I am starting to be at odds with some of Verizon’s practices (for instance if you have the unlimited “In” plan it STILL costs min. to send and receive pix, flix and txts) so I am thinking about changing cell providers. My contract is up in June and I live in the Manchester, NH area.
I currently have the LG V (9800) and I love it, I need something with a nice QWERTY keyboard.
Your thoughts?
I use Cingular on a family plan. I don’t know how well it covers Manchester, but I have empirical evidence that my phone worked fine at FIRST Place. I don’t do text or picture messaging, though, so you’d want to investigate further.
I spend most of my time in Chicago and its suburbs.
I currently have a Cingular family plan. Cingular is ok when it works, but has a lot of places where service just dies unexpectedly, and when I do get service it still drops calls.
It is nice to be able to talk to anyone with the carrier for free, but it costs 10cents a txt and a bunch more for sending pictures. There are a few packages that you can get with the service to allow for a lot of text messages and internet uses etc, but I would make sure that the manager of the store sets that up (an employee stole my brother’s sim card and cloned his phone, it ended up charging over $3,000 to our bill, they removed the charges but only after spending a week on the phone and in the store)
The customer service at Cingular is less to be desired, not just at one store out by me, but the three that I have gone to. And their overages are astornomical.
A good thing about Cingular is if you wait a few months you can always grab one of the new iPhones.
I have Cingular since the merger in 2001 (6 years ago!) when my Cellular One became Cingular. I like it. I’ve had a corporate store near my parents house that I’ve gone to since we got the phones. Never had a problem there, other than one guy recently that was new and didn’t understand his network. :o The kiosks and other authorized agents have had a generaly lower helpfulness when I’ve had questions or whatever. By the way, the corporate stores can do a lot more than the authorized agents can.
Right now, it is $20 a month for unlimted data, and you can connect your phone to your laptop as a modem (phone allowing) for no extra charge. With the 3G right now, 800kps down easy. With good signal people are getting better than megabit down. Unlike WiFi, that will roam from tower to tower as you drive. Internet radio in your car anyone?
The 3G network might be to Manchester by now, as of November it wasn’t quite there yet. Check your coverage here.
3G+Blackjack=:D
Wetzel
My carrier? That hole in the wall over there…
I used to have a cell phone for about 3 months. It was Iowa Wireless, now iWireless. I bought it at the mall just 5 minutes from my house but could not get reception anywhere near my house. Pretty lame, but then again it doesn’t matter to you… heh, Iowa is far from you… Sorry about the rant, I’m tired and bored.
We have a Verizon family plan with the “in” plan for the calls, and have added for the kids an “in” plan for texting (text, pix, flix). (I have the normal texting package) It makes their costs $20/month and they have yet to go over… 
Verizon seems to be the popular choice in this area, so almost all of their friends are “in.”
I use Tracfone with a Motorola C261 (SLVR’s somewhat fatter sister), and the service uses cingular’s services for multimedia messages and whatnot. Whats great is that I get reception in my basement. Otherwise, its a pretty nifty service for those who would not be able to handle monthly payments.
I have Cingular on a family plan with my parents and brother. It’s not too bad; every now and then a call will be dropped, but it’s not so often it makes you want to rip your hair out. Service is overall pretty good with Cingular. Ever since they improved their service and we switched from Nextel (Sprint now) I’ve had no complaints.
My phone is okay, I have a LG C2000, which doesn’t have a keyboard, but Cingular does have some nice phones with keyboards on them.
I have Cingular for about 4 years now. I have had one call dropped in my home area. I’ve dropped a few while I’m traveling, but I was out in the boonies so I think most carriers would have dropped them anyway. I personally think Cingular is amazing.
I can’t remember the last time I had a call dropped. I’ve not had signal before, but I don’t expect a total coverage of back roads in the mountains of West Virginia, but I have never dropped a call in a civilized area. Anyone else out there not drop calls?
Wetzel
I can see it now
Cingular, FIRST has it, do yo
offical carrier of FIRST Robotics
from that you can guess i have cingular too
I have Sprint with the Samsung A-900. I’ve never had an issue with Sprint that 15 minutes on the phone with customer service would not fix. Also, We get a 25% discount per month because my mom is a Pharmacy Tech. at K-Mart and Sears bought K-Mart. However, I am very happy with my phone and the plans aren’t too bad. Nights at 7pm and some other nice features - like additional 100 minuted for only $5. However, Sprint recently changed all their plans and eliminated the internet and texting combined plan. All texting costs are seperate than those associated with internet usage. IE, You could originally spend $15 for 500 texts and unlimited internet. Now, it’s $10 for 1000 texts and another $15 for internet access (unlimited). Without a plan, texts cost a hefty $0.15 per message…I can’t remember their data rate costs though - but I know those are high as well. But as I said before, I’ve never had any major issues that couldn’t be resolved.