Best Cell Phone Service

[ua549]

The major drawback to Verizon is that their handsets don't work when traveling outside of North America. For that you need a GSM handset. GSM service is offered nationally in the US by T-Mobile and Cingular.

[rock]

GSM rules. That is, as long as you're not heading to Korea or Japan....
I actually thought everyone was on the GSM bandwagon by now...

[snapplekid13]

Cingular is by far the best!

[vairox]

Cingular is by far the best!

you mean AT&T right? since they just got bought out by AT&T.... lame

how does this happen? cingular buys at&t wireless then at&t buys it back..... kinda like a bankrupt kmart buying out sears, w t f ?

[ua549]

Not exactly.

AT&T Wireless was a different company that AT&T.
Cingular is a 60/40 partnership between AT&T and Bell South.
Today, At&T who was SBC last year bought Bell South thus reuniting four of the seven companies created by the government breakup of AT&T in 1984.

Confusing? Yup! It's just like trying to figure out blood lines between cousins in the south because they inter-marry so much.

[ImaNihilist]

Not exactly.

AT&T Wireless was a different company that AT&T.
Cingular is a 60/40 partnership between AT&T and Bell South.
Today, At&T who was SBC last year bought Bell South thus reuniting four of the seven companies created by the government breakup of AT&T in 1984.

Confusing? Yup! It's just like trying to figure out blood lines between cousins in the south because they inter-marry so much.

I just read that today. Messed up. Didn't Cingular technically buy AT&T Wireless, but stake a 60% claim in Cingular? And then didn't SBC techincally buy AT&T, but keep the AT&T name because it was more well known?

It's just a matter of time before we see only two companies, AT&T and Verizon. They are the only two strong enough to stand on their own.

[ImaNihilist]

The major drawback to Verizon is that their handsets don't work when traveling outside of North America. For that you need a GSM handset. GSM service is offered nationally in the US by T-Mobile and Cingular.

It's going to be even more as a drawback as everyone moves to quad-band GSM/WCDMA/UMTS phones while Verizon sticks out with CDMA/EV-DO.

Nokia is releasing a bunch of phones pretty soon that are UMTS and support GSM 900/1800/1900 AND WCDMA. I can't wait to get my hands on an E70. Not only is it quad-band, but it also supports WLAN and Bluetooth. Connects to everything!

[ua549]

Cingular was an SBC and Bell South partnership that was formed in 2001, the same year AT&T Corp. spun off AT&T Wireless as an independent company.
Cingular purchased AT&T Wireless in 2004.
SBC purchased AT&T Corp. in 2005 then changed its name to AT&T Inc. SBC was the surviving company.
The new AT&T Inc. reached an agreement to purchase Bell South in 2006.

It is important to realize that AT&T Corp., At&T Inc. and AT&T Wireless are/were totally different companies.

[ImaNihilist]

Cingular was an SBC and Bell South partnership that was formed in 2001, the same year AT&T Corp. spun off AT&T Wireless as an independent company.
Cingular purchased AT&T Wireless in 2004.
SBC purchased AT&T Corp. in 2005 then changed its name to AT&T Inc. SBC was the surviving company.
The new AT&T Inc. reached an agreement to purchase Bell South in 2006.

It is important to realize that AT&T Corp. At&T inc. and AT&T Wireless are/were totally different companies.

Ahh. I see. That clears that up. I had no idea the original Cingular was an SBC/BellSouth creation. I thought it was just BellSouth.

[Soul Assassin]

GSM rules.

Rules at what? There's a reason Verizon consistently scores higher than all the GSM providers. GSM offers better battery life and that's about it. Voice quality is worse, signal quality is worse.

Cingular has more towers than any other provider and yet they still can't manage to finish much higher than 4th every year in the CR studies.

CDMA might be a band-aid for an aging technology, but it's still better than GSM. 3G is probably better than CDMA but the US is so far behind in cell phone technology it's scary.

[Soul Assassin]

Nokia is releasing a bunch of phones pretty soon that are UMTS and support GSM 900/1800/1900 AND WCDMA. I can't wait to get my hands on an E70. Not only is it quad-band, but it also supports WLAN and Bluetooth. Connects to everything!

Are any of them going to be flip phones? God I hate the regular Nokia phones. Actually I hate non-flip phones in general.

[Soul Assassin]

It's just a matter of time before we see only two companies, AT&T and Verizon. They are the only two strong enough to stand on their own.

I doubt you'll see Qwest going anywhere anytime soon.. they control most of the west. Then again I never thought the titan that is BellSouth would go down either, so who knows.



Also, Cincinnati Bell will probably never sell out to anyone just because I think people in Cincinnati enjoy being "special" and having their own phone carrier.

[rabidmoose171]

AT&T bought Bell South today for 67 billion dollars.



I have to vote for T-Mobile because here in germany they basicaly have a monoply.

I hate my service though, but i voted before i saw that last option.

[MrBrett]

Rules at what? There's a reason Verizon consistently scores higher than all the GSM providers. GSM offers better battery life and that's about it. Voice quality is worse, signal quality is worse.

Cingular has more towers than any other provider and yet they still can't manage to finish much higher than 4th every year in the CR studies.

CDMA might be a band-aid for an aging technology, but it's still better than GSM. 3G is probably better than CDMA but the US is so far behind in cell phone technology it's scary.

I have cingular because most of my family and friends have it, and the service is absolutely terrible pretty much anywhere in Texas. Calls are consistantly dropped after 10-15 minutes, and it's often very difficult to understand people because the signal is so bad (even though my phone says it has 5 bars? ***?). Text messages sometimes take 30+ minutes to get through. The call quality is often bad even when I'm calling someone on a land line.

The price is great (I have like 10k rollover minutes, so no worrying about going over), but I'm about fed up with the service.

[idiotekniQues]

CDMA might be a band-aid for an aging technology, but it's still better than GSM. 3G is probably better than CDMA

this makes no sense :/