AT&T GSM or Cingular in Dallas

[jasonphillipstx]

I live in the Dallas area and my company's Voicestream/T-Mobile contract is ending in a couple days for about 20 phones. At first we were pretty satisfied with VS, saving a lot of money after switching from Cingular. Since we work in the dallas area and rarely travel, VS has worked fine. However, we have noticed a lot of echos and dropped calls in the last few months and feel the service quality has dropped.

Now, I am considering between Cingular(good ole' faithful) and the new AT&T GSM unlimited plan. Cingular has offered us a pretty good deal for 3000 anytime minutes, but we really like the GSM phones because of the IR and ability to simply switch your chip when you break tour phone. I know that the AT&T GSM network is currently very small, but I have been testing it for a few days now and feel pretty confident with it in the areas we work. Dallas, Richardson, Plano, Garland, Allen, Frisco, McKinney, Carrollton.

One reason I am leaning toward AT&T is because it seems cingular will take forever to switch over.

Does anyone have any thought or comments on what they have experienced with either Congular or AT&T GSM lately?

I would definately go with ATT. Cingular is going to take forever to switch to GSM. I agree, I have recently used ATT in my area (Frisco) and the signal strength is fine and the clarity is great. If you are a local user then I would definately go with ATT.

[TNDan21]

Don't choose a cell phone based on the technology its uses. Frankly from what I have heard Cingular is actually pretty good in Texas and yes they are still on a TDMA network their but who cares what technology it is as long as it works well. I'd prolly choose Cingular (TDMA) over AT&T (GSM) myself.

[cryogenic]

TDMA will give you considerably better coverage area than GSM. GSM is still very limited, especially when you get out of TX and go anywhere west or north from there.. It's more dense on the east coast, though still hardly acceptable for anyone who travels a considerable amount. AT&T also does NOT have roaming agreements with T-mobile, so if you travel by car, you're in trouble because AT&T has converted quite a few metro areas to GSM, but not the routes in between.... so you'll be going long stretches of road without service, which isn't a good thing in my book. They do have the Multiband One Rate plans, which include both GSM and TDMA networks, but they're kinda expensive and don't include that many minutes for the money. Your best bet may be to go with either Verizon or Cingular in that case.

[Airb330]

I'm with Cyro, go with TDMA. Much better coverage and quality too. I don't see the HUGE appeal of GSM, I mean CDMA is more advanced and I don't see people raving about it, I guess there is just a cool factor due to the Euro phones.