Cell Phone Service

I'm thinking about changing Cell Phone companies for both my cell and internet (Currently with AT&T on both, and want to go totally wireless on the PC, and just have the one phone for me)

Would love to hear your expereineces, both good and bad, and any advice you might have. I've been with them for so long that they don't even offer my rate plan anymore. I'm just not very happy with the service I'm getting, and thought it was time to shop around a bit.

Thanks in advance

[Robin Garr]

I hated Sprint, was pretty satisfied with T-Mobile, but changed to AT&T specifically because the iPhone was more important to me than the provider. I haven't had any problems with them yet.

I'm thinking about changing Cell Phone companies for both my cell and internet (Currently with AT&T on both, and want to go totally wireless on the PC, and just have the one phone for me)

Would love to hear your expereineces, both good and bad, and any advice you might have. I've been with them for so long that they don't even offer my rate plan anymore. I'm just not very happy with the service I'm getting, and thought it was time to shop around a bit.

I've been using T-Mobile for years with absolutely no problems at all.

[Robin Garr]

I've been using T-Mobile for years with absolutely no problems at all.

Regular service or EDGE network? If you're getting a smartphone and plan to do Web browsing, EDGE can be problematic because it's in a frequency range that doesn't get inside buildings well. T-Mobile's customer service is generally considered a model for the industry, though.

I've been using T-Mobile for years with absolutely no problems at all.

Regular service or EDGE network? If you're getting a smartphone and plan to do Web browsing, EDGE can be problematic because it's in a frequency range that doesn't get inside buildings well. T-Mobile's customer service is generally considered a model for the industry, though.

I use the regular service with a regular cell phone. I didn't see where Bill indicated he was using a smartphone.

[Robin Garr]

I use the regular service with a regular cell phone. I didn't see where Bill indicated he was using a smartphone.

I generally feel it's better to provide a little extra information than to fall a little short. <shrug>

Bill didn't mention it, but didn't I read that smartphone sales represent more than half the market these days?

I just wanna regular dumb phone......I don't need no stinkin' fancy, high and mighty smarter than me phone

I'd love to switch from my Palm product to the I-phone (is that hyphenated?!), but wonder about the non-US service capability. ATT is pretty darn good outside the US with Palm - any reason not to think the 3G I-phone isn't up to par, as well? How about Sprint non-US? Any thoughts?

[Robin Garr]

I'd love to switch from my Palm product to the I-phone (is that hyphenated?!), but wonder about the non-US service capability. ATT is pretty darn good outside the US with Palm - any reason not to think the 3G I-phone isn't up to par, as well? How about Sprint non-US? Any thoughts?

TP, I had no problem with my Blackberry on TMobile from many parts of Europe, including Eastern Europe (former Yugoslavia), New Zealand and Australia. Of course that doesn't answer your question about AT&T. Best I can say is that I believe they roam on the same networks, so the iPhone SHOULD work as well as the Blackberry, but I can't offer positive first-person testimony.

... and want to go totally wireless on the PC...

Hopefully I'm not too late. Bill, we use Verizon's wireless cards on our laptops at work for on-call support. I've also used the cards for less "official" reasons, and find them to be very quick. In fact, when I use them with the rather bandwidth heavy applications I use at work, I don't really notice the difference between being directly wired to my LAN at home and the "cellular wireless" cards. Both are, of course, slower than being at work, but not horribly. For home use, they should be more than adequate.

Oh, and there are routers you can plug these into in order to share the connection via normal WLAN to other computers. I believe this usage to be in a legal gray area in terms of most of the providers' acceptable usage policies, though. Unfortunately, they have some strange verbiage in their AUPs. For instance, they claim unlimited bandwidth, but the second you go over what their acceptable usage limits are, they ding you for it (not necessarily monetarily, though). Unlimited, for whatever reason, isn't really unlimited. All the companies do this, so be careful.

Pricing is about as expensive as the higher tiered DSL/Cable high-speed services from AT&T and Insight.