[ale] OT: Cell service provider recommendations

[Greg Clifton]

My family used to have 7 phones with Verizon, until they wouldn't let me
have an Alias 2 phone without $10/mo data plan or a smart phone without a
$30/mo plan per line, whereupon I told them to take the phones and shove
them (figuratively speaking). As the kids were in the "kick them out of the
nest phase" of life, we wound up using a number of carriers including
Verizon by way of Page Plus, Sprint by way of iWireless from Kroger, AT&T
by way of Straight Talk and T-Mobile directly and in different parts of the
country including NYC, DC, Atl, Columbus, GA. All of them worked pretty
well, but like others have said it depends on where you are. Home coverage
still isn't very good with T-Mobile, but they have WiFi calling on all
their phones, so, assuming you have WiFi at home, you can use that to fill
in the gaps.

Since all carriers are transitioning or have already to LTE, I'm not sure
you can rely on experiences from 4 years ago. T-Mobile coverage did improve
after their merger with AT&T failed (the rep told me AT&T had to give them
a bunch of 3G towers in the breakup, never verified, but my coveage did
improve). The iWireless was a CDMA/EVDO phone and the Sprint coverage in
South GA (Savannah-Fayetteville via Waycross) was much better than the
T-Mobile GSM service a couple of years ago. I still rely heavily on the
WiFi calling feature and it generally works well.

One other note, T-Mobile merged with Metro PCS not long back (I think that
is when they got into LTE since Metro was already rolling out LTE service).
Also, I just heard on the radop today that T-Mobile and Sprint have agreed
to merge. If T-Mobile handles customer service, that will probably be a
good thing, if Sprint, not so much. Right now, the T-Mobile famly plan is
hard to beat, though the Sprint Frambly plan looks good if you have a large
family and/or lots of friends. What sorts of plans will they offer after
the merger, who knows, but one might expect their LTE coverage to improve.

Regarding phone choice, pick the size and features you want/need
(T-Mobile's upgrade plan is pretty sweet in case you aren't happy after 6
months). My wife has a Galaxy S2 (GSM),  I and my son have Galaxy S4's, one
daughter just upgraded from an S4 to a Nexus (made by LG) and loves it. She
says it is much faster than the Samsung and the screen is actually readable
in daylight which is a major shortcoming of the Galaxy line. I have always
had good service life of both their phones and their batteries with
Samsungs. I think they are the top phone manufacturer for good reason.
However, all the phones seem to have gotten much better over the past 4 or
5 years (a short eternity in the phone/computer universe). Competition does
wonderful things for innovation!

HTH,
Greg C


On Thu, Jun 5, 2014 at 8:52 PM, Calvin Harrigan <calvin.harrigan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 06/05/2014 03:26 PM, Scott Castaline wrote:
>
>> So we're sort of getting tired of ATT's games with pricing. We have 5
>> phones with 15Gb data and paying ~$340/month with my wife's state employee
>> discount. We're looking to bail out of ATT and go with T-Mobile's program
>> to pay contract termination fees. We can get all 5 phones exchanged for new
>> ones plus the deal only gives 1GB/phone, but I can get and extra 2GB for
>> $10. So what I'm asking is 2 things:
>>
>> 1. How is T-Mobile's service and also their coverage?
>>
>> 2. Motorola, LG, Samsung, or HTC?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Scott C.
>>
>>  I've been with them for a bit. I used to travel a bit and have never had
> any trouble in metro areas. I only remember  a couple times not having any
> signal at all. In rural areas it falls back as far as 2G, but you could
> still make/receive calls. Service has been great. Contacted customer
> support twice when I initially setup.  One was to switch from prepaid to
> post-paid, the other was adding my wife to my plan.  Both times the rep was
> knowledgeable and empowered (no need to speak to a supervisor). They just
> took care of business and even credited me a few bucks during the switch
> overs, even though it was working.  Then earlier this year they doubled my
> data for free! Can't argue with that. Being able to text family over seas
> is also a win.  No data overages also saves the day when you do go over.
>  They throttle you back, not charge you more. All in all a happy camper.
>
>
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