LA Hollywood area - T-Mobile or Cingular? Which has better coverage?

[rambo77us]

Hi,
I've just recently moved into the LA Hollywood area. I have two questions:
1. Which has a better coverage ? T-Mobile or Cingular?
2. Between a Treo650(Cingular) and Blackberry7230 (T-Mobile) which will u recommend?

-Rambo

[ShoresGuy]

1. For the moment, T-Mobile and Cingular are still sharing Cingular's GSM 1900-only network in CA/NV. Cingular might be better in certain portions since they now also use AT&T's GSM 850/1900 network. Eventually all Cingular users in CA/NV will switch to the former AT&T network and T-Mobile will gain 100% ownership over the old Cingular network which was sold by Cingular to T-Mobile as part of the AT&T/Cingular merger.

[rambo77us]

Thanks. I read that T-Mobile may have the advantage in the long run - how much time are we looking at for the transition of the Cingular network over to T-Mobile?

Originally Posted by ShoresGuy

1. For the moment, T-Mobile and Cingular are still sharing Cingular's GSM 1900-only network in CA/NV. Cingular might be better in certain portions since they now also use AT&T's GSM 850/1900 network. Eventually all Cingular users in CA/NV will switch to the former AT&T network and T-Mobile will gain 100% ownership over the old Cingular network which was sold by Cingular to T-Mobile as part of the AT&T/Cingular merger.

[budney]

Originally Posted by rambo77us

Thanks. I read that T-Mobile may have the advantage in the long run - how much time are we looking at for the transition of the Cingular network over to T-Mobile?

Cingular will hopefully be off of their old network (now T-Mobile's) in about 3.5 to 4 years from now. Short trem T-Mobile will have the advantage as they now have the better built out network in CA. But it was Cingular who built out that network, and will now do the same to the old AT&T network. So in a few years Cingular should be equal to T-Mobile with the size of their network, and have a advantage with 800MHz.

I would recommend trying both out with the trial periods they offer, T-Mobile 15 days & Cingular 30 days. When you try out Cingular ask the rep to have them program your phone to prefer the Blue Network (old AT&T).

[Tony E!]

Right now you will not noticed much difference between the two, for now it's just a matter of you choosing who has the better deal, then four years(approximately) from now you can start to think about changing to the one with better coverage here in LA...just my .2

[Andy]

Originally Posted by budney

Cingular will hopefully be off of their old network (now T-Mobile's) in about 3.5 to 4 years from now. Short trem T-Mobile will have the advantage as they now have the better built out network in CA. But it was Cingular who built out that network, and will now do the same to the old AT&T network. So in a few years Cingular should be equal to T-Mobile with the size of their network, and have a advantage with 800MHz.

I would recommend trying both out with the trial periods they offer, T-Mobile 15 days & Cingular 30 days. When you try out Cingular ask the rep to have them program your phone to prefer the Blue Network (old AT&T).

you're saying they will do the same great build out to the old AT&T network. Cingular went through a lot of battles and took a lot of time to get towers up in some areas, especially NIMBY areas, so it will take a while to get towers up in those areas, even if they want to aggressively do it, or am I missing something?

[ShoresGuy]

This probably also depends on how well AT&T placed their towers in the LA area. Maybe larry can give us some more insight as to how the tower approval process works in LA.

[budney]

Originally Posted by Andy84094

you're saying they will do the same great build out to the old AT&T network. Cingular went through a lot of battles and took a lot of time to get towers up in some areas, especially NIMBY areas, so it will take a while to get towers up in those areas, even if they want to aggressively do it, or am I missing something?

No you are not missing anything. Back in 2000 Cingular was having all sorts of problems in CA, but were able to turn things around in 2 to 3 years. Also the CA/NV network is a big priority for Cingular right now from what I have read. So I can see them doing it again in a four year period, even battling the NIMBYs

[larry]

The old Cingular GSM network (now T-Mobile) is better than what AT&T had. Cingular will have some catching up to do and it could take years.

[ShoresGuy]

larry,

what about the tower approval process in LA? Isn't it exceedingly difficult to get a new tower approved within a reasonable amount of time?

[Andy]

Shoresguy, I guess it depends on where in LA they want to get towers up, if it's a NIMBY area it will be hard. But it's not only LA we're talking about, California is huge and cingular invested millions and years into making the now T-Mobile network great there, to just do the same thing again. It will take years and a lot of money and NIIMBY battles.

[ShoresGuy]

I certainly hope that they improved coverage up in the SF Bay Area since I had trouble getting a stable GSM 1900 signal back in the summer of 2003. I haven't been back to the US since then but now I have a quadband phone for the US so that should make a major difference. AFAIK, the Bay Area is also a tough area to get new towers approved in whereas here in Germany, towers are approved left and right and even get mounted on top of places like hospitals/retirement homes.

[Rasputin]

Test both out. The T-Mob/Cingular has good coverage in and around Hollywood, better last I knew then on the old ATT Network, but with Cingular you will go from the old ATT network (Now Cingular) to the T-Mob (old Cingular) if you lose signal.

[powertoburn]

I would most definately go with T-Mobile You can still get a Treo 650 directly from Palm.

The reeason why I say this is because: if you sign up with Cingular now you will be issued one of the new national sim cards which will have you use the AT&T 850/1900 network by default. It will be nearly impossible to get on the better pre-merger Cingular 1900Mhz only network.

I have been experiencing a few problems with my Cingular service recently probably due to congestion - calls have been routinely rolling into voicemail without my phone ringing first and when I place calls I get either "system busy" or "call failed" errors. I have not seen these errors with my T-Mobile service. And this is happening on the same cell site in San Marino, CA 91108.

I have full service when this happens about -72db.