[geeks] Opinions on T-Mobile and Verizon

[Michael Parson]

On Tue, 27 Nov 2007, Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> On Nov 26, 2007, at 3:02 PM, Nadine Miller wrote:

<snip>

>> I've been a T-Mobile customer since 2001, and am quite happy with
>> their customer service.  While they do have the "call back if you
>> don't get the answer you want" problem, it's not as dramatic as other
>> carriers from what I can see--I've never had to do it.
>
> I'm mostly worried about coverage with T-Mobile.  Their map looks a
> little spotty in SE Virginia.
>
> But then, maybe their map is simply more accurate than those from
> Verizon and Sprint.
>
> It would be hard for their coverage to be worse than Sprint.  I cannot
> make calls with my Sprint phone from inside my home, and it is bad in
> most buildings, and there are quite a few bad and dead spots around
> town.

One thing I've found recently is that personal cell-phone repeaters are
surprisingly affordable.  You can get one for your house for <$300.
Both Fry's and Thinkgeek have them for $249 for the single-band or
$349 for the dual band units.  Google/products found them for cheaper
elsewhere.

A friend of mine has a single-band version for his house.  He lives out
in the boonies and could barely get one bar of signal inside his house,
with the booster, he gets a full 4 (5?) bars.

> Verizon probably has good coverage, but I really hate that company and
> rather not support them if possible.
>
>> Their plans are quite good as far as I am concerned.  Their data plan
>> is not great (and not the fastest--that goes to Verizon) price-wise.
>
> I'm going to be mostly voice.  In fact, I don't yet have any reason to
> use one for data.
>
> T-Mobile supposedly has free WiFi, but their map didn't show any T-
> Mobile hot spots around me.

I don't know about free WiFi, they offer a 'Total Internet' package
which gives you unlimited data over GPRS/EDGE and use of their WiFi
HotSpots, which are mostly at Starbucks.  You can also get a phone from
them that works over WiFi, but I think it might require their special
AP/Router for that to work, ie, I don't know that it works with just any
WiFi connection, but I've not done any real reasearch into them.

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org