Feedback - Cingular network in pacific NW

Cingular never had a native network in Oregon, so they inherited the old AT&T Wireless infrastructure.

My take is that AT&T Wireless had the best network in Oregon, including seamless roaming for many years, and then sort of tanked in the last couple years before Cingular bought them out. They went quite a long while with no visible improvements, and suffered from over capacity issues in some areas.

While AT&T Wireless had outstanding customer service, Cingular seems to be only content with being mediocre.

All that being said, they can be a good option. It's nice to have a GSM phone that enables you to roam the planet, and swap phones around without having to tell the carrier.

Last time I checked they had a 30 day trial. Double check that this trial period still exists, and give them a try. If you do, we'd all appreciate a report from you on how well it went.

-Dan

PS: I'm from Portland, and currently live in Eugene, with frequent trips between the two to visit family.

http://cell.uoregon.edu

 

I was not too thrilled with AT&T GSM due to coverage - we kept our TDMA service untl recently for this reason.

Now however, I am less than thrilled with Cingular due to overcapacity issues. A good 25-30% of my calls go to voicemail without my phone ringing - the situation has been getting steadily worse. If it were not for my the rest of my wife's family being on Cingular (she routinely runs about 900-1000 M2M minutes per month), I would be ditching Cingular in a minute.

On the other hand, my colleagues at work who have Verizon have always said that they have great service at least in the PDX metro area. So, you may be jumping from the frying pan into the fire by switching - tread carefully here.

P.S. Not sure why you ascribe dropped calls to CDMA - I was not aware of any technical reason for CDMA to be more susceptible to dropped calls than TDMA - in fact, I would have thought that soft handoffs would make CDMA less likely at least in principle to have dropped calls.

 

In my recent trip to Portland, i had great service with Cingular! I also had very good service with T-Mobile. I also had 2 CDMA phones and one iDEN with me as well. I had one from Verizon and one from Sprint and one from Nextel. I never had a problem with either Cingular or T-Mobile. I had full reception everywhere and never noticed and garbled calls, dropped calls, or my phone not ringing and calls just going straight to VM. Now with Nextel..... Service was very bad. It always broke up and most calls went straight to VM. I would not choose them for that area. Now with Sprint..... Well they might have shown full reception, that could not be farther from the truth. My calls dropped constantly and if they didn't, the person on the other end could not hear me. Now onto Verizon..... They were ok. I had service most everywhere i was however a lot of it was analog. They did drop quite a few calls and broke up a lot. But they were better than both Sprint&Nextel. But they would deff be my last choice. Overall i would go with Cingular. They were by far the best. Second would be T-Mobile, because if T-Mobile did not have native coverage, They would switch over and roam off of Cingular for Free. If i were you, i would go with Cingular or T-Mobile..... But thats just me.

 

Well, I live in Portland and from what I have experienced with Cingular and what my colleagues at work appear to experience with Verizon, I just can't recommend that you switch from Verizon to Cingular. Cingular is ok but I don't think it is superior to Verizon....but YMMV...

 

Jordan: You mentioned your experience with everything but Sprint CDMA, only
saying it was bad, but not why. What happened there?

Scrumhalf: CDMA usually drops calls due to cell breathing, which is unique to that
technology. As a cell reaches peak capacity, it's apparent size
shrinks.
You can Google this for a more thorough explanation.

As for TDMA/GSM, overcapacity means running out of channels and
time slots, but GSM handles this a bit more gracefully. Still,
"accidents" happen.

As for my own personal experiences up there while I was driving truck, I can't
contribute much: I had no problems over nearly the entire length of I-5 from San
Diego to Blaine (and into Delta, BC) on my phone when it was running on the
orange (old Cingular/new T-Mobile) network. In N. California and S. Oregon,
you're on Edge's network, which covered the corridor reasonably well. As for
dropouts in the major metro areas, I don't think I experienced one anywhere in
there--in fact, the only place with lots of dropouts I can remember is a region
running from southern Virginia down through the Carolinas: I consistently had
trouble there and still have no idea why. I also had trouble on some of Plateau's
system in central New Mexico, but I think it was a faulty backhaul microwave.

Mike

 

Well, I know what cell breathing is - however, cell breathing in combination wtih soft handoffs is actualy why CDMA performs better than TDMA in marginal areas, not the other way around.

 

Yeah, you are on the right track here. No sense in dumping a perfectly good service to something that may or may not work for you. After all, the most fancy phone is of no use if you can't make a call.

 

See thats just it, i really don't know what was going on with Sprint. Usually they are pretty good. But for some reason, they were by far the worst. The phone showed full reception, but it broke up and dropped calls or i got that busy signal saying the network was busy. I can't explain it, but all i know is from what i experienced with Sprint in that area, i would never do with them. My number 1 choice would have to be Cingular/AT&T Wireless-Mobile... Thats all i know. 2nd would be T-Mobile and 3rd would be Verizon. Again, that is just me.

 

I used to live in PDX and am down there quite a bit to visit friends. I can echo the comments other folks have made about Cingular - the network has improved in the past couple of years, but it's mediocre at best. T-Mobile has the best and most mature GSM network in the Portland area, and they were the first PCS carrier to deploy a network there (as VoiceStream). If you're considering GSM, I'd recommend you go that route.

I'm not sure why Jordan2005 didn't have good luck with Sprint; I have consistently had good coverage with them all over the metro area. However, Verizon runs, without any question, the best network in Portland. Neither Sprint nor Cingular are competitive with Verizon on price, so if you're otherwise happy with Verizon service, I recommend that you stay with them.