Avantadrive_Original

I have had Verizon for a while... It's been OK, with two gripes 1) The phone selection is terrible. I've had the Treo 650 for 2 years and I like it a lot, but looking ahead to my contract expiration in 2 months, the selections of Smartphones in Sprint and ATT are MUCH better.

2) The service in the greenwich, CT area for Verizon is spotty. In fact, it's spotty in a lot of areas around here. It's not terrible, and it holds a call pretty well under low signal.

That said, looking for opinions from people in the area on what they use and like. I think I'm limiting myself to those three companies, unless there's a strong fourth. I also plan to stick with a smartphone and, thus, a data plan.

SKIroad'r

However, I've been with Verizon for the last 5 years or so, so may networks have gotten better, but I doubt it

S40RCE:Smurf

T Mobile or Verizon FTW IMHO

Raistlin

I have been a Sprint PCS customer for about 10 years now and I love their service in Central and North Jersey as well as New York City (where I work). I don't think I have had a dropped call in five years.

I have had AT&T (Cingular) for a year now as my work phone and email. My good friend has Cingular (now AT&T) and his calls are ALWAYS dropping during his commute to and from the city (he lives in town next to mine). I yell at him all the time that his phone service sucks. Voice quality between ATT and Sprint is huge, Sprint blows them away.

Now mind you, AT&T has pretty good service around here, but calls do drop.

S4Lee

Been on VZW w/ a PDA phone for 3-4 years (ever since EVDO was first offered in the NYC area) in N. NJ. The $45/mo for data is hard to swallow, as is VZW's lack of support for SmartPhones beyond instructions on how to do a hard reset. That being said, I somehow doubt anyone else is much better. And yes, it takes VZW forever to get a phone out (ie - the Samsung i760 that was just released had great specs a year and a half ago when it pics/specs were first hitting the rumor mill).

AT&T has some nice offerings in Smartphones (ie, Tilt), and coverage from what I hear isn't any worse than VZW, just 'different'. Keep in mind thay have 'more bars' (as per thier advertising) because thier phones have a 5-bar scale, while VZW uses 4, so 'bars' isn't really a good comaprison. Try to find people where you spend most of your time that are ATT users to get thier personal opinion. ATT's data plans aren't cheap, but they are cheaper than VZW, and if I was to switch I could probably save ~$30/mo total over my current voice/data/txt plan for a similar allowance. Data speeds with the 3G networks are comparable to EVDO for most basic PDA functions.

Sprint has cheap voice, the cheapest data ($20 unlimited, I think, even w/ EVDO) and not a bad selection of pda phones, if you like RIM / Blackberry (though they do have the popular Touch). It seems CDMA technology (VZW/Sprint) is always behind the curve w/ new features. Sprint has a smaller network than VZW, so they roam alot on VZW's network. Depending on your plan and where you go, this may or may not be a big deal (is roaming included?), but I'm not sure how that works with data. On the other hand, I believe they were rolling out the never revisions of EVDO fairly quickly. A co-worker from Rockland County swears by them, but I always think of Sprint and TMobile last when considering alternatives to VZW.

As I've said, I've been on VZW w/ an Samsung i730 and was looking to switch. I was waiting for the Tilt on AT&T, but managed to get a free Motorola Q9m when it first came out and it's grown on me enough that I don't feel the need to shell out the money for a new pda/phone atm, though occasionally I miss the touchscreen on my i730. Other than a few dead spots where I tend to travel to in upstate NY, and an occasional data connection problem w/ the Q9m that seems to be getting better, I'll probably stick w/ VZW for the time being, unless I see a great deal on a Glofish M800 or a HTC Kaiser / Tytn II.

Oh, and if you're interested in going the Blackberry route, PM me. I have a brand new VZW 8130 that I'm not going to use.

quattrothatcould

Its not that much different from a Blackberry, and it works for me. I have pretty good service from North NJ all the way down to DC, so Verizon works well for me.

daves4izzle::ASP 3-

seems to be doing pretty well right now.

AT&T's overall coverage is very good and I don't see or hear about many dropped calls.

Avantadrive_Original

I see what you mean about Sprint, and I tend not to think of them seriously when considering phones either. In fact, I was gungho on switching to ATT for a while, and considered sprint only recently.

ATT still seems like the nicer offering then. Their phones are clearly superior (apparently the BB Curve is killer), their service sounds comparable, and the plans might even be cheaper. Sounds win-win to me!

The only thing I'm still concerned about is the potential for dropped calls. I've heard a few people around here say they get random dropped calls sometimes. Not sure if that's anything serious or not...

Judge AR

In SI-Bklyn-NJ, ATT has been great for me, Verizon's very overrated

EastSix2.7T

Verizon is great for most of NJ and NY when i was driving from nj to ma i had not one dropped call