Many friends and associates have mentioned that Cingular coverage has been changing, mostly for the better in Philadelphia, Delaware, And Southern NJ areas. How has Cingular coverage changed in your area, since the merger and reported expansion? Better; Less holes, more holes?
Less holes in Delaware. They have 5 cellsites in my immediate area, while Verizon has 2 (and the one still acts weird and goes offline at random, and the other site is only 6 months old). Cingular works fine at the Delaware beaches and the rich rural areas of Wilmington, Verizon's very overloaded and weak in those areas. Cingular has been steadily adding sites, 3 in my state last month, though I don't know where they are, and just added one this month that I spotted. It'll be really good after integration in this area IMO, if you can stick it out with Verizon for a little bit longer, you should have one solid Cingular network very soon.
The ATT sites will fill in some weak indoor areas. However, that isn't stopping Cingular from putting up more 850 'orange' sites in other spots. While the sites look all 850...I'm pretty sure they also do 1900...but I'm not 100% on that.
If they are not doing 1900 then can we assume that that spectrum is getting vacated for another use? anyway;once handover glitches are fixed it may be the better network. On the other side of the equation is that eventually they switch to WCDMA and all the GSm changes are, well, changed again.
UPDATE: Checking with friends and associates on Cingular around Philly, it seems to be working better coverage wise. And in many places, for what BARS are worth, MORE BARS than Verizon in a side by side comparison.
I can say I've dropped maybe 10 calls in 1.5 years. I'd say I had maybe 3-6 times where someone called me and my phone didn't ring. With Verizon, I'd experience both in one day usually. Most of them were during one night when something was wrong. I've been all over MD, PA, DE, and AZ. I really wanted to get up around central PA this year, but I had a boring summer and didn't go anywhere besides Hershey. Cingular beat the crap out of Verizon on the drive to/from Hershey, PA! Verizon was utterly useless in many areas (so was T-Mobile). Luckily both cars had people with Cingular. I really think you should look into a 'pay as you go' gophone.
as I mentioned it is getting better in many areas. and VzW still is not that great in atlantic City, on the Boardwalk. also did you notice how Cingular has more press releases about new towers?