your experience with AT&T and WP7

[tre-nitty]

Yeah I think people just make these stories up about att's service. I love it and am so happy with the switch from sprint.

 

[MarcMaiden]

to be fair...i dont think any carrier is as bad as a lot of people make them out to be.

Maybe Tmobile doesnt have the best coverage, but they have the best prices and phone selection.

Verizon isnt the fastest but it is the most reliable

Sprint offers good value (service to price ratio)

and AT&T is extremely fast with pretty reliable coverage (from my experiences at least)


fanboys will be fanboys i guess...

 

[Lionstone]

to be fair...i dont think any carrier is as bad as a lot of people make them out to be.

Maybe Tmobile doesnt have the best coverage, but they have the best prices and phone selection.

Verizon isnt the fastest but it is the most reliable

Sprint offers good value (service to price ratio)

and AT&T is extremely fast with pretty reliable coverage (from my experiences at least)


fanboys will be fanboys i guess...

I have to agree. I have t-mobile because they're cheaper. Coverage is generally fine, but I do have some odd dead spots, and I can't count on having coverage in small towns. It's only a problem when I head out to my uncle's ranch for some bass fishing.

Most of my family is on Sprint, and one is on ATT, and one is on Verizon. Nobody has any real complaints about any of them, though Sprint's coverage is definitely spottier that ATT or Verizon. I also see Verizon is a bit slower than ATT in our area, as you said, but when they're not side-by-side, you probably wouldn't notice. Just a couple seconds difference when browsing, and that could be the phones for all I know.

 

[2frostey]

I work at ATT as well. I been working here for 3 months now at a authorized dealership. The only reason AT&T took away unlimited data for any phone was because of the iphone. There is way to high of iphone users that use too much data and makes AT&T worce reception. I hope it comes back tho. I had the blackberry torch 2 weeks later i went to iphone 3gs, 2 weeks later i went to samsung captivate, then to focus, iphone 4, then now im back to the focus. Only reason i came back was the concept of the phone is good and since its a new un-polished OS, once they work out all the bugs, the phone will deffinetly be on top. I noticed way to many dead spots, and my service constantly changing on the iphone 4, when i put it down, it lost service..it was rediculous

 

[Rico]

To beat a dead horse, the problem is with the iPhone. People bought a phone because of all non-phone tasks it performed, then cried when the phone itself was weak. AT&T could've set the record straight, but I'm sure they didn't want to upset their partner. It's a pity because they're fighting a perception issue which continues to haunt them.

I've had AT&T for over four years, owned or at least used more devices across practically every manufacturer (save Pantech), and rarely had a reception issue. I can't tell you the last time I dropped a call, but I can tell you it definitely took me a few moments to realize what happened because I so rarely drop calls.

 

[foosball]

I don't have any experience with att but I'm curious if all of you on att have won the lottery?

I considered switching to them just to get a Focus and calculated it would cost me a whopping $2,500 dollars MORE than what I'm paying now (24 month contract for 2 lines with unlimited texting, 2G data, unlimited anytime minutes, att navigation). The total cost is $5k for a 2 year agreement. How do you guys afford that?

 

[spitothec]

I have a job, that helps.

 

[ninjaap]

I don't have any experience with att but I'm curious if all of you on att have won the lottery?

I considered switching to them just to get a Focus and calculated it would cost me a whopping $2,500 dollars MORE than what I'm paying now (24 month contract for 2 lines with unlimited texting, 2G data, unlimited anytime minutes, att navigation). The total cost is $5k for a 2 year agreement. How do you guys afford that?

Same way we can afford a $500K home. Spread out the payments for 30+ years and end up paying double what it's worth. It's the American way.

Plus, there is such a thing called - wait for it - a family plan.

 

[Rico]

I don't have any experience with att but I'm curious if all of you on att have won the lottery?

I considered switching to them just to get a Focus and calculated it would cost me a whopping $2,500 dollars MORE than what I'm paying now (24 month contract for 2 lines with unlimited texting, 2G data, unlimited anytime minutes, att navigation). The total cost is $5k for a 2 year agreement. How do you guys afford that?

I just upgraded to the Samsung Focus which I got for free via Amazon. I don't believe in paying much if anything for a cell phone because the carriers make the money back that vast majority of the time on the contracts. I pay roughly $85 a month for 450 anytime minutes, unlimited texts, and unlimited data. That's with the 20% discount I get for working at UPS.

Keep in mind that...

AT&T has a feature called A-List that lets you call five people (ten shared numbers on family plans) as much as you want. I think for family plans it's added to plans with at least 1400 minutes per month. You also get rollover minutes, free calling to anyone on the AT&T network, and of course night and weekend minutes starting at nine. And I understand some people really need unlimited calling, especially on a family plan, but I recommend realistically looking at your calling, seeing how many minutes you actually use on average, then figuring out how you can use the features I mentioned to work for you. Choose a plan that's closest to the amount of minutes you actually think you need and try to be kinda conservative the first few months to build a little rollover minute buffer. Again, you may actually need unlimited calling, but too many people buy voice plans over what they need and pay for it over the duration of their service, which is usually more than two years.

Regarding AT&T Navigation, that's likely a service you won't use once Bing Voice Navigation becomes available.

Also, you may apply for a discount from you or your wife's employer. Go to an AT&T Corporate store and tell them where you work and you can see if your jobs qualify.

You can also use Google Voice to mitigate the costs of texting, but it doesn't support MMS. Frankly, I'd just rather use standard texting but there's a growing number of people doing this.

A little work upfront will save you tons of money in the long run. Such is life.

 

[MarcMaiden]

I just upgraded to the Samsung Focus which I got for free via Amazon. I don't believe in paying much if anything for a cell phone because the carriers make the money back that vast majority of the time on the contracts. I pay roughly $85 a month for 450 anytime minutes, unlimited texts, and unlimited data. That's with the 20% discount I get for working at UPS.

Keep in mind that...

AT&T has a feature called A-List that lets you call five people (ten shared numbers on family plans) as much as you want. I think for family plans it's added to plans with at least 1400 minutes per month. You also get rollover minutes, free calling to anyone on the AT&T network, and of course night and weekend minutes starting at nine. And I understand some people really need unlimited calling, especially on a family plan, but I recommend realistically looking at your calling, seeing how many minutes you actually use on average, then figuring out how you can use the features I mentioned to work for you. Choose a plan that's closest to the amount of minutes you actually think you need and try to be kinda conservative the first few months to build a little rollover minute buffer. Again, you may actually need unlimited calling, but too many people buy voice plans over what they need and pay for it over the duration of their service, which is usually more than two years.

Regarding AT&T Navigation, that's likely a service you won't use once Bing Voice Navigation becomes available.

Also, you may apply for a discount from you or your wife's employer. Go to an AT&T Corporate store and tell them where you work and you can see if your jobs qualify.

You can also use Google Voice to mitigate the costs of texting, but it doesn't support MMS. Frankly, I'd just rather use standard texting but there's a growing number of people doing this.

A little work upfront will save you tons of money in the long run. Such is life.

thanks for doing my job!

 

[foosball]

Rico- This was the analysis I was interested in reading to see if it could help me make a transition. Thanks for taking the time to delve into it feature by feature. For comparative analysis purposes I was doing a 1:1 comparison from my current plan (Sprint). You are right that in some respects this can be overcome or mitigated and your thoughts on precisely how are well taken. I was hoping it would be financially rational to switch networks and unfortunately with my minutes/text/data usage its not.

 

[Rico]

Rico- This was the analysis I was interested in reading to see if it could help me make a transition. Thanks for taking the time to delve into it feature by feature. For comparative analysis purposes I was doing a 1:1 comparison from my current plan (Sprint). You are right that in some respects this can be overcome or mitigated and your thoughts on precisely how are well taken. I was hoping it would be financially rational to switch networks and unfortunately with my minutes/text/data usage its not.

If you're coming from Sprint or T-Mobile and going to AT&T or Verizon, expect to pay more. Especially true if you're on one of Sprint's SERO plans. Sprint and T-Mobile are smaller carriers that can (and have to be) more aggressive in pricing, but they don't get the best phones and their coverage isn't as great as the other two.

 

[cglaguna#WP]

I moved from a Treo to iPhone 3G. I was with Cingular for 6 years with little issue. Cingular in this area was great. Cing bought ATT, changed name to ATT moved over to ATT's frequency and sold off towers to T-Mobile (who at the time had no towers and was leasing from Cingular). ATT service is/was horrible. I'm in in a highly populated area outside LA. Dropped calls like crazy. Apple blamed ATT, ATT blamed Apple for three months they replaced iphones, one after the other. Finally I screamed my way to the top and they let me out of my contract and offered to take back the phone (which I kept for a ipod). I am tempted by these offers of $.01 W7 phones.

 

[Duvi]

no issues with my iPhone or wp7 device.