Hi all, My wife and I have been in Hawaii for about the last 11 days now, we spent the first 7 days in Maui and the last 4 in Honolulu. She uses a Treo 700 -Verizon- and I use a Treo 650 with Cingular. I wanted to share my observations on coverage.... Maui; It appears that you have decent service with both Verizon and Cingular in all the tourist spots. Highways are covered well, as well as Lahaina. When you go out a bit say towards Hana, the coverage is a hit and miss at best. Certain spots " on the road to Hana " there is no service by either carrier but not for long. You'll pick up signal within few hundred yards if you are patient. So if I had to grade Cingular vs Verizon in Maui, they would be both B+. Honolulu; The difference was a little more in the island of Oahu. The city of Honolulu is covered well by both carriers as expected, however in my opinion Cingular had the best coverage outside the city. I am so used to having my wife (Verizon) the better service, this was rather a nice surprise. So in my humble opinion Verizon scores a B+ and Cingular A- in Honolulu. Hope you find this helpful....... ALOHA everyone![/B][/SIZE]
Did you go past Hana along the eastern coast of Maui? I wonder if the GSM coverage has improved there. The last time we were in Maui about 3 years ago, our (ATTWS) GSM phone was flatlined in this area, whereas we could actually make a call off my wife's TDMA.
AT&T/Cingular has the only coverage in the lava flows on the Puna coast of the Big Island... you can juuuuuuuuuuuuust barely get a bar or two.
Sprint isn't bad on Maui, but they aren't great either. Sprint covers the populated areas well, but they do not work well in the upcountry and there is no coverage on the west coast. I took my Sprint and Cingular handsets and in most remote areas, Verizon had the only coverage. Fortunately Sprint users can roam freely on Verizon, so this isn't too much of an issue. On Lanai, Cingular and Nextel are the only carriers with coverage (and only GSM). You can pick up Verizon from neighbor islands, but only near the ferry dock. The Castle and Cooke resort staff all use Nextel.
Just any FYI for those who don't know. PrimeCo is the one who originally built the Sprint network in Hawaii. Then PrimeCo decided they wanted out of there and Sprint bought them out. This was about 1998-99. Here's an old news article about it: http://starbulletin.com/98/10/14/business/story2.html
