular

[aiwapro]

Hey Zotie, all of those price plans that you saw of Voicestream are Nationwide plans. They only have one regional plan, and all the rest are Nationwide, including FREE Roaming & Long Distance. Trust me, they don't lie. I was down in Louisiana and Alabama last month for a whole week, and everyone used my phone. I wasn't charged a penny over my normal rate per month. Iwasn't charged any roaming fees or long distance fees.

[aiwapro]

I don't know about Verizon. They seem good, but there has to be a good reason why they lost over 200,000 customers in just the first quarter of this year.

Since Zotie would be signing up for service from either home or school, both areas which are well covered by Cingular, I would say take advantage of Cingular's generous minutes and low prices on the National plan while the gettin's good. Then elsewhere in NY or New England (or other parts of the USA) there would be no worries about roaming or long distance. I don't know how long the bonus 3500 night and weekend minutes will continue to be offerred, however. Once that is gone the Cingular National plan would not look so attractive, but the anytime minutes would still be higher, for the price, than Verizon's Single-Rate National.

[Matt]

Aiwapro - all cell companies lose thousands of customers every quarter - most switch to another carrier. Verizon added about 180K "net" adds in the 1st Q. They didn't get smaller. VS lost customers some too - they didn't say how many contract customers they lost, but they did saw that they reduced their prepay rolls by 48K; but their net adds were 502K.

[Jack]

I think that cingular promotions last until the end of the month

Jack