Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

How does at&t....

S

stevey500

macrumors 6502
Original poster
get away with telling everyone they have the best coverage worldwide?


I know I don't know the real details but being as I was on alltel for years and then switched to AT&T thinking it was some awesomely great revolutionary choice in my life.

I almost hate my AT&T service. For an adventurous person, AT&T is almost on the edge of useless. The iphone for a geek is the god of all devices and is hard to give up.

I was freaked out to know if I was ever run across the dreaded "no service" when I was on alltel. In the craziest of places, I always had a great signal, if I had any signal at all, data was usable and bearable when needed. Being on AT&T when no data services are available (just GPRS)... IT SUCKS and is basically useless. Waiting 3 minutes for one map view to load to find out where the heck I am is unbearable.

I'm an hour south of salt lake now (I signed up for AT&T while i lived in salt lake) and within 40 miles it's a deadzone requiring me to go outside to hold a quality call. I get voicemail notifications 20 minutes after I miss a call that never rang, sending messages is SLOW. .. it's terrible.

Calling AT&T, the conversation is all the same. "Where are you located?" "just an hour or so south of salt lake" "ah, that's strange, lets find out why this is happening, it might be some minor system troubles" ..... 20 minutes later on hold... "we don't serve in your area and don't see any good news for you in the next 12 months"


Verizon, Alltel, Spring, and T-mobile is pegged in my area. In the middle of nowhere in the desert... I have a pegged signal on my alltel phone in EVDO. Going to moab I have full service on alltel al the way there, maybe 1/8th of the way there (near st. george and cedar city) I have a signal. I think I've got to give up AT&T for a while, sell the iphone, get an ipod touch, wait for OS 3.0, wait for someone to jailbreak a feature to use my alltel phone thru bluetooth to get data on the ipod.

More bars in more places... what?
 
Don't you know statistics are BS. If you didn't, there, I just taught you a life lesson.

So, to answer your question, AT&T found some research firm who claimed AT&T had the best coverage worldwide and then plastered it all over their billboards. And by the way, worldwide, they probably do have the best coverage. I'm not sure how many companies operate in as many countries as AT&T.
 
I have a pegged signal on my alltel phone in EVDO.
Click to expand...

But doesn't alltell specialize in service for the sticks? meh. I had one dropped call this month. And bars galore.

Threads like this are chock full of anecdote. If coverage was really so bad or important to a person, the iphone would not be selling in droves, or people with and iphone say each month by voting with their dollars that the benefits of the iphone outweigh the coverage problems they may or may not have.
 
More bars in more places ...

Then again I sit on Edge while in a large city we like to call Chapel Hill. 🙄
 
AT&T has the best coverage word-wide, it never said anything about the US 😉

Try to get out of your contract, or maybe it's soon enough to get out just by paying the 10% restocking fee.
 
Mr. Giver '94 said:
Well 86% of all statistics are fake...
Click to expand...

They say 3 percent of the people use 5 to 6 percent of their brain
97 percent use 3 percent and the rest goes down the drain
I'll never know which one I am but I'll bet you my last dime
99 percent think we're 3 percent 100 percent of the time

64 percent of all the world's statistics are made up right there on the spot
82.4 percent of people believe 'em whether they're accurate statistics or not
I don't know what you believe but I do know there's no doubt
I need another double shot of something 90 proof
I got too much to think about

- statitician's blues
- Todd Snider
 
They all sound so 3Good. 😀

AT&T offers the nation’s fastest 3G network. 3G speeds for supported devices deliver:

Typical download speeds of 700 Kbps—1.7 Mbps
Typical upload speeds of 500 Kbps—1.2 Mbps


Why Choose Verizon Wireless?We're not 100% satisfied unless you are and we've got America's largest 3G network.


Sprint and Palm Announce Upcoming Availability of Treo Pro on America’s Most Dependable 3G Network
 
Actually, at&t does have the most complete coverage of the US, mostly via roaming partners, which don't have to offer data to the connecting user, or you have to turn on data roaming (found that out in UT and WY). I have traveled the country with friends with VZW, T-Mo, Sprint, and Alltel and in many places, I will have coverage, while they will not, or they will have some quirk, like dialing twice in order to get connected. That being said, there are some places, but many fewer, where I did not get service, and one or all of them did. On the whole, I do believe the coverage of the at&t network is larger than that of some of the other providers, but by no means is the 3G network as large as VZW, nor as stable as Sprint, but at least the have one (on a standardized frequency) unlike T-Mo, who's 3G network is a joke to say the least. I would suggest however, looking into a Femptocell for at&t, which would act much like a booster for voice coverage, and would serve 3G service to the area, but then again, you could just invest is DSL/Cable and Wi-Fi, like most people on the fringe of coverage (my parent's home, where I'm living right now, is on the edge of coverage, so I usually use Wi-Fi when home, and have my calls forwarded to the home phone).

Also, at&t is the only provider that has hardware available that WILL work in every country of the world (including Japan and Korea that are on 3G only). T-Mo has some, but not all, and the hardware from VZW and Sprint will basically only work in the US and Canada, unless you purchase special phones that are capable of GSM connections.

TEG
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back