I have had Sprint for 7+ years and have never had a problem with them. Customer service has been great. The rebate center is a different story though.

I have used Cingular, AT&T and Nextel for business and their call quality just pales compared to Sprint. Now that Sprint has nationwide roaming (onlly $5/month unlimited on my plan) it's great.

I just bought one of the new Samsung quad band a790 phones and will be trying out their international roaming while on a vacation to Thailand soon.

There are two fundemental differences between the two carriers, GSM and CDMA.

GSM is the global standard for mobile phone technology, if you get the razar your phone will work virtually everywhere. CDMA is more limited to the USA and some carriers world wide.

GSM: Land line voice quality, global standard, wider selection of phones, easy to switch phones thanks to SIM card technology.

CDMA: Slight modulation issues with call quality, more likely to drop calls, fewer phones to choose from, hard to set up for global roaming.

I prefer GSM and my opinion is based over having has attws, cingular, tmo, sprint pcs, nextel, and vzw.

I've come home to Cingular (i.e. attws). I have the Razr too, it's a great phone.

Customer service: Cingular has 24/7 is you sign up on the old attws side, other wise it like 9am-10pm for the orange side. Sprint - okay csr to be honest.

Network: Largest digital voice and data network of north american = Cingular.

I travel to NYC, PHX, SAN, SFO, YUL on a fairly often basis, no service issues. I live in North NJ - no issues.

PLUS Cingular is the ONLY mobile provider to give you a full 30 days to cancel the contract - everyone else is 14/15.

DUH! go with Cingular!

BTW: Who ever tells you the phone doesnt matter and only the network does is full of it - the phone and network DO matter. Awesome Phone + Awesome Network = Good Service.

-Vincent

Good comparative review. Thank you.

I've been a Sprint customer for 4+ years, and I've been very happy with them. One of the plan enhancements that I subscribe to is Unlimited Roaming for $5/mo. As long as at least half of my minutes each month are on Sprint's network, then I pay nothing extra or over for roaming. This might be something you'd be interested in if your biggest complaint re Sprint is lack of coverage in one particular (and relatively small) geographic area.

One of the reasons that I am so happy with Sprint is because I use my phone as much or more for data (email, web browsing, IM chat clients, text messaging) than I do for voice calls. Sprint has the best data network bar none, and the cheapest data plans too. I can't imagine using my Treo 650 on any other network.

There are a couple of online forums for Sprint users where you might be able to pick up lots of tips and info:

http://www.sprintusers.com

http://www.pcsintel.com

We had AT & T no roaming/no longdistance nationwide plan. When Cingular bought them, we switched. The coverage is excellent(our friends have Sprint and experience areas with no reception), but that depends on where you are. Unused minutes rollover to next month. We had an initial billing problem, but it was resolved through Cingular customer service. We have two additional lines for $9.95 each. We couldn't add any lines with our AT & T service.

Good luck getting 2000 a/t min for $85 (less corp discount) with Cingular on a nationwide plan. Not gonna happen.

I have been with sprint for many years - never a problem and always the best rates for nationwide service. I, too, would love a Razr phone, but that is not enough reason to dump sprint particularly as new bluetooth phones will be arriving in the next 6 months. And you'll find that if you travel nationwide, every carrier has service issues.

Don't forget to consult howardforums.com

Simply put if you live and work in a major US city and need lost of bells Sprint is for you. If you travel to midsize or small cities (20 miles from an interstate) and can wait a year for some great bells go with Cingular or Verizon. Verizon will give you better US/Canada coverage but if you go to Europe/Asia/SA Africa go with Cingular.

Reviewed them all this year.

Had Sprint in Chicagoland, dropped calls like a madman, no reception in buildings, etc.

Switched to Cingular with the new job, and haven't had any problems at all. Plus, Cingular has phones that function in Canada, where my Sprint phone sat there and did nothing.

I�ve had Sprint PCS since I turned 18 (nearly four years ago). I recently extended my contract an additional two years because:

(1) I�m extremely satisfied with the service. I travel extensively and have experienced only a small number of service issues -- and nothing major. I�ve only had two consumer service issues (one was overbilling, the other over a late payment automatically charged to my check card on-time), and a trip to my local Sprint store took care of them immediately.

(2) Price. I have a retention plan: two lines sharing 750 anytime + unlimited nights (beginning at 7PM), weekends and Sprint PCS-Sprint PCS for $40/month - 5% loyalty discount (stackable with my 25% company volume discount). I�ve added the $10 Vision (with Picture Mail) package� I can �tether� my phone to my laptop & have unlimited internet access on the road (technically not legal per contract, but not usually enforced). Total monthly cost (including taxes & fees, minus discounts): just under $40. NOBODY comes close to this.

(3) When traveling abroad, it�s SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper to buy a prepaid cell phone, or SIM card (if you already own a compatible GSM phone) + minutes than it is to use Cingular or T-Mobiles (the two USA-based GSM carriers) services.

I'm a Cingular heir from MaBell's old one rate "really nationwide" LD and wouldn't change. The Voice mail is good and convenient, and the Cingular map coverage is better than Spring (which is famed out here in the "wide open" as being good only within sight of the Interstate (often).

There are "holes" in all of the systems, however, and one's "best hope" is to attempt to tailor a provider for the areas in which you travel. Cell service is important to my business, not as much in minutes as in being in contact, even when fishing for redfish and trout out in Matagorda Bay (and saved by the cell towers along the Intercoastal canal by which the towboat skippers communicate better than the old radios were ever able to do).

Being unwilling to pay for phones leaves some interesting narrow choices and hard bargaining. Always a "Nokia Man", almost ruined by a Panasonic, but have gotten good service from an "LG", far more durable and tough that it looks or feels.

I do believe it should be incumbent upon God and/or the "Authorities" to order that all brands of telephones come equipped with a universal adapter to plug into every type of charger.

TMO

I was with Sprint for about 7 years, then left for T-mobile. Why? Blackberry. Sprint now has them, but as I now work for an airline, my GSM phone is worth alot more to me.

Sprint had great coverage and I was expecting bad coverage with T-mobile. I've been pleasantly surprised with the great coverage and great customer service. I was with ATT years ago and hated their customer service. T-mobile has been great.

Nothing BEATS having the same phone numbr worldwide, if roaming cost is an issue... TXT! It only costs a 10 cents maybe 50 cents at the most. Plus data roaming is usually cheap.

I may be a bit basied, bit I have tried them all.

Best advice? Try them all! Just remember - Cingular is soo confident in thier service they give you 30 days to cancel the service and contract penalty free. Everyone else is only 14/15 at most.

-Vincent

I am going to switch this week. I am still partial to the Razr, but are there other phones I should consider? I am looking for the best possible reception and voice quality. Bluetooth is a bonus.

TIA.

If you do get a razr/gsm phone, the best thing to do is get it unlocked! If you do a lot of travelling outside the US, you can get yourself a prepaid SIM card and not pay roaming charges that your US based carriers will charge. That's why, I'm with Cingular. Their service is fine. I've had my share of drop calls, but since the acquisition of ATT, reception in parts that were spotty have gotten better. Another thing to point out, there are more countries that use GSM and that's the big advantage that GSM has over CDMA.

On Cingular, originating an SMS from Western Europe will cost $0.50. Receiving will cost $0.10. Roaming costs: either pay $5.99/mo + 0.99/min (incoming and outgoing), or $0/mo + $1.29/min.

One catch (at least with Cingular) is that you can't use the GSM # codes to prevent your calls being forwarded to voicemail. So, if someone calls you and you don't answer, you'll still get the roaming charge for a minimum of 2 minutes for the call to bounce to you and back to voicemail in the US. The only way is to call Cingular customer service and have them completely deactivate your voicemail, then reactivate when you return to the US.

I actually would strongly recommend getting a local prepaid SIM card if you're going to Europe. You can give out the number to people who need to get in touch with you, which keeps you from paying >$1/min when your friends drunk-dial you from the US. You can take advantage of the free incoming calls on most pre-pay plans to use a call-back service to phone home for much less. Here's a budgeting of what it would have cost for me on a recent 2-week trip to Germany, calling home for an average of 10 minutes/day to talk to my wife:

1) Vodafone SIM (w/ 15 euro initial credit) + 15 euro top-up: 50 euro - this covered all my in-country voice/SMS usage for 2 weeks, and I had 5 euro left. SIM is still valid through 11/2006.
2) Enlinea call-back actual usage (~150 min @ $0.26/min) = ~$40.
Total: $100.

If I'd used my Cingular SIM:
1) $6 for international plan (to reduce roam cost to 0.99/min)
2) 50 minutes of in-Germany calling @ 0.99/min = $49.50
3) 150 minutes calling back to the US @ 0.99/min = $148.50
4) Originate ~10 SMS at 0.50, receive ~15 at 0.10 = $6.50
Total: $210.50.

That's a no-brainer if I ever saw one.

I had Sprint for 2 years in Chicagoland as well ('01-03). I probably averaged 1 dropped call/day in my apartment, with a supposed signal strength of 3-4 bars. Switched to Cingular because Sprint had zero coverage in the area of upstate NY where I was traveling frequently for work (and to this day, I don't think they do). Now, almost no drops. I wouldn't touch Sprint service with a 10-foot antenna.