Best network in Portland?

Verizon is excellent in Portland. I don't think you can go wrong with Verizon if you have it already.

I have Cingular and it is good for the most part but does have some dead zones around the West Hills and in unincorporated Washington County up by Laidlaw/Saltzman Rds and Skyline Blvd (same is true for T-Mobile as well from what I hear). I know someone at work who know lives by Saltzman and has zero signal at home with Cingular and intends to switch to Verizon. On the other hand, I have never heard any one who has Verizon have any complaints.

 

I'll have to ask around at work - don't know too many people who have Sprint.

And I agree... one of the (few) disadvantages of living out West is that by the time 9pm rolls around out here, everyone else in the rest of the country is already asleep...lol...

 

Verizon generally is excellent in that area from what I hear. Keep Verizon service until you get there and try it out for yourself. If you are happy, stay with them, if not or if you think you can get a better deal somewhere else, keep the Verizon phone and open a Sprint line and try it for 14 days to see if their coverage is as good or better and then make a decision. I would not make a decision before moving and get locked into a new contract.

 

Yeah, that is great advice. I wouldn't change anything because of hearsay. Almost every carrier has odd locations with less than ideal service, so you don't want to have a situation where you locate your dream house/apartment only to have poor service there. Your Verizon service will be perfectly good when you get here and get settled, so once you know your way around town and the surrounding areas, you can test out other services to see if one of them suits you better.

Another thing to consider is your travel patterns. Do you go skiing/hiking, etc? There is a lot of outdoorsy activities within a day-trip distance of Portland, so you may want to wait until you have time to get around to be able to test the service in these locations.

 

I had been with Verizon for the past six years and switched to Sprint about six months ago. I've really experienced poor service from Sprint. My Verizon phone worked so well I'd simply forget about it, use it whenever I needed to, and virtually never found a spot without coverage in my travel pattern. So anyway, for my travel patterns in Portland (and Oregon in general) Verizon is head and shoulders above everyone else.

There's lots of folks who love Sprint, including in Oregon. Perhaps I'm the charlie brown who simply tries to use his phones in the few dead spots (but I don't personally believe this).

In Portland, Verizon is outstanding. T-Mobile is also quite good (without much rural coverage). Cingular is acceptable, but having more capacity issues than other carriers. My Cingular phones sometime have to dial the same number repeatedly for the call to go through. Sprint has simply been painfull for me. Lots of dropped calls. In my mind, you get what you pay for and yes, Verizon is pricy, but it's nice to know your phone will simply work when you need it to.

-Dan

PS: I live in Eugene OR, and come from a huge family, most all living in Portland, so it's fair to say I spend a lot of time in Portland, and travel frequently all around Oregon.

 

It is very interesting that Sprint coverage is so poor in Oregon. Here in Southern California Sprint is the best of all carriers.

 

Well, this is not a perfect world- not even for Sprint. Sprint is not the best carrier everywhere and it's debatable whether or not they are the best in Southern California. For you and your travel patterns that may be true.

 

Sprint's network will only get better and better in Portland and everywhere else once Nextel sites are overlayed with CDMA which was supposed to start happening last month. However I haven't seen any yet.

 

Sure it will. It will get better everywhere. However this doesn't mean that Sprint has the best network, or will have the best network everywhere as some think. The OP should stick with what he has and then make a decision when he gets there in case his current provider doesn't offer him enough coverage.

 

A bit OT to the OP's question, but:

Hi Dan, a while ago, I made a trip from Portland to Crater Lake and filed this report:
http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/w...48-portland-crater-lake-trip-report-long.html

I wonder if in your experience, the GSM overlay on Hwy 58, Hwy 97 and Hwy 138 has improved in the last 1.5 years....

 

Sprint does not have the best network in some areas, however I have done extensive testing and Sprint does have the best network in Southern California. :deadhorse

 

Just like Cingular has the fewest dropped calls...bla bla.

 

Jay Leno had a good joke about Cingular last week on his monolog. He was discussing Verizon turning over phone records to the government. He stated that Cingular does not have have to worry about turning over records to the government because the Cingular Network is so bad that you can't even make a call. Therefore, there are no records to turn over. :rotfl:

 

Hello Scrumhalf (and all)-

Your coverage report is still largely the case. In eastern oregon folks roam. Verizon and Sprint on US Cellular (CDMA/analog), and Cingular on Unicel (formerly Cellular One NW, which is GSM/TDMA/analog). They have similar coverage along the routes you describe. US Cellular has finally overlaid CDMA everywhere along that route (but perhaps had done so by your last report).

I have a slight preference for US Cellular's coverage, but it's pretty much six of one half dozen of the other. 138 is stll an awesome drive, and still completely void of celluar coverage. My bag phone fares a little better (like you'd expect), but still finds no signal on much of that highway.

Sprint phones with analog support fare pretty well along that route. i.e. They'll roam on both the A and the B side automatically.

-Dan

PS: Verizon tri-mode phones can roam on both the A and the B side if you force them, but most folks don't know how to do that. Unicel isn't in any Verizon PRL to my knowledge, but roaming on them works.

 

Thanks for the update, Dan! I had been hanging on to my TDMA phone until about a month ago because of the excellent non-I5 coverage but finally had to jettison it because TDMA in Portland had deteriorated considerably - I would be sorely disappointed if the GSM overlay hasn't improved significantly in 1.5 years.

 

TDMA/analog still fares slightly better than GSM in some areas, but the GSM overlay in Eastern Oregon is pretty complete (and certainly all of the areas you mention). That is to say a GSM phone works about the same as any other on that route.

-Dan

PS: I've seen the providers complete overlays, and enhance roaming service in terms of feature transparency. Last trip out to crater lake voice and other basic services worked fine, but data did not. That was last year, perhaps data works there now...

 

Sprint coverage is not poor in Oregon. It's not very good in Eugene as compared to Verizon, but it's decent overall.

Only Verizon covers Eugene well. It's hard to put towers in there (lots of NIMBYs), and the University of Oregon is a tough campus for 1900MHz to penetrate. Cingular, now that they are running GSM850, does an OK job, but not nearly as good as VZW. Sprint, for their part, has improved their network in Eugene from awful (they only covered I-5 and the tiny and virtually unused airport for some bizarre reason) to mediocre. I expect that Sprint's network will continue to improve, although the pace will likely be as glacial as the city of Eugene's permitting process.

Sprint covers I-84 all the way across the state to Ontario, and covers I-5 all the way to California. They have excellent coverage in Portland, and good coverage in southern Oregon (Medford, Ashland, and Roseburg). And best of all, Sprint users can roam on every carrier (except Cricket, whose coverage is eclipsed by Sprint) serving Oregon that is compatible with either CDMA or AMPS.

Bottom line, Sprint doesn't do a bad job overall in Oregon. Of course, this is small consolation if Sprint doesn't work in your office at the University of Oregon. I always recommend that users take full advantage of the trial period and test the service to determine what works best for them.

 

Sprint gives you the best of both worlds because if you are not getting a good Sprint Signal, on the new Sprint phones you can force the Sprint phone into roaming mode. The phone would then roam on the Verizon network and therefore you get the best of both worlds. On the other hand, you cannot get a Verizon phone to roam on the Sprint network. Even the resident Verizon Shill in this forum can attest to that fact.

SPRINT RULES!! :rasp:

 

I disagree. My experience Spans more than just Eugene. Sprint is an also-ran provider in Oregon. Mediocre at best. I leave it to the reader to judge for themselves. I live in Oregon.

Dan

http://cell.uoregon.edu

 

Actually, jim, in Oregon Verizon users can very well take advantage of the 'best of both worlds' as well.

 

Andy,

Does the phone have a setting to force it into roaming mode, or does the user have to use a "hack" such as a special code that they enter into the phone? I believe that on the old Motorola V Phones the code was *22802. In other words, is forcing roaming mode officially sanctioned by Verizon?

 

Hello

I live in Portland, and I have had Verizon. I had Verizon/Airtouch since like 1995 or so down in Salem. Then I moved to Portland. In my home it was terrible..they never could figure out why reception was so bad considering there is a tower up the road, but everywhere else I always had reception without a lot of issues. I tried 3 different phones and the only one that could barely hold the calls in my home was the Nokia 3589i phone. I had to do something else, because my cell phone was our only phone. Anyway we ended up getting VOIP and I got a prepaid account with T-Mobile. AWESOME reception. I get full bars here in my home and everywhere else I've been...even on 1 bar I have never dropped a call. I'm happy with what I have.

Good luck with whatever you choose. Have a good day

 

That's interesting - you are the first person I have heard having problems with Verizon in PDX - just goes to show that no carrier is perfect in every place for every person. However overall, I would have to say based on inputs from many many people that Verizon is about as close to perfect in PDX as any carrier can be (although clearly that is scant comfort for the exceptions like yourself )

I do know a couple of people at work who live in near the West Hills somewhere in the Saltzman Rd./Skyline Blvd. area who are fed up with both Cingular and T-Mobile because they get zero reception at home and want to switch to Verizon when their contract is up.

 

Yeah I know. I never had a problem with verizon until I moved up here. Everywhere else in Portland I had no problems.... But I swear I live in an area of bad with Verizon. My folks have verizon and their phones have like 1 bar of reception when their here...and so do my best friend and her husband. Same thing. The only place I could pull maybe 3 bars was upstairs way in the back room on the west side. Downstairs was a pit.

SW is a different story. I never really hang out over there..so I couldn't tell you with my T-mobile phone..although I was at the Round Table Pizza off of Barbur Blvd about a week ago and I had perfect reception with my T-mobile phone..and Tigard, Sherwood, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Great Plains, Cornelius, etc. I've never not had reception on my T-mobile phone.

If I hadn't gone through 3 ...actually 4 phones with Verizon while I was here I would have thought is was just my phone..., but it was always the same thing..had to go upstairs and hide in the corner just to hold a call while at home.
Weird how things are some times......

 

"It's the Network" :evillaugh

 

Wow. That was a smart comment, I must admit.

 

I would like to see Verizon make a commercial with the Verizon Guy having to go upstairs and hide in a corner near a window to make a call. He would then say "It's the Network". The Sprint Guy then walks onto the scene and says "I have five bars and we built our network from the ground-up, not piece-meal-hodge-podge like "The Network... would you like to use my phone?". :rotfl:

 

"Can You Hear Me Now"???