Att vs Verizon - service quality?

[NicoleW78]

This isn't a "which one am I going to end up in" thread. I already know I'm in a Divested market, which means Att gets me sometime next year. What I'm worrying about is the service? Is it going to be any good at all? I know right now Att service, even in areas where it is already well established, is spotty at times. I was talking to my dad (an Att customer) last night and we lost the call twice is a 15 minute conversation. How bad is it going to be in an area that currently doesn't even have any GSM towers? I know we'll run CDMA for awhile, but what about afterwards?

I've thought about just letting my Alltel contract run out (April 2011) and then going to Verizon. But, I have to wonder when Verizon gets the iphone, are they going to have the horrible service Att has, due to all the people who will be jumping ship from Att? (I've read in several places that Att's service is bad because of the iphone. Not enough towers and bandwidth to support it.) The flip side to that, is since there will be a lot of people who drop Att, maybe their service will be just fine again.

Argh. I know. I'm over-thinking it. But I was curious what other people think about the situation.

[Chaldo]

at&t service is bad in areas where it is congested a lot, I live in Detroit and Att service is great here. I really honestly in my opinion do not see Verizon getting the iPhone for a while, they just made fun of it yet again with the droid commercial, and Steve the guy at APPLE hates people who criticize his product.. so yeah. I would see when AT&T announces expansion in that area, they usually do on there news room on the att site.

[NicoleW78]

How do you think the service will be in an area that is converting over to Att, though? It's definitely not a congested market up here in Northern Minnesota, but we also have the problem of having NO gsm towers at all. Do you think Att will get the new towers up or converted before they flip the switch on us?

[tsguy52]

Even if VZW did get a CDMA iPhone it would not congest the network like it does on a GSM network. The reason is because CDMA is not limited so much in terms of how many users can use one cell site.

Cocktail Party Analogy comparing TDMA and CDMA (although not relevant to GSM you still get the point):

Imagine a room full of people, all trying to carry on one-on-one conversations. In TDMA each couple takes turns talking. They keep their turns short by saying only one sentence at a time. As there is never more than one person speaking in the room at any given moment, no one has to worry about being heard over the background din. In CDMA each couple talks at the same time, but they all use a different language. Because none of the listeners understand any language other than that of the individual to whom they are listening, the background din doesn't cause any real problem.

However with LTE this will all change and everything will eventually be about the same. Expect VZW to have the largest LTE network of course. VZW already has 5x more 3G coverage than AT&T.

[R.O.C.]

I think I heard somewhere that towers pretty much take a year to complete, from planning to having it built and functional....

Nothing against Chaldo... But his advise is based on pure speculation and hypotheticals... Don't get stuck waiting for AT&T to build towers in your area... Just for it to end up inferior in the end....

It's unfortunate that you were in one of the divested markets, but if you live in MN, you're going to be better off with VZW. The service has always been better than AT&T and with the conversion, Verizon's presence is lifted significantly higher still...

Whether it be in the Cities or the rural areas of MN... Verizon's service is far above that of AT&T...


This is all pretty much from experience after many years of being both a customer and employee of AT&T and Verizon and having been all over Minnesota and experiencing the service first hand....



And what tsguy said is just as important... LTE will be incredible...

[R.O.C.]

And allow me to post this...



Not a whole lot of blue where it counts... Northern MN that is...

[NicoleW78]

Thanks to most everyone. You pretty much echoed what I was thinking. ROC, I wasn't asking about the now, as I already have stated that there are NO gsm towers in this area. I was specuating about Att's service in 6-12 months after they finish transitioning Alltel.

Looks like once my contract is over I'll switch to big red.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[HellKatzX]

good questions Nicole, I was wondering a lot of the same things, i'm in north western iowa and I'm planning on waiting for my alltel contract to expire also then i'll be going to verizon

[budfox]

I don't think ATT will ever catch up to VZW's coverage/quality. And, I thought, if you are Alltel, you will be VZW by default when your contract runs out anyway!? Maybe not in divested area?

[HellKatzX]

Originally Posted by budfox

I don't think ATT will ever catch up to VZW's coverage/quality. And, I thought, if you are Alltel, you will be VZW by default when your contract runs out anyway!? Maybe not in divested area?

Divested means Verizon is selling us to ATT