cingular or T-mobile?

[kalster]

Originally posted by: thomsbrain
cingular has coverage in more out-of-the-way places, like mountain ranges.

but T-Mobile FTW. cheaper, better service, fewer dropped calls. i've used both, BTW. Cingular's "fewest dropped calls" slogan is complete horsesh!t. i had a personal Cingular phone and now have a work Cingular phone (different makes of phones), and both get dropped calls all the freaking time. my T-mobile phone is much more reliable in comparison.

 

[fstime]

Originally posted by: fritolays

Originally posted by: miri
If you get Tmobile, make sure you get a 850mhz phone

mine is a samsung x475 and it does not have 850mhz, i found that out the hardway driving in a rural part of new mexico, If I had the 850mhz phone I would have had coverage

in defense of the x475, it worked great in Europe and Africa when I was there

so only 850mhz?

what about phones that are 900mhz?

Rural areas = better to have a quad band (850mhz) phone.

You can get away with a tri band phone in non-rural areas but i'd stay on the safe side and go quad band.

 

[Rock Hydra]

Verizon...

(sorry, had to)

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Originally posted by: miri

Originally posted by: fritolays

Originally posted by: miri
If you get Tmobile, make sure you get a 850mhz phone

mine is a samsung x475 and it does not have 850mhz, i found that out the hardway driving in a rural part of new mexico, If I had the 850mhz phone I would have had coverage

in defense of the x475, it worked great in Europe and Africa when I was there

so only 850mhz?

what about phones that are 900mhz?

I dunno, I just know if your phone is capable of 850MHZ you will have a larger coverage area

When we drove from Virginia to California, my wife had coverage 100% of the trip, while I lost coverage in some of the 850mhz areas. She had a Samsung t509, i have a Samsung x475

Ugh.. misinformation galore. Tmobile's native coverage is all in 1900 towers. THey dont even have 850 towers. Cingular is the one that uses 850..

You don't really need 850. Trust me. Ive used non 850 phones for 3 years now, and it's fine. The only reason I get extra reception once I switched to Cingular and got a quadband phone was because there is a cingular tower nearby the place where I couldnt get reception w/ Tmobile before. Switching w/ my friend's W800i in that locaiton, I can see that we both get identical reception... but then again if you live in rural, 850 might be important.

If you live in CA, I believe Cingular can still roam on Tmobile, so it's ok. Tmobile cannot do the same though. Roaming agreements might not last very long though...

 

[miri]

Originally posted by: DLeRium
Ugh.. misinformation galore. Tmobile's native coverage is all in 1900 towers. THey dont even have 850 towers. Cingular is the one that uses 850..

You don't really need 850. Trust me. Ive used non 850 phones for 3 years now, and it's fine. The only reason I get extra reception once I switched to Cingular and got a quadband phone was because there is a cingular tower nearby the place where I couldnt get reception w/ Tmobile before. Switching w/ my friend's W800i in that locaiton, I can see that we both get identical reception... but then again if you live in rural, 850 might be important.

If you live in CA, I believe Cingular can still roam on Tmobile, so it's ok. Tmobile cannot do the same though. Roaming agreements might not last very long though...

If you take a lot of road trips, its nice to have 850mhz coverage because then you can use roaming. Tmobile might not have as much coverage as other carriers but thats ok, because they have so many roaming partners like Cingular, Suncom and many more.

When I was in Europe my tmobile phone picked up Vodaphone and another carrier in North Africa

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: fritolays

Originally posted by: miri
IVe used tmobile for over 2 years, tmobile has agreements with a bunch of roaming partners including Cingular. Ive ued tmobile all across the country and in Europe and Africa, where it picked up on its roaming partners. Only problem ive had with Tmobile is at my parents house which is so rural there is not even a house number. Also tmobiles customer service is the best and they have never made a billing error.

sweet

I too am incredibly impressed.

 

[miri]

Originally posted by: Goosemaster

Originally posted by: fritolays

Originally posted by: miri
IVe used tmobile for over 2 years, tmobile has agreements with a bunch of roaming partners including Cingular. Ive ued tmobile all across the country and in Europe and Africa, where it picked up on its roaming partners. Only problem ive had with Tmobile is at my parents house which is so rural there is not even a house number. Also tmobiles customer service is the best and they have never made a billing error.

sweet

I too am incredibly impressed.

I work for verizon wireless and have no intention of switching to them, I like tmobile to much

 

[mercanucaribe]

T-Mobile and Cingular use the same networks do they not? It's just that Cingular uses both 850 and 1900, and Tmobile uses only 1900. Unless they use different 1900 towers, I don't see how it's possible for them to have different amounts of dropped calls or different quality.

The coverage area of Tmobile is smaller than Cingular's.

 

[RossMAN]

Whichever has better network coverage in your area rather than which wins a popularity contest.

 

[mpitts]

I have used both T-Mobile and Cingular in the past few years. I just switched back to Cingular from T-Mobile for two reasons:

Cingular 8525
3G network

T-Mobile was great and I would definitely go back to them if I ever have problems with Cingular's service.

 

[intogamer]

1900mhz is Tmob digital 850mhz is analogue

Best to get quad band to pick up both signals

Cingular and AT&T merged bands also. Thus better coverage

 

[DaWhim]

first of all, coverage is useless if you don't travel.

I had used crapular for about 8 months, so I got every right to bash them. they got better coverage, so what? they also have overloaded capacity. I got reall fed up when I was making call in my area and I usually had to make the same call twice. it was their network problem.

 

[mercanucaribe]

Originally posted by: miri

Originally posted by: DLeRium
Ugh.. misinformation galore. Tmobile's native coverage is all in 1900 towers. THey dont even have 850 towers. Cingular is the one that uses 850..

You don't really need 850. Trust me. Ive used non 850 phones for 3 years now, and it's fine. The only reason I get extra reception once I switched to Cingular and got a quadband phone was because there is a cingular tower nearby the place where I couldnt get reception w/ Tmobile before. Switching w/ my friend's W800i in that locaiton, I can see that we both get identical reception... but then again if you live in rural, 850 might be important.

If you live in CA, I believe Cingular can still roam on Tmobile, so it's ok. Tmobile cannot do the same though. Roaming agreements might not last very long though...

If you take a lot of road trips, its nice to have 850mhz coverage because then you can use roaming. Tmobile might not have as much coverage as other carriers but thats ok, because they have so many roaming partners like Cingular, Suncom and many more.

When I was in Europe my tmobile phone picked up Vodaphone and another carrier in North Africa

No it's not okay, because you can't roam on 850 with Tmobile. If that IS possible, you won't be able to do it with a 900/1800/900 tri band phone.

 

[FoBoT]

I :heart: T-Mobile

 

[GrantMeThePower]

where do you live? That plays a part...west coast, Tmobile is better, east coast, Cingular

Furthermore, If you need HDSPA now, you have to go cingular...tmobile's will be out end of next year (they're saying Aug/sept, but i dont believe it yet).

Tmobile has the best customer service and plans. Cingular has the rollover minutes.

I personally went with tmobile and couldn't be happier. (well i could if the HDSPA was out already)

 

[DanTMWTMP]

I have T-Mobile. I thought T-Mobile and Cingular used the same networks, heh. I had Pac bell, until they got bought out or turned into cingular. Then switched to Tmobile after Cingular's bad customer service.

T-Mobile provided me w/ the best minutes per $$ so, ya.

 

[miri]

Originally posted by: mercanucaribe

Originally posted by: miri

Originally posted by: DLeRium
Ugh.. misinformation galore. Tmobile's native coverage is all in 1900 towers. THey dont even have 850 towers. Cingular is the one that uses 850..

You don't really need 850. Trust me. Ive used non 850 phones for 3 years now, and it's fine. The only reason I get extra reception once I switched to Cingular and got a quadband phone was because there is a cingular tower nearby the place where I couldnt get reception w/ Tmobile before. Switching w/ my friend's W800i in that locaiton, I can see that we both get identical reception... but then again if you live in rural, 850 might be important.

If you live in CA, I believe Cingular can still roam on Tmobile, so it's ok. Tmobile cannot do the same though. Roaming agreements might not last very long though...

If you take a lot of road trips, its nice to have 850mhz coverage because then you can use roaming. Tmobile might not have as much coverage as other carriers but thats ok, because they have so many roaming partners like Cingular, Suncom and many more.

When I was in Europe my tmobile phone picked up Vodaphone and another carrier in North Africa

No it's not okay, because you can't roam on 850 with Tmobile. If that IS possible, you won't be able to do it with a 900/1800/900 tri band phone.

Uh, much of Tmobiles roaming is 850MHZ. My wife drove from Virginia to California with 100% coverage, with a ton of roaming.

I think most if not all of Tmobiles international phones are 850/900/1800/1900 phones

 

[GTaudiophile]

I have been a loyal T-mobile customer for 3 years. The have wonderful customer service!

Also, if you need any sort of international coverage, I would go TMO over Cingular. TMO is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom.

 

[thomsbrain]

somebody brought this back from the dead and tricked me into posting again!

 

[b0mbrman]

Originally posted by: fritolays
who should I go with?
I like sprint and their unlimited vision where I can access the internet for very cheap, however I want to use phones that are not available in the U.S.

I'm willing to sacrifice the unlimited internet access for a better phone

Get phone at Amazon = cheap w/either company

$46 T-Mobile
$40 for 600 anytime minutes
$6 for unlimited interweb access

$60 Cingular
$40 for 450 anytime minutes
$20 for unlimited interweb access

Which is why I'm switching to T-Mobile...

 

[Crazee]

OP lives in Los Angeles and T-mobile has a higher overall customer satisfaction rating from a consumer report's survey than does Cingular.

Actually if you look at the results of the survey (42,291 responses done 9/06) There is no city in the survey where Cingular finished ahead of T-mobile. They tied a couple of times (New York and Dallas) and there are a few markets that t-mobile doesn't compete in or they didn't get enough responses from (San Diego, Miami, Detroit and Cleveland)

The rest listed they beat Cingular and in some places they were the top overall (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver*, Houston*, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul*, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle*, St. Louis*, Tampa, and Washington D.C.)
* Were top in market or tied for top with Verizon (Houston, Minneapolis-St. Paul)

 

[intogamer]

Try both with prepaid? !!

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Originally posted by: Tiamat
tmobile ftw

I have had great luck with tmobile customer service.
My gf has cingular and has had a tough time with her customer service.

Things like a random charge for not upgrading her phone was applied each month until she upgraded to an expensive motorola.

Depending on where you are, cingular can have better coverage.

BTW, I have been using tmobile for 6 years (voice stream before) and whenever there was a problem, customer service came through, and if the problem was their fault, I usually got some sort of "extra minutes" or "free txt msgs" for a month. They have also increased my minutes by 200 minutes per month for no increase in price - a plan that doesnt currently exist. I use a samsung D500 that I imported from Germany over a year ago.

That was not a random charge, that was a charge for clinging onto their TDMA network as they were trying to shut it down.

Originally posted by: Crazee
OP lives in Los Angeles and T-mobile has a higher overall customer satisfaction rating from a consumer report's survey than does Cingular.

Actually if you look at the results of the survey (42,291 responses done 9/06) There is no city in the survey where Cingular finished ahead of T-mobile. They tied a couple of times (New York and Dallas) and there are a few markets that t-mobile doesn't compete in or they didn't get enough responses from (San Diego, Miami, Detroit and Cleveland)

The rest listed they beat Cingular and in some places they were the top overall (Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver*, Houston*, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul*, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle*, St. Louis*, Tampa, and Washington D.C.)
* Were top in market or tied for top with Verizon (Houston, Minneapolis-St. Paul)

I don't know how T-Mo beat Cingular in Tampa. A couple of friends with T-Mo and Verizon phones are notorious for hunting down us Cingular folk so they can actually make phone calls. T-Mo's got it worst with dead spots, but Cingular's plans are a little bit more expensive. Of course, I get the best of both worlds, old AT&T Wireless plan, Cingular's network.

 

[GTaudiophile]

NM

 

[Crazee]

Apparently the respondents to the survey in Tampa felt that Cingular has a bad problem with circuits full and static.

The rankings were Alltel with 74, Verizon with 72, T-mobile with 71, Cingular with 62 and Sprint with 60. They also factor in customer service, etc.