swanscn

I switched to Verizon and have not looked back. The downside to Verizon is CDMA, but they had a phone that was CDMA and GSM. They unlocked it so I just use a local SIM card when out of the country (which is often).

LessO2

And they're selling more smartphones that are dual band as well (unfortunately, Droid is not).

Paint Horse

The Droid is very nice. That is what I bought when I switched.

user1

Is anyone really surprised?

Congrats, AT&T, on outsucking even Sprint!

AT&T: the one reason I've never owned an iPhone.

dingo

^ I do love ATT's attempted rebuttal to the map adds that are running against them. Getting that Wilson guy to show where ATT has coverage, not 3G coverage mind you just coverage, is a nice non-response to the charge that their 3G sucks. When are they going to wake up and invest in their infrastructure? I maintain my landline at home only because I have to say 'let me call you back on the house phone' any time my cell rings at home. Pitiful. I don't live in a major metro area...we've got about 20,000 residents as a suburb of one however and I'm shocked at the poor coverage.

Wilbur

I have a corporate-standard, rock-solid BB with the gold-plated worldwide ATT coverage package, and my wife has inexpensive TMobile coverage with a cheapo Curve.

Guess which one of us has the best connectivity and voice quality in Asia and Europe? It isn't the one with ATT.

And my corporate BB monthly cost is 12x that of my wife's Costco TMobile bill.

dtsm

I finally signed up for optimum voice and got it installed last night. The installer assured me it will link with our alarm system so I plan to port my land-line over shortly and dump my AT&T landline - which costs us $32/month without any of the caller-id, call waiting features.

TMO international service is outstanding - does the Mrs. use UMA for free calls back to states? ^

gfunkdave

This is purely a function of the carriers you and your wife are roaming on. It has zero to do with AT&T or T-mobile (aside from the fact that they are the ones who have negotiated the roaming agreements with the foreign carriers).

mbreuer

And you can have your voicemail emailed to you.

djk7

It hardly matters. AT&T has been in the gutter in the Consumer Report surveys for years, I don't see any reason it would change that quickly. Many other posters to this thread have mention coverage, but the survey also covers other areas where AT&T is severely lacking, such as customer service. I signed on 15 years ago with Cellular One, and stayed on through the change over to AT&T for over 10 years. Finally changed to Verizon 4 years ago, and haven't looked back.

The main advantage that I found of AT&T is that in St. Thomas, and maybe other Caribbean locations, they don't charge the $1 a minute rates that the other US carriers do.

anrkitec

???

I have free int'l roaming as a standard feature on my $89/month unlimited voice/data plan.

And most of Europe for example is only ~$1/minute.

ctuttle

I was with at&t for years and watched its network get worse every year. The only bright spot was the worst service was in my home area, or home area in the sense of where I live, not work. Since it was more important for the phone to work when I was out of town this wasn't a huge issue.

Then at&t turned off what was the best part of their network, the analog - I had a digital/analog phone, and I guess most of the time was on the analog system, and it worked a little. When they turned off their analog network I found out just how many dead spots and how crappy at&t is nationwide.

For the longest time I thought "No Service" was one of the at&t roaming partners, as they were everywhere, but their service didn't work too well.

I switched to T-Mobile as they gave me a Blackberry and their package with internet and more minutes was less than what at&t was soaking me for voice only. I took it on a 30 day trial. On the first week I was in San Jose, at their Convention Center where a co-worker had a at&t Blackberry. He had no service in the convention center, and I had no issues. I drive up to Wine Country and never lose service with T-Mobile, something unheard of when I was with at&t.

Another thing I like with T-Mobile is if I am on a WiFi network I am on the T-Mobile network, so when I am out of the country there are no roaming charges because T-Mobile considers when I am on WiFi I am still in the U.S.

at&t might have the iPhone and other cool phones. Their service, on the other hand is terrible, almost as bad as their poorly named customer service department. It's almost as if they still think it is 1960 and they are the only phone company... oops, I guess they are the only phone company if you want the iPhone. They are a good marketing company, but their service and everything else about at&t is miserable. The only thing at&t does well is stretch the truth in their advertising and overcharge their customers, and for some reason a lot of large corporations think they are the only option for phone service. Oh, that's right they are a good marketing company.

LessO2

Their response to the Verizon "there's a map for that," both in terms of in the media and a counter-campaign was, and still is, simply pathetic.

If it weren't for the iPhone, AT&T would be dead.

jackal

I have a hard time believing all these reports of AT&T's poor customer service. I've never experienced it. (The only reason I even give any credence to the complaints is because of the sheer number of them--I figure I must be the exception.)

Every single time I've contacted AT&T's customer service, I've always walked away very pleased with the service I received. While traveling overseas for two months last fall, I contacted AT&T probably a dozen (maybe two) times to make adjustments to my international data roaming packages. I also made some adjustments myself online that screwed up my plans (I had miscalculated how much data usage would be prorated) and had to call multiple times to straighten that out. Every time, I was given competent, professional service that addressed my requests and questions--they happily backdated my packages or did whatever it took to give me exactly what I needed without charging me any more than necessary.

I made one major miscalculation at the very end and ended up with an $800 bill. I called AT&T and they had absolutely no problem going in and re-rating my already-posted bill to add on the appropriate data package to bring my bill down to what I should have set it on in the first place.

And they continue to surprise me. I discovered a few weeks or so ago that AT&T representatives maintain a presence on Twitter. I decided then, yesterday morning, to report a coverage issue to them (an area with previously good coverage seemingly went dark a couple of months ago). One of the AT&T reps tweeted me back within minutes and took down the information I provided. Then, yesterday evening, I received a phone call from a technician in the engineering department who collected a bit more information from me in order to create the ticket and have the issue investigated.

Blew me away. I never expected to receive such a proactive response to a report about a coverage gap. Time will tell if they actually fix the issue (not sure if it's a downed tower or something intentional, like re-aiming an antenna array in another direction or something), but I can find no flaw in how they handle their customers.

As for coverage itself: well, all I can say is the coverage is good wherever I've need it. It's perfect up here at home (with the exception of the strange half-mile coverage gap mentioned above, which didn't exist a few months ago). On my recent 1,500-mile road trip from New York to Chicago, I encountered no coverage problems except in relatively remote, mountainous parts of central Pennsylvania--and the person I was traveling with had no coverage in those areas on his Verizon phone. The vast majority of that road trip also had 3G coverage--I'd say I saw the E on my iPhone perhaps 5 times over the 5 days and for a total of 100 miles, if even that--and I use my phone constantly (I incurred about 350MB of predominantly web/email usage just in those five days).

I did have to laugh at the maps Verizon showed on one of their recent commercials. They showed Verizon 3G service in Alaska (which they don't have, except through a limited roaming agreement with the local CDMA carrier) and didn't show any 3G service with AT&T in Alaska, which is patently false (my phone has a big 3G on it right now). Kinda makes it hard for me to believe their claims.

Paint Horse

Good customer service that says gee we are sorry is useless if voicemail messages routinely arrive two to three DAYS after they are left. I do not need any more apologies or promises. I need reliable service. Thus the move to Verizon to see if they can do any better,