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| reply to ISurfTooMuch
Re: Speed or Coverage Lol! I call your statements BS too. There may be areas where there is VZW 4g but not AT&T 3G. But that does change fact there is still a lot more areas where AT&T 3G or even tmobile partners' 3G is present but not 4g yet. And in some areas us cellular will deploy 4g before VZ does. All what you are trying to prove in your responses is that you are VZ fanboy! Lol | |
| No, it's not that I'm a VZW fanboy; it's more that I've watched AT&T's network down here turn from a solid network to complete shit, despite the fact that they were told about it and even their local corporate stores knew it.
Personally, I don't care what carrier I'm on, as long as it meets my needs. I don't really care which network is faster. If the slower one is fast enough and more stable, then that's the one I'll go with. Personally, I prefer GSM over CDMA, but, as I said, AT&T's service here went downhill in a hurry, and T-Mobile has issues in some big buildings, so that left VZW, Sprint, and Southern LINC. SoLINC is iDEN, so that won't work, since there's no fast data, and I used to have Sprint (and I know people who still do), and their coverage here isn't that good. So that left only VZW, which is where I am now. If their service deteriorates, I'll reevaluate and go somewhere else.
But if you think I'm a fanboy for saying what works best for me, then feel free. You'd be wrong, of course, but feel free. | |
| said by ISurfTooMuch:No, it's not that I'm a VZW fanboy; it's more that I've watched AT&T's network down here turn from a solid network to complete shit, despite the fact that they were told about it and even their local corporate stores knew it.
Personally, I don't care what carrier I'm on, as long as it meets my needs. I don't really care which network is faster. If the slower one is fast enough and more stable, then that's the one I'll go with. Personally, I prefer GSM over CDMA, but, as I said, AT&T's service here went downhill in a hurry, and T-Mobile has issues in some big buildings, so that left VZW, Sprint, and Southern LINC. SoLINC is iDEN, so that won't work, since there's no fast data, and I used to have Sprint (and I know people who still do), and their coverage here isn't that good. So that left only VZW, which is where I am now. If their service deteriorates, I'll reevaluate and go somewhere else.
But if you think I'm a fanboy for saying what works best for me, then feel free. You'd be wrong, of course, but feel free.
AT&T started getting worse here in 2009, specifically when AT&T took over right after Cingular though. SouthernLINC is good for voice and text, but you are right, they suck as far as data is concerned.
Verizon has taken over and dominated central AL and of course AT&T is still on the decline. | |
| Actually, AT&T didn't take over. It's just that BellSouth wouldn't allow Cingular to be renamed AT&T while they were a partner in it with AT&T (formerly SBC). Then, AT&T bought BellSouth and renamed everything.
In this area, I think what caused AT&T's problems is that they started directing phones to camp on 1900 instead of 850. While the 850 network has been solid, 1900 isn't so solid, and they were sending phones up to 1900 even in spots where the 1900 signal was weak enough to be unusable. The effect was that, even if you had a solid 850 signal, you could still have bad service because your phone was being directed to camp on 1900. From reading HoFo, this wasn't just affecting Tuscaloosa but was happening all over north and central Alabama. At one point, in early 2010, it reached the point that AT&T phones in Tuscaloosa were pretty much unusable. I happened to see a former coworker at lunch and asked her if she was having problems, and she actually said that was the first day in two weeks that she could make a call. I actually went on AT&T's FB page and told them that they had a serious network problem down here, and some other folks from the area also joined in. It ended up turning into a huge pile-on, where people were coming out of the woodwork to say how bad things here had gotten, but all the AT&T mod would say was that they were working to make the network "better than ever". No acknowledgment whatsoever that there was a problem or an ETA on when it would be fixed.
That was about the point when my wife said that she thought it was time to make a change, so we ported to VZW and paid the ETF. Money well spent, IMHO. | |
| said by ISurfTooMuch:Actually, AT&T didn't take over. It's just that BellSouth wouldn't allow Cingular to be renamed AT&T while they were a partner in it with AT&T (formerly SBC). Then, AT&T bought BellSouth and renamed everything.
In this area, I think what caused AT&T's problems is that they started directing phones to camp on 1900 instead of 850. While the 850 network has been solid, 1900 isn't so solid, and they were sending phones up to 1900 even in spots where the 1900 signal was weak enough to be unusable. The effect was that, even if you had a solid 850 signal, you could still have bad service because your phone was being directed to camp on 1900. From reading HoFo, this wasn't just affecting Tuscaloosa but was happening all over north and central Alabama. At one point, in early 2010, it reached the point that AT&T phones in Tuscaloosa were pretty much unusable. I happened to see a former coworker at lunch and asked her if she was having problems, and she actually said that was the first day in two weeks that she could make a call. I actually went on AT&T's FB page and told them that they had a serious network problem down here, and some other folks from the area also joined in. It ended up turning into a huge pile-on, where people were coming out of the woodwork to say how bad things here had gotten, but all the AT&T mod would say was that they were working to make the network "better than ever". No acknowledgment whatsoever that there was a problem or an ETA on when it would be fixed.
That was about the point when my wife said that she thought it was time to make a change, so we ported to VZW and paid the ETF. Money well spent, IMHO.
They have redirected most of the traffic to 850mhz now with the down tuning of GSM, but that still hasn't resolved the issue. The main problems with AT&T in central AL are, backhaul and the cell site density. They aren't running enough *carriers* to handle the growth of data usage like Verizon has. Game day, AT&T goes completely down basically, my calls don't work half the time, but Verizon works great.
I am in Oak Grove and I get 4G LTE from Verizon where AT&T is all EDGE still, and like everyone else, I will drop AT&T soon when my contract is run out. I thankfully have had 2 family plan's, one on ATT and one on Verizon and have unlimited Verizon data as well so it all works out pretty good. | |
| locust43, right? ALCingularUser here. Small world.
Yeah, I know what you mean about game days. I was in the stadium for the Vanderbilt game last year with a buddy of mine, and my VZW phone worked fine except for one brief time when data slowed to a crawl. His girlfriend called me because she needed to talk to him during the game, since she couldn't get through on his AT&T phone. Mine rang the first time she called.
My only complaint is that VZW is still 1x in some areas down 69S around Taylorville, something they should have fixed a long time ago, and they're also 1x up by County High, but I don't visit those areas much, so it doesn't really affect me. | |
| reply to ISurfTooMuch
Your observation of the services is probably the best way to look at things. Many people on the post are so focused on speed that they receive that they fail to focus on the quality of service they are receiving.
In several studies, Verizon has shown to have the best coverage nationwide. However, if you find that a local or regional carrier has the best coverage and service for where you use it the most, that is the best company to use in your situation. Too many people are believing all of the hype of advertisements and are not researching everything for themselves. | |
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