Wireless in Massachusetts

Well, for best coverage in rural areas, the easy answer is Verizon. They will be cheaper than Nextel, but not the least expensive out there.

You may want to give AT&T a try with their GSM America Plan along with a Multiband Phone. That should get your excellent coverage here in MA and just about the least expensie pland/minute out there. AT&T gives you a 30 day trial period so you can always cancel if the service isn't up to your expectations. also, if you find that the multiband phone rarely has to switch to digital in your area, you can then consider a more feature rich phone later on.

 

Based upon my travel experience in the Area, I tend to agree with the above message. Verizon is probably the best for coverage, but you get what you pay for.

 

AT&T might be a good choice because of pricing. Since they roam a lot on Cingular in that area they should offer good coverage. However, you may want to check out Cingular as well since they offer more rural coverage than AWS in Massachussetts.

 

You will find the information you need on this excellent web site.

http://markson.net/cell_phones.htm

Hope this helps

 

Cingular has the greatest coverage in MA outside of the Boston area, where they anyways freely roam onto at&t... In central and western MA, cingular is hands down #1.

 

I am going to have to disagree with you about Cingular being strong north of boston. I tried it for a week and found myself in "extended area" (ATT) in a few locations. ATT TDMA used to be good about a year ago but now has a lot of system busys. I can not speak for GSM but if you travel to NH/ME/VT it is not the best option. In the two years I had Verizon I never had coverage issues and yes I agree with you that Cingular is king in central mass.

 

I live in central mass, and I have had at&t and vzw. vzw is much better. When you go into rural areas, that is when vzw really shines. Whatever you decide, make sure you try your new phone/service everywhere you want/need it to work, while you're on the trial period. 15 days for vzw, 30 for att, I believe. If you do decide to go with att, make sure you find out about gsm and tdma, and which works where. The att sales people told me gsm would not work well, if at all where I live. I get full signal strength with vzw. Good luck!