Which cell phone carrier?
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i dunno about family plans, but ive had sprint for a couple years now and havent had any problems with them at all. always had a great signal.. even out on the lake. i get 3400 night/weekend minutes, 600 anytime minutes, and free long distance for 50 bucks a month.
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Cingular/AT&T has good coverage, T-Mobile if you want cool phones. Verizon is expensive compare to these two. I have verizon, and I hate it.
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I've had cellone for about 7 years. Yeah, their phones aren't the newest/coolest, but they had the best plan for my needs...no roaming anywhere in the country w/ their national plan so basically you can use any carriers tower that has CDMA technology. If you don't mind buying your own phone at full cost, you should be able to activate just about any CDMA phone on their network.
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Alright, I'll give you the run down:
Unicel
Unicel has moved away from its "rover" unlimited plans and now are pressing thier "CDMA" plans. The rover plans use existing GSM Towers. Basically when you sign up for Rover you are getting T-Mobile. You also get to roam on T-Mobile's network if you leave the area.
Unicel was ALWAYS fucking up my bill, I never saw a bill that was less then $150 per month, becuase they always charged me for roaming at my house and shit. Then they started telling me they wouldn't credit it off my account, and that the only way to fix it was to switch to their new CDMA service.
Don't be decieved by thier advertised price, Unicel charges higher fake "taxes" then any other company I've seen, one month I had $16 dollars in "taxes" which werne't state or federal it was thier made up bullshit.
Also note that, Unicel doesn't include roaming, doesn't include long distance. The only benifit is, that you can add on unlimited TXT messaging for 3.00 a month. Oh yeah you have to add on voice mail and all that other shit too.
Unicel's CDMA service operates off of Verizon's towers. Yeah, can you see a trend? RCC Wireless, the parent company of Unicel doesn't actually own and operate thier own towers, they have roam and lease agreements with other companies. Unicel's CDMA service was ok, but for the extra money you spend on it you may as well get a real provider.
T-Mobile
T-Mobile has some awesome plans, you'll find that you an get some of the best deals with them. Thier Data plans also rock, if you want to use the internet alot, Tmobile is the way to go, as it doesn't use your min. and GPRS is unlimited. Tmobile also uses GSM Technology.
GSM is a standard of cell phone that has been adopted throught much of asia, europe and south america. It allows for you to switch SIM cards from phone to phone and your number moves with you.
Downside, GSM tends to operate on a lower frequency but it varies from carrier to carrier. The lower the frequency the less penetration of signal your going to get in hard to reach places like basments and stuff.
Another downside about Tmobile is that there are no local dealers here for them. Why? They contracted out to Unicel to do all the reselling, yeah it kinda sucks. If your willing to do all your interaction with them via the internet / telephone, T-Mobile is prob the best option for a carrier that is out right now, best plans, best phones, etc...
Nextel
Nextel operates on a proprietary I-Den signal. Thier main customers are business customers, and their main appeal is the Push-To-Talk Walkie Talkie feature.
However, you will be pretty hard pressed to find a happy Nextel customer.
- I-Den signal sucks, its coverage sucks, dropped calls, missed calls etc..
- Data features are almost non existant, much like sprint, Nextel has the problem of delayed text messaging, sometimes your message won't be delivered to the phone for DAYS!!!
- Very expensive.
So basically, you pay out the ass for nextel for shitty service. Unless you have a network of friends that use thier Push-To Talk feature, its not worth it.
Sprint
Sprint is a CDMA service, has plans which are generally a bit more expensive then comparable plans from other providers.
Some people are happy with Sprint, I have no 1st hand experience with them, I however had heard, thier customer service sucks. Thier text messaging is often delayed, and they are currently 1 generation of phones behind.
Verizon
I had Verizon way back when, I got mad at it, becuaes it seemed there were better deals out there, but I can't be happier with their service now. I guess it does come back to you, you get what you pay for. Verizon invests billions of dollars in cell phone tower deployment, and they also invest in a thing called customer service.
If your like me, your prob like, fuck customer service they are usually stupid anyway. But, I've had my share of problems, and verizon has generally always worked them out for me.
Verizon is less expensive then sprint, but more expensive then Tmobile or local cell phone companies (Unicel / Cell One). But they do ofer a plethora of features that the other provides can't touch:
Vcast / Broadband Access - A brand new feature that uses EV-DO tech. (Remember monet mobile? same stuff). Up to 2.5mbps yes, MEGABITS per second, to your phone. Sprint and the rest are stuck back using 3G wireless, which connects at a maximum 115k per second, and in real life connects closer to 80k per sec (80k compared to 2500k). If the handset supports it, your able to watch live tv streams from CNN, ESPN, alot of the major news channels. You also are able to teather your phone to your laptop (unfortunely at this time there are no bluetooth phones which support vcast, but thats ok, becuase bluetooth doesnt have enough bandwidth to support 2.5mbps anyways), and get your comptuer on the internet via your cell phone.
Text messaging is always instantaneous. Call quality for me anyway, has always been good.
Verizon now is starting to roll out its plans that are meant to compete with cingular and at&t. Starting next month, you'll see roll over minutes, and new plans that feature no roaming.
Family plans are now add a line for 9.99, which is a fairly good deal.
You get free nights and weekends, virutally no roaming anywhere, free long distance, free calls to other verizon customers, etc... etc...
OK i'm tired of typing this now, if you have questions let me know, I'll most likely be able to answer them.
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Jim wrote:
Some people are happy with Sprint, I have no 1st hand experience with them, I however had heard, thier customer service sucks. Thier text messaging is often delayed, and they are currently 1 generation of phones behind.actually.. sprint text messaging sucks. i forgot about that one. getting texts isnt a problem.. but most all texts i send to people never end up getting to them.
and holy shit jim. thats almost too much info.
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I had verizon a few years back from a local carrier, not a verizon store. DONT get verizon from a local carier whatever you do. I think that verizon has the best family plan, however I think that Cell One (particularily Cell World) has the best coverage of anything in the area. I drive to Wisconson and have only one blackout that last for about 30 miles. Contrary to what some asshat said here about Cell One not having the latest phones, thats bullshit. Maybe CellWorld is different, but they have all the phones, plus some I havnt seen at verizon. I can give you a referal card if you want CellWorld. Talk to the owner, Justin Mumm if you can. I went in and couldnt afford the phone I wanted, so he made some deals with me and I ended up getting it for less than half the listing price. Yes, the listing price WAS the SAME as verizons. So suck it you stupid asshat that said they have sucky phones and higher prices.
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I have a LG VX-8000 w/ EV-DO, I'm positive that cell one has nothing that can touch it.
Edit: I just looked at cell one's website, the most advanced phone they have is a Kyocera 7135 which is a PDA unit.
The most advanced non-pda handset is a Motorola V810...
I don't see how they have such pimp phones? Cell one uses CDMA technology, with roaming agreements with sprint and verizon. You will get the same sort of roaming reliablity with any of them as they all "share" towers via lease agreements.
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I have to agree with amicheze that there some problems with sprint. When i went to bismark, my sprint phone had no signal for half the trip, but my friend's phone (who also has sprint) had a signal the entire way. I am looking to ditch sprint after my contract is up, and go to verizon, because i heard they have better coverage.
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I am going to have to say the new Sprint phones are good. My text messaging is a lot faster now. My signal stregnth is always good (even at the lakes). My plan is pretty sweet also 6oo any time minutes, free long distance, anything after 6 pm is free plus free weekends. I get all this for 46.00. I have been with sprint for 3 years and have no major complaints besides text messaging, but that has gotten better.
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First phone=Verizon
Verizon suckedNext phone=Rover from Unicel
Don't think they offer it anymore, but it rocked just as Nick said. We could use our phones all across the country and latch on to any digital signal. I never got one roaming charge. Used it all the way from Florida, Ohio, etc. Best experience yet.Next=Cell one
Wow, the worst service ever, biggest BS plan unless you live in a cow pasture in the middle of ND. Just ended my service and switched to Sprint. Hated it soo bad that I didn't care about the $200 contract cancellation fee.Current=Sprint
Awesome so far. Did a family share plan with my brother, plus we both get discounts through work. He has had Sprint for 3-4 years and still likes it a lot.Basically, as you can tell it all comes down to personal preference. Most of all, where are you going to use your phone, how much traveling you are going to do, etc. Nothing beats the Rover plan if they are still offering it!! The only problem I had with it was when I was out at the lakes or out in the middle of nowhere in ND where there wasn't a digital tower.
My opinion, get Sprint if they no longer offer Rover..
Nate -
nate, when you had rover and said that you were never charged for roaming, are you saying that when you were in florida and called people in fargo that it didn't cost you anything extra?
edit: extra meaning more than the 33 bux a month for the unlimted local plan.
They said you deal was a promotion that ended xmas of last year
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