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ATT vs Sprint

CoachStall

CoachStall

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 18, 2009
253
0
Indy
Folks, i am changing my carrier from Cincinatti Bell to either: ATT or Sprint.

What is your personal preference or suggestion?

Its a family plan, 5 lines will be making the move.
 
CoachStall said:
Folks, i am changing my carrier from Cincinatti Bell to either: ATT or Sprint.

What is your personal preference or suggestion?

Its a family plan, 5 lines will be making the move.
Click to expand...

My personal suggestion would be to check out both AT&T's and Sprint's coverage in your area. I'm on AT&T and enjoy generally good service where I live.
 
Sprint is not cheap anymore.

Do the math. If you mix and match smartphone with dumbphones. Say 3 smartphones and 2 dumphones, Sprint forces data down your dumbphones throats.

So it comes down to coverage and data speeds. AT&T has faster data, way much faster data than Sprint's CDMA network.

AT&T has voice and data at the same time (if that's important to you).

Bottom line is coverage area. You got 14 days to try out Sprint's coverage. I believe you have 30 days for AT&T. (you still have to pay pro rated charges for both).
 
I am with at&t, and the service is generally very good where I am.

Remember that with at&t, you can talk and surf at the same time. I've also heard that at&t has better indoor reception.

If you're with at&t, your iPhone automatically joins the many at&t Wi-Fi hotspots you're in range of. Most businesses have at&t Wi-Fi so you seamlessly join the hotspots.
 
I have Sprint, and where I am, the coverage is much better than AT&T. I rarely have issues with network speed. But it all depends where you are.

Also on my family plan, I pay $42 per phone to share 1500 mins (3 lines) unlimited text and data, and nights at 7pm.
 
CoachStall said:
Folks, i am changing my carrier from Cincinatti Bell to either: ATT or Sprint.

What is your personal preference or suggestion?

Its a family plan, 5 lines will be making the move.
Click to expand...

Make sure where you are that you have coverage for both carriers first. It would suck to transfer your whole family and end up not having good reception.

For myself At&t has always been solid for me.
 
Sprint currently has the best plans right now, they beat AT&T and Verizon. But plans do not make for good service. Making sure you have good coverage where you plan to use your phone is THE MOST IMPORTANT part of which carrier to use.

Even when you DO make a choice, make sure that the coverage is good at home, office and any where else you will visit often. After the trial period, you are stuck with it so make sure.

Nothing worst than a phone with no coverage or poor coverage.
 
Data speeds are higher on AT&T and Sprint has some huge coverage holes in outlying areas around Cincinnati. That may or may not be considerations for you, just pointing out those possible issues.

If cost is a factor (and for most of us it most definitely is), I would suggest a stop at a Sprint store and an AT&T store and get a quote on exactly what your 5-phone plan would cost in each case. If Sprint is a lot cheaper, you might get just one phone and try it for a few days to see if the coverage is adequate (don't port your number yet, just forward your old phone to it). It would be a lot easier to undo one phone without ported number than to do the whole 5-phone package twice if you decide you made the wrong decision.
 
Stealthipad said:
Sprint currently has the best plans right now, they beat AT&T and Verizon. But plans do not make for good service. Making sure you have good coverage where you plan to use your phone is THE MOST IMPORTANT part of which carrier to use.

Even when you DO make a choice, make sure that the coverage is good at home, office and any where else you will visit often. After the trial period, you are stuck with it so make sure.

Nothing worst than a phone with no coverage or poor coverage.
Click to expand...

From my experience with both, sprint is the best deal if you use all of their features, but from when I first switched over to them 4 years ago to now with me going back to AT&T. The customer service is very much lacking at sprint. If you don't get their insurance you are SOL after your first 30 days (14 now) and a they tend to train their employees to stand up to customer demands more... Great for them sucks for us.

AT&T are a bunch of blood sucking leaches and will nickel and dime the ***** out of you at every angle. Once you get past the 20 automated messages their customer service is the best I have ever experienced. They are also ( at least in the past) willing to take care of your hardware issues within the manufacturer's warranty timeframe. What is sort of nice about their plans is the ability to have small "casual" plans. But be careful if you have low level plans... They will ding you like crazy if you go over your usage, most notably the 200mb data plan.

Just my 2 cents after my last decade dealing with both companies.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for all the input.

I am curious if my 3GS will work on Sprint? I'm running


I'm running
OS 4.0.1
Modem Firmware 05.13.04
Old Bootrom 359.3

Jailbroken with the jailbreakme website, unlocked with ultrasn0w
 
CoachStall said:
Thanks for all the input.

I am curious if my 3GS will work on Sprint? I'm running


I'm running
OS 4.0.1
Modem Firmware 05.13.04
Old Bootrom 359.3

Jailbroken with the jailbreakme website, unlocked with ultrasn0w
Click to expand...

You can't bring ANY phone from other companies to Sprint... especially not At&t phones because they run on different radios Sprint is CDMA and At&t is GSM. The hardware can't be used on each other's mobile technology.
 
CoachStall said:
I follow, Sprint is a non-SIM card provider...
Click to expand...

So we have 3 iphones (out of the 5 lines) on our current plan:

OG iPhone - 8Gig
3G - 8Gig
3GS - 16Gig

Obviously all are JB and unlocked and in good shape.

If i go with Sprint, i'll have to sell them. What should i expect to get for these phones?

I dont have the 250 posts to get in the market place, so i cant view the going rates...
 
CoachStall said:
So we have 3 iphones (out of the 5 lines) on our current plan:

OG iPhone - 8Gig
3G - 8Gig
3GS - 16Gig

Obviously all are JB and unlocked and in good shape.

If i go with Sprint, i'll have to sell them. What should i expect to get for these phones?

I dont have the 250 posts to get in the market place, so i cant view the going rates...
Click to expand...

Probably 150 for the 3GS, around 100 for the 3G, and under 100 for the OG ($50-$100)

I am interested in getting a first gen iPhone if you're willing to sell cheap.
 
MrXiro said:
Probably 150 for the 3GS, around 100 for the 3G, and under 100 for the OG ($50-$100)

I am interested in getting a first gen iPhone if you're willing to sell cheap.
Click to expand...

Thanks, its possible. Have some decisions to make with the family.

Stay tuned!
 
Sprint offers very generous discounts to employees of certain companies. For example I get 27% off the primary line ($129.99 for 1500 min.), 27% off of the 3rd line of service (2nd line is free) and 27% off of my Airave. My total discount is $41.85 per month. Three of our five lines have the $10 additional data charge, 2 don't, but there is no discount on the $10 data fee. Another thing to remember is Sprint has unlimited cell to cell minutes, regardless of the carrier. We've never used more that about 800-900 of our allotted 1500 monthly minutes. Sprint roams on Verizon and there are no roaming chargers with Sprint so you should have cell service anywhere Sprint and Verizon are with no additional charges.

I've never had AT&T so I don't know how they compare, just some fyi regarding Sprint. Good luck with your decision!
 
Coverage Being Equal

If coverage and discounts through your employer are near equal, then it has to be AT&T IMO.

The talking and surfing feature is MAJOR as well is the DATA SPEED advantage.

I'm definitely happy Sprint is in the game as it serves to keep VZW and AT&T honest but AT&T was/is/will continue to be the best iPhone carrier.
 
Both carriers are bad..I have had every major cell phone company in the US (Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon) and let me just say Verizon is well worth the extra money. They have soo much better service anywhere you go, even though they are overpriced their spectacular service makes up for it. But if your stuck on either of those carriers, i would choose sprint. They have unlimited data and i believe their service is still better then AT&T..

Hopes this helps and I'm not here to offend anyone, just stating my opinion!
 
QAZWSXEDCRFV said:
Both carriers are bad..I have had every major cell phone company in the US (Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon) and let me just say Verizon is well worth the extra money. They have soo much better service anywhere you go, even though they are overpriced their spectacular service makes up for it. But if your stuck on either of those carriers, i would choose sprint. They have unlimited data and i believe their service is still better then AT&T..

Hopes this helps and I'm not here to offend anyone, just stating my opinion!
Click to expand...

I second verizon, they are head and shoulders above the rest.
 
Wide opeN said:
If coverage and discounts through your employer are near equal, then it has to be AT&T IMO.

The talking and surfing feature is MAJOR as well is the DATA SPEED advantage.

I'm definitely happy Sprint is in the game as it serves to keep VZW and AT&T honest but AT&T was/is/will continue to be the best iPhone carrier.
Click to expand...

I think the playing field will even out once all 3 companies have LTE up and running and the iPhone 2012 comes out. Sprint will probably lose or cap their unlimited data at some point or start getting down on people who steal tether.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

I have sprint and in my area, irvine ca, I generally have good coverage and speeds of up to 1.2 mbps, which is pretty good. You should definitely check your area though, because in some areas, sprint's speeds are quite low.
 
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