After much waffling I finally switched my cell phone from Verizon to Cingular…

Some thoughts.

The main reason I switched is that Cingular’s coverage on campus is *far* *far* better than Verizon’s… I guess the deal was that AT&T laid all the fiber here so AT&T Wireless was the only company that got to set up cell towers. As a result, especially in the GSB buildings, all non-Cingular cell reception *SUCKS*. That being said, in my first week or so with Cingular I still experienced dead zones and I was missing tons of calls even though my phone showed 3-4 signal bars… but apparently the network was experiencing problems and these types of problems were very widespread. It’s better now.

Off campus is an improvement too… Cingular’s coverage is insanely better than their coverage about 2 years back… in 95% of the cases, I think that Cingular’s coverage is as good as Verizon.

Other improvements from Verizon – my phone now picks up a signal faster, makes data connections faster and after it is turned on, tells me I have voicemail faster that it did on Verizon. However, in all three of these cases, I am more likely to attribute this to a newer, faster phone than the network. Verizon also carries the same phone so I wouldn’t consider this an advantage.

Also, since the school has an account with Cingular, I get to talk to the business account managers when speaking to customer service. Being able to bypass the uneducated sales droids that they get to staff the general consumer lines has been a *dream*!! The only mistake I made was to purchase my phone at the Cingular store. They offer higher rates than their own company’s website, take the demographic information you give them and screw it up, put you on different plans than you asked for, give you wrong information on what specials they offer than lie to you when you ask them about it.

I know better but was seduced by my desire for instant gratification… order off the web and avoid my mistake…