Better service for Cleveland-Medina area. AT&T or T-Mobile?

Cat,
AT&T, T-Mobile, Cingular, Northcoast and Sprint all use the higher PCS frequencies, so you need to be close to a tower to get good service. T-Mobile seems to have done a good job installing their Cleveland network, but it is less than a year old, so they probably have a few holes that still need to be fixed.

If T-Mobile does not work out for you, consider one of the 2 coverage leaders in Cleveland and Medina: Alltel or Verizon.

-Bill

 

My own personal rankings for Cleveland are:

1. Alltel and Verzion (tied for best)
2. Cingular (TDMA not GSM)
3. Northcoast and AT&T (tied, they have about the same coverage area, I think Northcoast is covered a little better though)
4. Sprint
5. T-Mobile ( too new, im sure they will get better )
6. Nextel ( unless you can use DC alot, not a good option )

If you dont do alot of traveling, Northcoast is the best, I mean how can you compare with 35 a month for unlimited? Medina is covered pretty well with them. Also all of their new phones are dual band tri-mode phones, with dual nams, you could set up the second number with a Verizon Freeup account and use it when you travel. Hope this helps, by the way, Im in Elyria.

By the way, if you wanted to test Northcoast coverage, take your Sprint phone and dial *22807 and watch the signal meter when it connects to Northcoasts network, listen to the recording for a moment and see if you have good signal. that way you dont have to buy a phone and wonder about it.

 

Give Cingular a shot. The recently put up new towers in Medina that improved their coverage a great deal. They've got the 14 day free trial also I believe.

 

Try T-Mobile. I have friends that have been to Cleveland with T-Mobile, and they haven't complained at all.

T-Mobile put up over 300 towers there initially, and may have added more.

 

I will have to agree with Bill on this one.

I would say go with Alltel (I personally have the service in this area) and am happy. Verizon would be the next choice. The rest would follow.

The one thing to consider when picking your plan/service is do you do alot of traveling and if so where will you be traveling.

Jack

 

Why yes actually, this webpage should do the trick. Keep in mind, some towers are owned by third-parties, so you might not beable to tell exactly who uses what towers. Cingular (and T-Mobile too I believe) use the towers owned by Ameritech and SBC. AT&T usually have theirs registered in their own name. The post about T-Mobile putting up 300 towers seems high, but I could be wrong.

 

T-Mobile's Cleveland launch included over 300 towers from the start last summer. That comes from an engineer I know who was responsible for that network.

 

I believe there are 300 T-Mobile towers in Cleveland, the question is, why does it take twice as many towers to cover the same area?

 

As twice as many towers compared to who? Who has half these amount of towers?

GSM's signal strength is not as strong as a CDMA signal, so more towers are needed to make the signal equal or more strong than the CDMA signal.

 

Thats exactly my point, if the GSM towers are less powerfull, then it takes more towers to cover the same area. I was talking to one of the reps for Northcoast, now granted this was a while ago, he said they have 160 towers in the Cleveland area, now im sure since I talked to him they have added more towers, but they dont have the 300 that T-Mobile does.

Now with AT&T and Cingular overlaying their networks with GSM, how is that going to work, are there going to be dead spots all over the place since the GSM signal is not going to go as far as the TDMA signal?

Which brings up another point, putting up towers isnt cheap, if you have to put up more towers to get the same coverage, and you are charging the lowest rates, how can you make money? Especially when most of the towers are not co-located.

That what why I put T-Mobile just under Sprint, now Im sure by the end of the year, they will be past Sprint the rate they are expanding their network. And they will probably pass up AT&T and Northcoast in total coverage area and move into that spot by themselves, party because Northcoast sold all of ther licenses to Verizon ( really stupid move by Cablevision ) And it dont seem like AT&T is really worried about expanding their network because they allow free roaming on Alltel to make suppliment their coverage area.

But hey, this is just my opinion, if T-Mobile phones were capable of analog roaming, I would switch to them in a heartbeat, I do way too much driving for work, and there is a long stretch of I-80 in PA that has no T-Mobile service.

 

I live in the University Circle area in Cleveland and also travel to nyc a lot. I have att now, but they ream me on roaming. I wanted to get a new plan, so i was wondering if anyone had any suggestions. I have heard good things about verizon but havent found a good deal with them; i also have a couple friends who use sprint, which drops calls and sometimes doesnt even put the calls through, so that's out. I dont really know anyone who uses alltel or t-mobile, but i know that they offer free phones now, so i was wondering if anyone had feedback on the coverage those two have around Cleveland, NYC and in between. Also, any advice on phones they offer would be much appreciated!

irene

 

irrka,
If we may be allowed to slip off-topic, if you like AT&T, just switch your plan with them. The National Network plan is very generous at 500 minutes for only $35, and you can use it in NYC w/no roaming charges.

Verizon's claim to fame is better coverage, so they feel they can charge more. You can see the two carrier's national plans' coverage side by side at:

Network Comparison maps

-Bill

 

Alltel is good here in Cleveland, if you were to travel to NYC, you would be roaming on Verizon anyway, the only difference between the 2 is that with Verizon, your night and weekend minutes are anywhere on the americas choice map, with Alltel, they are only in you home area. I travel to NYC for business also, and have not had any problems making and recieving calls all the way from Cleveland to NYC on I-80. One more thing, AT&T GSM is not a good option right now, if you look at that map, there are alot of areas that dont have service, even if you buy one of the GSM/TDMA phones. Hope this helps.

 

Correction: Alltel's N&W apply anywhere on the National Freedom network... It's the Total Freedom (no roaming anywhere like VZW's SingleRate National) where N&W only apply in your home calling area. Alltel's National Freedom is just like Verizon's America's choice, except they don't offer unlimited N&W (isn't it like 4000 or 5000?) and I don't think they give the 1000 mobile to mobile minutes, either.

 

Yes, you are correct, I just checked, their night and weekend minutes are good on the entire national freedom map, I could swear that wasnt the way it used to be, but maybe I am just losing my mind.

 

the problem with the att national plan is that it only actually gives you 300 minutes, and no night and weekend minutes

 

Question- Where would i go to try a T-mobile phone (close to University Circle/Cleveland heights)? how long do they let you try it for and do you have to pay for trying it?
Thanks!

 

I'm not familiar with Cleveland, but there is a store locator on t-mobile.com.

You have 14 days to try out the service.

 

Irrka

IF you are interested in trying t-mobile service you have three choices:

1. Go to a t-mobile store and get a pre-paid package and if the coverage is to your liking then get a contract with the.

2. Sign up for t-mobile and you have 14 days to cancel service without cancelation charges you would only pay for the minutes that you use and the activation fee

3. I would call United Wireless I think that they will give you a phone for a few days as a demo. I am not sure if the t-mobile stores will do this

Jack