[Pearl_Diva]

Yes, but not $1K, LOL! Those are the billing problems I mean, always with data plans.

[Mize]

I think GSM sounds significantly better than CDMA, the call quality that is. I have plenty of friends on Verizon and even with a strong signal their call quality breaks up, and that's sitting still, not even driving. This is no matter where they are, home, work, friends house, starbucks, etc, I frequently have to make them repeat things. By way of comparison I can drive from work to home and never experience any kind of call break up, never repeat myself, it sounds as clear as a landline (on GSM that is.) Same with my relatives that are still on TDMA, the quality sucks comapared to GSM (but we all knew TDMA quality is for the birds, that's what the early adopters get.)
This, folks, is the main reason I'm on GSM. I know a lot of it may depend on the phone used, but these are my consistent experiences between the two.
I don't know what makes it better, but I think GSM sounds much better.

As for errors in setting up packages and accounts and billing, I've had multiple screw ups with every single wireless carrier I've used (except TMobile ironically, I think I just got lucky) so Cingular is no exception. As with all things when shopping it helps to know what you need before you ask for it, but that doesn't help if they push the wrong buttons.

Between verizon and Cingular there are just as many reasons to go with one vs. the other. My priorities put me on Cingular.

WHAT?!

I've had AT&T TDMA (2 years), T-mobile (1 year), and VZW (4-years all over the US) and now Cingular.

VZW had *by far* the best coverage of these networks and the fewest dropped calls for me. Today I have my Treo 650 on Cingular GSM because I'm doing tons of international travel, but I keep a VZW phone for US coverage as the Treo has so many uncovered areas (rural) and such crap call holding.

This is well-known about CDMA - CDMA can boost it's output amplitude in weak signal areas to maintain call hold. GSM cannot. This is why GSM versions of the same phones can have such improved battery life.

What's more, VZW has phones with analog roaming (GSM doesn't) and, trust me, when working at an acid plant in the backwoods of Arkansas or WVA, you *need* analog to talk to anyone.

Maybe you live in Europe where GSM coverage is better, or maybe you don't travel much and live in a well-covered area. I travel about 60% of the time and GSM in the US sucks rocks compared to CDMA. Of course CDMA sucks everywhere else (except Mexico).

[FlyWoody3]

My 2 cents is to switch to Cingular. My family had been with Verizon for 4 years, and could not use our cell phone at home or near one of our regional airports (we are 1/2 mile from I 95). We waited for 3 years for Verizon to build out additional towers for coverage and heard many excuses from the local Verizon store manager. When we swiched to Cingular, all coverage issues were resolved. I can also use my cell phone from my basement. Moreover, my Cingular bill is about 25% cheaper than Verizon.

I think Verizon is scamming folks with their "can you hear me know?" ad campaign. I travel to and from the 50 US states and find verizon coverage to be equal to Verizon. Futhermore its all digital. Remember, Verizon can offer you a dual mode phone so it can switch back to analog coverage when digital is not there. That's how they can claim the coverage footprint on their color maps when you look at them.

When getting a Cingular phone make sure that it has the Cingular SIM card, that way it will use both the Cingular and AT&T towers to find the best coverage (they should not be installing AT&T SIM's anymore). Also remember the snails pace at which Verizon likes to introduce new phones (Treo 650 8 months after everyone else).

My last point is to remember that Cingular is going through the motions of the AT&T and Cingular merger. Trying to combine two sets of employees, billing systems and pricing plans can be a monumental task. As someone has mentioned, customer service is good a resolving billing issues. Also in talking to a manager at the store, Cingular plans to convert everyone to Cingular phone with Cingular SIM's and pricing plans in the near term. Probably to improve billing accuracy and customer service issues.

The cell phone industry is dynamic and changing. I think Cingular is being more aggressive in investing in improving their service and coverage. I would still place my bets with Cingular and give them another chance.

[Coffeeman]

I switched from Verizon to Cingular in December. I needed a Bluetooth solution that actually worked, and Verizon only offered the V710, which had Bluetooth "crippled", so the short sighted morons @ Verizon could charge me to send pictures via their "Pix" service, instead of sending via Bluetooth.

Cingular's coverage in my area is not as good as Verizon's, but their customer service, in my experience, is far better than Verizon. I too, have had some billing issues, but Cingular has resolved them quickly, and painlessly.

Cingular's positives outweigh the negatives, for me, anyway....GSM vs. CDMA, Better data plans, better voice mail system, better customer service, Bluetooth implementation that actually works.

[Fabricguy]

While Cingular's billing plans are confusing to say the very least, and their phone reps are not the brightest, I have had every problem resolved to my satisfaction. I am on the $24.99 unlimited plan, and that has worked out just fine for me. The added benefits of GSM for international travel made my decision an easy one when I picked Cingular.

[Pearl_Diva]

Cingular definitely has better phones, and GSM quad band phones are great for travelers! That's why I'm with them. I'm just wary of the billing problems, never heard that until I got on here.

[Travelin'Rich]

Cingular definitely has better phones, and GSM quad band phones are great for travelers! That's why I'm with them. I'm just wary of the billing problems, never heard that until I got on here.

I think it's been said before, but there is a lot of confusion about the Cingular data plans. Just read the posts on this site and you'll get all kinds of wrong information on the MediaWorks, MediaNet, and PDAConnect plans. Not to mention that those plans have themselves changed over the past few months. I think every provider will have some billing errors but I believe that a lot of the reported Cingular billing problems are really people who don't really understand what they signed up for. If you don't use exactly the right words with the CSRs and verify exactly what they did there's a great chance for miscommunication.

Don't everyone flame me for making excuses for Cingular. I did say that I agree they have some actual billing problems just like the other carriers. I just think their data plans are more confusing then all the othes combined so that has contributed to the reported "billing problems."

[Pearl_Diva]

That may be true in some cases. BUT what about the people who got pay per use when they signed up for Unlimited? Who can mistake that?

[z3bum]

I would not switch to Cingular. If people really wanted cheaper data though, every Cingular customer would cancel their data plan and demand $10/month unlimited data for their Treos! Why are consumers letting Cingular get away with this BS?

[ekuzco]

I would not switch to Cingular. If people really wanted cheaper data though, every Cingular customer would cancel their data plan and demand $10/month unlimited data for their Treos! Why are consumers letting Cingular get away with this BS?

$10!!! That's twice as much as I pay....$4.99 w/ T-Mobile, unlimited Tzones access...Verichat and Versamail are 'on' all the time. Sure I can't get to EVERY web site and the internet doesn't work for somethings, but I'm near a computer most of the day anyways.

Besides (IMO) Powertel/Voicestream/T-Mobile have always had the best rates of any other carrier. Your mileage may vary, but I have good signal strength in my neck of the woods (NE Atlanta suburbs).

[chadallan80]

$10!!! That's twice as much as I pay....$4.99 w/ T-Mobile, unlimited Tzones access...Verichat and Versamail are 'on' all the time. Sure I can't get to EVERY web site and the internet doesn't work for somethings, but I'm near a computer most of the day anyways.

Besides (IMO) Powertel/Voicestream/T-Mobile have always had the best rates of any other carrier. Your mileage may vary, but I have good signal strength in my neck of the woods (NE Atlanta suburbs).

Amen to all of this (including the signature ) I've had TMoblie for almost 2 years and have found the plans to be easy to understand and the reps knowledgeable. My only experience with Cingular/ATT is that my father-in-law had no signal at their house in S Florida (I had a couple bars in parts of the house), and now at work, users with Cingular/ATT have very poor coverage between Tampa and Orlando (whereas I drop only once on a VERY backroad). I check traffic the whole way home with no drops/delays.

Oh, and $5/mo for unlimited data. Seriously, I dont think you can beat TMobile, IMHO.

[oldmike]

What it boils down to me: should I expect to get better notebook-to-internet data rate with VZ than CNG? If it's a toss up, I'll stick. I've seen many inconclusive threads as to whether the VZ 650 will support EVDO. If not, I doubt 1XRTT will be any better (or worse) than EDGE, which is only giving me 50K.

Mike

[taylorh]

WHAT?!

I've had AT&T TDMA (2 years), T-mobile (1 year), and VZW (4-years all over the US) and now Cingular.

VZW had *by far* the best coverage of these networks and the fewest dropped calls for me. Today I have my Treo 650 on Cingular GSM because I'm doing tons of international travel, but I keep a VZW phone for US coverage as the Treo has so many uncovered areas (rural) and such crap call holding.

This is well-known about CDMA - CDMA can boost it's output amplitude in weak signal areas to maintain call hold. GSM cannot. This is why GSM versions of the same phones can have such improved battery life.

What's more, VZW has phones with analog roaming (GSM doesn't) and, trust me, when working at an acid plant in the backwoods of Arkansas or WVA, you *need* analog to talk to anyone.

Maybe you live in Europe where GSM coverage is better, or maybe you don't travel much and live in a well-covered area. I travel about 60% of the time and GSM in the US sucks rocks compared to CDMA. Of course CDMA sucks everywhere else (except Mexico).

You're confusing what I'm trying to say.
I said call quality is better on GSM vs. CDMA, not coverage.
I would agree that Verizon has the ultimately superior coverage many times over, Cingular can't hold a candle to Verizon. You can use Verizon where roads don't go. Cingular stops working soon as the per capita population drops below 5000. And they don't always allow roaming in areas where coverage stops, and should.

But I mean call quality, that is voice quality.
Side by side, if you take a Verizon customer with 3/4 signal strength vs. a Cingular customer with 3/4 signal strength (by all means a strong signal) you're going to hear distortion and drop outs (Not calls dropping, I mean 1/4 bits of silence breaking up sentences.) You experience that phenomenon little to none until you get to very weak signal areas on Cingular.
Again, some of this could have to do with the particular make/model of handsets.. but some of these people I know get a new phone every 6 months and it doesn't seem to improve.

I've never done a scientific study on this, don't get me wrong. This is all based on my personal experience. I'll be telling friends that their breaking up and they claim "but I have full bars on my phone, it must be yours." Then I break the news to them that I'm on a landline, not a cel. I tell them that at least once through the course of a call, especially if they're driving. All the while they supposedly have a decent signal.
By way of comparison when I talk to my wife (on Cingular) I hardly ever hear even the slightest break up or distortion unless, she hits an actual ded spot in which the call totally drops, and this is consistent with everyone I convers with on Cingular. As well I rarely ever hear anyone ever ask me to repeat something because they couldn't understand it when I'm talking to them on my Treo (on Cingular.)

So it's 6 of 1, half dozen of the other. Your experience may be opposite, but my opinion is that GSM call clearity is superior to what I've experienced on CDMA.
On the flip side, I ocasionally really regret not having a wider coverage area and have even looked into pre-paid, or bare minimum verizon plans in order to have a backup phone for when I travel outside Cingular's GSM coverage. However, I can't find anything reasonably priced to do this. Pre-paid is a rip off with credit expiring after 30-60 days, and even the cheapes plans aren't worth it for a backup phone.

Maybe someday when/if Cingular ever expands GSM out to where AT&T has TDMA/Analog coverage will they truly be acceptable to me. They aren't there yet.

Verizon or Sprint with roaming for far far superior coverage.
Cingular or TMobile for superior call quality (where there's coverage.)
That's my opinion.

[taylorh]

What it boils down to me: should I expect to get better notebook-to-internet data rate with VZ than CNG? If it's a toss up, I'll stick. I've seen many inconclusive threads as to whether the VZ 650 will support EVDO. If not, I doubt 1XRTT will be any better (or worse) than EDGE, which is only giving me 50K.

Mike

Mike, with EDGE I THINK I'm getting about 80kbps to 100kbps. It's hard to tell. Using IE in windows through PDANet I get 80kbps using dsl reports mobile speed test. But this speed test isn't very acurate and it depends a lot on latency, lag, an browser, etc as to how acurate the reading is.
When actually download files (PDF) it seems I'm getting a good consistent 120kbps give or take. I know it can go up to 160kbps or so, but laptop download rate seems to be about 120 for me.
Maybe I'll do a real test today and get a real acurate answer and post back.

Compre this with someone's experience on Verizon, and you got your answer.
I admit I'm very interested in the answer to this.

[napabrown]

What it boils down to me: should I expect to get better notebook-to-internet data rate with VZ than CNG? If it's a toss up, I'll stick. I've seen many inconclusive threads as to whether the VZ 650 will support EVDO. If not, I doubt 1XRTT will be any better (or worse) than EDGE, which is only giving me 50K.

Mike

PCMag posted a review of the Verizon 650 yesterday. Got poor scores on data due to not taking advantage of the EVDO. See http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1815640,00.asp