Merged thread on Cingular 310-38 vs. 310-26 in NYC

Re: Merged thread on Cingular 310-18 vs. 310-26 in NYC

This all depends on where in NJ you are, with a Blue phone.
As an example Middlesex county and south there are Cingular, AWE & T-Mobile networks.
Cingular use's 850 & 1900 and AWE & T-Mobile are 1900 mhz only.

If you go into Union County & North Cingular & T-Mobile are a Joint Venture on 1900 Mhz only whereas AWE's networks are 850 & 1900.
If you go into Middlesex cty with a blue phone you can do a search & see all 3 carriers listed (the old AWE network show's as Cingular now) & you can select all of them in certain areas, but as a min. both Cingular selections.
When you come into Union Cty & north you can only see Cingular & T-Mobile & can not use T-Mobile only the Cingular selection which was AWE's network.

As you said, Orange customers the phone automatically selects the network.

 

Re: Stay away from Cingular in NYC for another year

You're probably correct, if Cingular goes over they would have to pay more. But Cingular is being agressive with their transition so I think that would be unlikely.

I don't know any specifics about roaming costs, although from what I have been able to gather a good rate might be around 5-10 cents per minute, and I bad rate (that I have heard one smaller TM roaming partner was charging) is around 40 centes per minute.

 

Re: Stay away from Cingular in NYC for another year

I can still roam on T-Mobile whenever I want to. I've tried it in the past 2 weeks in Long Island, Westchester, the Bronx, Manhattan and Queens, and of course in my area of NJ. Roaming is still open for orange people.

 

Re: Stay away from Cingular in NYC for another year

I haven't been in NYC since Feb. So you mean if I'm on Orange (64K) I won't have these new problems I've been reading about?

what is the truth here?

 

Re: Stay away from Cingular in NYC for another year

Actually, Jones, Verizon is the only service that works all over my house...please quote me saying Verizon doesn't work in my house.

 

Re: Stay away from Cingular in NYC for another year

40 cents per minute would be a lot for a company if I spend a couple weeks in an area like this and use thousands of minutes.
5-10 cents would even be expensive if you spend a lot of time off-network.

 

Re: only 310-380 available in NYC

Which of your phones are you using? The c975 or the 6230?

 

Re: Stay away from Cingular in NYC for another year

It doesn't matter what SIM card you have. You just need a phone that allows you to perform network search and selection.

 

Re: Stay away from Cingular in NYC for another year

So you and bobolito have different experiences? Even with manual selection, if Tmobile/Cingular dropped the roaming agreement, bobo shoud'nt be able to roam on Tmobile.

I'm confused on what is really going on in NYC.

 

Re: Stay away from Cingular in NYC for another year

But for others it VZW does NOT work in their House.
And that place is that area around that RACE track.

 

Re: Stay away from Cingular in NYC for another year

Ok, here's the deal....Zhila probably just happens to live in one of those areas where there are overload problems. I don't. Therefore, my service is heck of a lot better than his. It varies by neighborhood, block or street. I know everytime I go to NYC I have had some audio issues, but since I don't live in NYC, I am not there to experience them constantly. It all depends where you live and move around. Since the issues are limited to spots within a large area, chances are some users will get problems constantly while others will never have problems. It also depends on the user habits: if you are the person who uses your phone only 5 minutes per day during low usage times, chances are you may never experience problems even if you live in a bad area. Why? because capacity problems only surface when many users are stuck to their phones in the same area. However, if you are a person who is constantly on the phone day and night, chances are you will experience problems even if you live in an area where there's little problems.

I know my immediate residential area has some problems with sound but not many, but coverage is excellent. Although I know some nearby areas where every night around the same time you can't have a peaceful conversation because audio problems are so annoying. If I lived in an area like that, I would be blaspheming Cingular too and probably thinking of jumping ship. I know I would've done it a long time ago if they hadn't bought AT&T Wireless since Cingular was only using T-Mobile's network in this area (glad those days are over!) Most likely I would've been with Verizon or Vodafone had they won the bid for AT&T Wireless since they are the only two strong networks in this area.

About the deal with T-Mobile, we can still roam on their towers, but for those who use 64K SIM cards their phones will not register on T-Mobile unless they lose the signal from the blue network and there's a T-mobile signal within range. This is a very rare scenario, but there are some areas where it happens. This is because the 64K SIMs place the blue network at higher priority in the network list, therefore they tend to stay registered on the blue network all the time in this area. Only those users with legacy 32K SIMs are able to stay on T-Mobile towers most of the time because the SIM prefers T-Mobile over the blue network. You can also select to use T-Mobile's network if you have a phone that will allow you to do that when using a Cingular SIM card. I don't think Cingular will ask T-Mobile to close roaming yet because all those left over users with 32K SIMs will be automatically falling back on the blue network, therefore increasing the blue network load which is already overtaxed which as a result cause more problems for all of us. As more capacity is added to the blue network (hopefully), then they will be ready for those remaining users to move permanently to the blue network. The current schedule to have everyone on the blue side is June 2006. Until then, I don't expect them to stop roaming on T-Mobile.

 

I thought orange sim cards do not allow network selection. I find with a blue card in I can select but with a orange card I cant. Since they replaced my old blue card with a new white sim when I do a network search I dont usually get Cingular as an option. Only ATT or TMo, but TMo is not selectable.

 

Re: only 310-380 available in NYC

"Manual selection of network is possible with Mot c975 only.
Nokia 6230 must be flashed and new nokia firmware reloaded.
i use c975 where i live and nokia 6230 everywhere else."


The motorola c975 DOES NOT have 800MHz GSM. That means that it cannot utilize the Cellular band frequencies in NYC, only the PCS bad frequencies. If it had GSM 800MHz it would probably perform better. Now, what kind of Nokia 6230 do you have?

 

Re: Stay away from Cingular in NYC for another year

T-Mobile is suppose to Give Cingular 10 MHz of 1900MHz
in this area, which can be added to what they have.
Maybe this isn't enough.
T-Mobile has good coverage around that Belmont racetrack.

 

That's true. However, with the right phone (or if you modify yours) you can override the restriction.

 

Re: only 310-380 available in NYC

Good pickup Dru on the c975! One reason not to buy a phone in Europe!
Now if the 6230 is not the 'b' type, Zhlia is really sunk.