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cingularcs
Posts: 7
Service Provider:
cingular wireless |
 
Sat Feb 05, 2005 11:30 pm |
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one thing you may not know is that in most areas you are probably already using Cingular towers. Of the large cell phone companies T-mobile's network is one of the smallest which means that they rely heavily on the use of roaming partners such as Cingular to provide coverage to their customers. Cingular now has coverage in 96 of the top 100 markets and 48 of the 50 states. Their network size is now twice the size of the next closest competitor, Verizon. They are the only company that allows you to roam on any GSM provider's towers in the USA without roaming charges and they are still the only company to offer rollover. With unlimited mobile to mobile you can call any one of cingular's 46 million customer's nationwide for free. Verizon only allows you to use their IN calling plan locally and only to call others in the IN calling plan.
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realboy2005
Posts: 82
Phone Model:
Motorola V3r (T-Mo), unlocked, flashed, flexed
Service Provider:
Former AT&T Wireless |
Sun Feb 06, 2005 1:02 am |
I think i know what towers i use..  ... and second thing ur wrong about comparing Cingular to others... if you have T-Mobile's national plan, you are allowed to roam to any 1900mhz network including Cingular, second thing is if you have Cingular's regional plan u don't have mobile-2-mobile minutes (you gotta pay $9.99), the same with t-mobile (extra 7 bucks is your way to call any t-mobile customer for free)
and rollover is good for only those customers who need it.. ( i don't, i use almost all of my 900 minutes every single month with AT&T)
reply if any further questions.. lol
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cingularcs
Posts: 7
Service Provider:
cingular wireless |
Sun Feb 06, 2005 2:05 am |
| realboy2005 wrote: | I think i know what towers i use.. ... and second thing ur wrong about comparing Cingular to others... if you have T-Mobile's national plan, you are allowed to roam to any 1900mhz network including Cingular, second thing is if you have Cingular's regional plan u don't have mobile-2-mobile minutes (you gotta pay $9.99), the same with t-mobile (extra 7 bucks is your way to call any t-mobile customer for free)
and rollover is good for only those customers who need it.. ( i don't, i use almost all of my 900 minutes every single month with AT&T)
reply if any further questions.. lol |
Maybe you should look at T-mobile's nation plan calling area map. It clearly defines areas where you will pay roaming charges. secondly, Cingular is pushing the nation plan because it is the simplest to understand. Put simply, there are NO roaming charges anywhere in the USA. You cannot get much simpler than that. The reason that is important is because customer's get angry when they get roaming charges in places they THOUGHT they were covered. Cingular was forced, in some cases, to credit some or all of the roaming charges back to the customer in order to satisfy them and retain their business. That cost millions of dollars a year and damaged Cingular's reputation with the public. So the reason that you get no mobile to mobile included with your region plan is because your region plan eventually costs Cingular more money because of adjustments made to bills of angry customers and the loss of new revenue from customers who avoided using Cingular as their wireless provider because of a negative image painted by friends and family. The Nation plan is so closely matched in price to the Region plan that there is no real incentive to choose the smaller calling plan. As for rollover... If you are using right up to your 900 minutes each month then I would be willing to bet that you have had months where you went over too. That is where the value of rollover lies.
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cingularcs
Posts: 7
Service Provider:
cingular wireless |
Sun Feb 06, 2005 2:10 am |
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one more question... what do you pay for your 900 minute plan?
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JCMyersIV
Posts: 122
Phone Model:
V635 & BB 7290
Service Provider:
Cingular |
Sun Feb 06, 2005 1:59 pm |
I never paid roaming charges when I was with T-Mobile, and the person that said they need additional roaming partners to fill in gaps in their newtork is absolutely correct. My problem (and the reason for dropping T-Mobile) was two-fold:
1) They grew faster than their network infrastructure could handle. Early 2002, you couldn't receive calls. They blamed SBC for not providing the T1's and other terrestrial infrastructure needed to place the calls, but that didn't help me as an end-user. After being yelled at by a client for the third time, I switched my voice service to a more reliable carrier (these problems have been resolved now to my understanding).
2) Many of their roaming partners did not have GPRS. I often had to go to cities like Cedar Rapids and Madison. In both of those markets, ATT had GPRS, but T-Mobile only had roaming agreements with smaller players (IWS and Einstein respectively in this example). Without my "crackberry", I'm sunk ... IWS now supports GPRS, not sure if Eistein does yet...
I also couldn't stand their voicemail system (including receiving SMS's instead of message waiting indicator) and their bills needed a magnifying glass to read - not good when I need to split out personal from business use.
As for the 850/1900 debate - I would be very surprised if you could tell a difference in the sound quality consistently - the real advantage to the 850 spectrum is that it penetrates obstacles better. There are huge areas of the country that may never deploy 1900 service because there isn't enough population to support it. I often have to go to those areas.
Lastly, for the person that says rollover doesn't help - here's a question for you... How much to you change your calling patterns at the end of the month to make sure you don't go over your minutes? Maybe I'm alone here, but I don't monitor my usage. Many months, I'll go 3-500 minutes over. After a couple $300+ monthly bills with my previous provider, it didn't take a genius to see how much I could save (and have saved) with rollover. With the xATT numbers now becoming M2M, I will likely be dropping my plan down a notch...
Just my two cents.
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lester83
Posts: 59
Phone Model:
Motorola V551
Service Provider:
Cingular |
Sun Feb 06, 2005 2:16 pm |
cingularcs, i dont know what is so hard to figure out about the t-mobile nation-wide calling area. it can be summed up in 1 sentence: You don't pay any roaming or LD anywhere in the US including AK, HI, and Puerto Rico. Period.
If you have T-mobile there are times when you will be using another company's network. T-Mobile pays for this, not the customer. And, if T-mobile doesnt have a roaming agreement set up in a particular area, then the other company's network wont let you use it.
You are right about one thing though: a map will clearly define where a t-mobile customer will and will not pay roaming charges on a national plan; however it doesnt have to be the t-mobile coverage map. Any US map will work. If they are anywhere in the US they will not; if they are outside the US then they will.
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JCMyersIV
Posts: 122
Phone Model:
V635 & BB 7290
Service Provider:
Cingular |
Sun Feb 06, 2005 2:27 pm |
Anywhere in the US that has 1900 coverage and T-Mo has a roaming agreement. Comparison shop the coverage maps. Cingular has a lot more rural areas (native and other providers' areas) than T-Mo b/c a good chunk of this country only has 850 coverage.
Compare T-Mo's spider web map with Cingular's. The areas not covered in T-Mo's map are (for the most part) 850 only.
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lester83
Posts: 59
Phone Model:
Motorola V551
Service Provider:
Cingular |
Sun Feb 06, 2005 2:47 pm |
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i realize that cingular has a larger coverage area than t-mobile; theres no question about that. However, there is not a single location in the US where a t-mobile customer on a nation-wide plan will have to pay roaming. ever.
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realboy2005
Posts: 82
Phone Model:
Motorola V3r (T-Mo), unlocked, flashed, flexed
Service Provider:
Former AT&T Wireless |
Mon Feb 07, 2005 12:36 am |
Thank you for keeping going this conversation over and over again...
anyways.. i pay 59.99 for my 900 minutes and there was not a single month when i went over that ammount of them....
second thing: i was trying to check if that's true about T-mobile's sound quality, my uncle got v300 on T-Mobile, i got v505 on AT&T... i compared the sound quality of both and my v505 got beated.... .., so my point is when i manually switch to Cingular, there is a difference in making a call, receiving it, and volume of the partner's voice, so, i guess that's how they are different. maybe the same way there is a difference between AT&T and T-Mobile...
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JCMyersIV
Posts: 122
Phone Model:
V635 & BB 7290
Service Provider:
Cingular |
Mon Feb 07, 2005 1:57 am |
Hockey, if you read my earlier post, I said I never paid a roaming charge with T-Mobile (i.e., I agree with you).
What I didn't say explicitly is that T-Mobile's 1900 only coverage area is much smaller than a combined 850+1900. The value of having no roaming charges on the combined frequencies is far greater than having no roaming charges on a 1900 only product (if you're going to be spending any time in rural areas.) Also, M2M is additional on T-Mo and must be made / received within the T-Mo network to count...
Boy, forgive me for belaboring the point, but I didn't think it was clear based on some of the responses. T-Mobile is consistently ranked higher than Cingular in both Consumer Reports and JD Power; from my experience I like Cingular better.
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