[donpeppino9]

I need some advice in regards to switching carriers. I currently have sprint, in chicago. I am trying to decide which carrier to switch my 5 line family plan. Sprint just hasn't been the same anymore and service has sucked, which is the main concern. I've done my research and consider myself to be pretty educated in regards to the key differences betweent he carriers.

I have narrowed it down between ATT and Verizon. At this point I would like input on which of the two will provide better overall voice and data services (speed, dependability, coverage, and overall reception).

Finally.. does Verizon or ATT provide blackberry unlimited international data roaming still?

[amyswan]

I guess both carriers provide the international data roaming service but i m not sure about the charges. I have heard AT&T is a rip-off when it comes to international data packages, $200 for 200mb or something retarded But Verizon seems handy.

[Laura Knotek]

I would suggest that you ask your family members, friends, neighbors, and co-workers where you live, travel, and work who their carrier is and how their service is. Do not rely on the coverage maps that the carriers provide. Ask folks who actually use those carriers.

Re: international service, you would probably be better off having a world phone from VZW or any phone from AT&T and getting it unlocked. Then you could use a local prepaid SIM in the countries where you travel. That would be cheaper than the international plans from VZW or AT&T.

[californiablackberry]

I would choose whichever carrier has the best coverage in my area.

[donpeppino9]

ok thanks for the info in regards to international data roaming. I like to travel so it's an important issue. i live in suburban chicago and both att and verizon work well. if it comes down to simply how it performs where you work and live then i would chose att simply because of the gsm technological advantages like international roaming, wider phone selection, better battery life, faster 3g.

However, I do value roaming and wide spread coverage for life's travels. I don't want to be on a road trip and be sol when i need service most. In this regards, does att provide adequate national coverage? it seems like verizon is the best in this category but is att so far behind that relatively speaking, it sucks?! this is hard to determine simply looking at coverage maps. anyone with realworld experience with using att AND verizon outside of urban areas?

[olliegrl]

i commented in the verizon version of this too, but i went to canada with ATT service and had to use some data while at the airport there. i got a $45 charge for 5 minutes of internet service. they said that was their "standard". maybe it's not, but i found that when it came to international service, ATT pretty much charged whatever they wanted then came up with excuses later.

[Seoul]

I travel all over Europe and U.S. and I am currently with AT&T - I have no problems with service; there are some rural area's I may get EDGE or GPRS and sometimes no signal, my business partner has VZW and he loves it; we do travel together quite a bit and sometimes he'll have service and I will not; and vice versa.. it all depends on location.

All I can say is that where sometimes my partner will not have any signal I at least got EDGE signal; it's slower data but it got the job done.

One thing i really like was simultaneous voice & data AT&T; I'm always on conference calls or business calls with clients and sometimes it does help I can be on my bluetooth & surf the net, send e-mail and stuff; I thought I would never use it but more and more often I'm using that feature

When I traveled to Spain and Italy I just took my Bold (then) and it worked fine; I had to add international plans, but all worth the $$ if you're in it for business.
My partner had to pay for a loaner phone to work over seas, and half the time he couldn't make calls or use data.

Like people are saying ask your friends, and esp your family.


@Olliegrl: 5mintues doesn't explain a lot for charge of $45, were you downloading contents, ie. pictures, video, youtube, etc which can cause high data usage.

Oh also I know that AT&T does not offer unlimited international data anymore, b.c i'm grandfathered in

Good luck!!

[californiablackberry]

My partner had to pay for a loaner phone to work over seas, and half the time he couldn't make calls or use data.

That's why you purchase a Bold 9650, which is a World Phone.

[Seoul]

That's why you purchase a Bold 9650, which is a World Phone.

He does have older world phone and it doesn't support a lot of places that my torch or bold does

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Mister Xiado]

i commented in the verizon version of this too, but i went to canada with ATT service and had to use some data while at the airport there. i got a $45 charge for 5 minutes of internet service. they said that was their "standard". maybe it's not, but i found that when it came to international service, ATT pretty much charged whatever they wanted then came up with excuses later.

You always get notified when you start racking up international charges; at which time you can always have customer care set you up with something to reduce the charges before the bill prints.

But no, it's the responsibility of the service provider to babysit everybody. Let's see... international data usage is billed at a default rate of $0.0195 per kilobyte, so we divide $45.00 by that and get 2308 kilobytes, rounded to the next kilobyte. Just a hair over two megabytes. Ah ha, now we're getting somewhere.

The 200MB international data feature is $199.99 per month. We divide that by 30 days, and you get 6.66MB per every day and are billed $6.63 per day. Well, one day of that feature would have covered all of the usage, and you would have been billed about a SEVENTH of what you were!

And it's certainly not like AT&T has the ability to re-rate your charges after the bill prints! Why, that almost never happens! AT&T is the devil and just makes up charges and imaginary phone calls just so you'll call in angry. That's called good business.

Also, if you want a BlackBerry unlocked for international use, seek a 3rd party service to do it. I use SwiftUnlocks, since they seem to charge less than all of the unlocking services hocked here.

[Slammers08]

Just curious which one you chose? I'm currently with sprint and am highly considering att and going with the torch for .1cent! Service has been pretty bad with sprint the last 30 or so days!

[GingerSnapsBack]

Just curious which one you chose? I'm currently with sprint and am highly considering att and going with the torch for .1cent! Service has been pretty bad with sprint the last 30 or so days!

I had Sprint and considered both Verizon and ATT before settling on Verizon.

Two reasons:

Verizon has the NHL app. As a hockey junkie, this was a HUGE selling point.

Secondly, Verizion still had unlimited data at the time while ATT did not. I blaze through a lot of data during the day as well as at the gym with my Sirius/XM app and can't be restricted by capped data.

My sister has ATT and the coverage is about as good as mine is here. I don't travel at all but my sister does and she's yet to have a bad spot. Hers even worked in the Bahamas.

Do what the other people in this thread have suggested: Just ask people with the services what they think. Ask about dropped calls. Ask about their plan pricing. Ask about their signal strength.

[Slammers08]

I've done alot of asking. The 2gb of data is not a deal breaker for me because I dont use the web or stream much. Most of mine consists of calls/texts/and bbm's. I like how att offers the unlimited text/any to mobile and roll over minutes. I looked at verizon but the best they got for bb is the bold and I have that now. Plus they are about 10-15 dollars more a month. the torch looks like a nice device i may just wait until the new devices drop and then jump ship. just curious what made you leave sprint?

[GingerSnapsBack]

. just curious what made you leave sprint?

If you mean me, there were two reasons.

1. The Curves I kept getting would break. I went through about 6 or 7 8530s in a year. I didn't drop them or drown them in the toilet. The screen would go black. Keyboard would quit. Phone wouldn't come on no matter what I did to it. Speakers would quit. Battery wouldn't charge. No one could hear me. Backlight quit working. Just bad phone after bad phone after bad phone. The guy at the Sprint store knew me by my first name when I'd come in. It was that bad. I was still under RIM warranty and rather than sending me a free upgrade to the Bold, they kept sending me Curves.

2. Reception was horrible at my house. I live in BFE, Arkansas and my closest neighbor is a bean field. I got no 3G at my house and was on 1X all the time which was fine for texting and phone calls, but the data for web browsing sucked. Not to mention the plethora of dropped/missed calls. Half the time, my phone wouldn't ring and it'd just go straight to voicemail. People eventually learned to just text me to call them.

The irony was I left AT&T for Nextel then ported to Sprint and considered going back to AT&T before settling on Verizon.

[Slammers08]

Yep same here has been happening to me lately. Signal has been bouncing from 1XEV-1X to searching for cdma signal. I just ordered 2 BB torch's and can't wait Sprint has treated me well BUT I need reliable signal.

[kbz1960]

Have you looked at uscellular? I believe their bb's come unlocked to use international.