VZ not for me.

[marksman]

Where I live Verizon coverage absolutely sucks... AT&T is much better, so using Verizon is not even a choice. I used to have Verizon and I had to go stand out on the street to make a phone call from my house.

 

[Darthdingo]

That might be because the building in question has a CDMA antenna built in.

Then I guess every building I have been in around Chicago the last few years has one, plus Basements.

Bottom line is, I know tons of clients that all use different carriers. In Basements and deep inside opffice buildings T-Mobile and ATT fail, but I have seen Verizon and Sprint work flawlessly down there.

Myself having owned ATT, T-Mobile, and Sprint the last 5 years, having a couple different phones on each carrier, Sprint worked perfect in basements where the other two always dropped calls or never got a signal down there. And my friends with Verizon say there never lose signal inside buildings.

 

[Applejuiced]

Then I guess every building I have been in around Chicago the last few years has one, plus Basements.

Bottom line is, I know tons of clients that all use different carriers. In Basements and deep inside opffice buildings T-Mobile and ATT fail, but I have seen Verizon and Sprint work flawlessly down there.

Myself having owned ATT, T-Mobile, and Sprint the last 5 years, having a couple different phones on each carrier, Sprint worked perfect in basements where the other two always dropped calls or never got a signal down there. And my friends with Verizon say there never lose signal inside buildings.

It was just a guess buddy.
Don't get all worked up
I do know that friends CDMA phones also lose signal in basements, big buildings and elevators.
Maybe your experience has been different so I was guessing that there was an antenna installed on the building in question.
Getting full signal in a basement doesn't make sense but whatever you say...
Unless you were getting like 1 bar and still wasn't dropping calls.

 

[IBradMac]

It was just a guess buddy.

Don't you mean "son"?

 

[Applejuiced]

Don't you mean "son"?

Lmao
Don't get him even more worked up now

 

[xraydoc]

CDMA is way better in my opinion for one main reason. Building penetration. Verizon and Sprint phones work perfectly in Basement offices and skyscrapers in Chicago. Where both T-mobile and ATT have like zero signal in Basements and deep inside buildings.

This. But don't try to explain that to JD914. He'll just label you a fanboy.
If I could keep AT&T with its 3Mb/sec data and simultaneous voice/data, I would. But that would mean up to 10 hours per day with no cell service for me. That is more unacceptable than only 900Kb/sec data.

 

[rjohnstone]

CDMA is way better in my opinion for one main reason. Building penetration. Verizon and Sprint phones work perfectly in Basement offices and skyscrapers in Chicago. Where both T-mobile and ATT have like zero signal in Basements and deep inside buildings.

An 850Mhz GSM signal will penetrate just as good as a CDMA signal will.
The issue is AT&T used their 1900Mhz band for GSM while they migrated away from TDMA that was on their 850 band.
AT&T is now recovering all their 850 bands for use in larger cities now that TDMA is completely gone from all their towers.
This will help with building penetration.

The issue with going from the 1900 band to the 850 band is they will need more towers with the 850 band as it doesn't have as good of coverage/distance as the 1900 band.
It's all a trade off.

 

[xraydoc]

An 850Mhz GSM signal will penetrate just as good as a CDMA signal will.
The issue is AT&T used their 1900Mhz band for GSM while they migrated away from TDMA that was on their 850 band.
AT&T is now recovering all their 850 bands for use in larger cities now that TDMA is completely gone from all their towers.
This will help with building penetration.

The issue with going from the 1900 band to the 850 band is they will need more towers with the 850 band as it doesn't have as good of coverage/distance as the 1900 band.
It's all a trade off.

All true. And presumably all the AT&T towers near me (not a major city by any stretch of the imagination) are still running at 1900MHz because simply stepping in to the (quite large, by the way) steel and brick building at work results in a "Searching..." indicator on my AT&T iPhone.

My VZW iPhone, on the other hand, maintains 4-5 bars all day. Now, we do have Verizon repeaters inside the building. This I know for a fact. I also know that there are no plans to put AT&T (or T-Mobile) repeaters inside the building according to our communications department. Interestingly, while there are no Sprint repeaters, Sprint phones also have excellent service coverage inside, too. So either Sprint's signal is amplified by the Verizon repeaters, too, or the CDMA signal is just that good at penetrating the building's structure.

Either way, unless AT&T works out some kind of a deal to put repeaters in our building or puts up an 850MHz tower right outside, AT&T phones - not just iPhones - will remain basically useless inside unless you're able to hang out a window.

Oh, and now that the iPhone has Verizon as a carrier, our IT people have decided to officially support it for our Exchange email/calendar/directory services and secure internal wifi network. Previously they would only officially support Verizon Blackberry (via BES) and Verizon Android phones (via "Good for Enterprise," an encrypted, enterprise-deployed Exchange app).

 

[JustLeft]

I also work in a building with vzw repeaters throughout. Odd thing is that the vzw phones still want to hop between 3G an 1xrtt. Numerous calls to vzw, tickets opened, no resolution. While vzw advertises that they have the largest 3G coverage, they don't say that they need to because their data speeds on 1xrtt are horrible. I was averaging 16 kbs. Much slower than edge on AT&T.

All true. And presumably all the AT&T towers near me (not a major city by any stretch of the imagination) are still running at 1900MHz because simply stepping in to the (quite large, by the way) steel and brick building at work results in a "Searching..." indicator on my AT&T iPhone.

My VZW iPhone, on the other hand, maintains 4-5 bars all day. Now, we do have Verizon repeaters inside the building. This I know for a fact. I also know that there are no plans to put AT&T (or T-Mobile) repeaters inside the building according to our communications department. Interestingly, while there are no Sprint repeaters, Sprint phones also have excellent service coverage inside, too. So either Sprint's signal is amplified by the Verizon repeaters, too, or the CDMA signal is just that good at penetrating the building's structure.

Either way, unless AT&T works out some kind of a deal to put repeaters in our building or puts up an 850MHz tower right outside, AT&T phones - not just iPhones - will remain basically useless inside unless you're able to hang out a window.

Oh, and now that the iPhone has Verizon as a carrier, our IT people have decided to officially support it for our Exchange email/calendar/directory services and secure internal wifi network. Previously they would only officially support Verizon Blackberry (via BES) and Verizon Android phones (via "Good for Enterprise," an encrypted, enterprise-deployed Exchange app).

 

[Olivia23]

I returned my Verizon iphone and ported back to ATT.

Just my experience not necessarily for everyone.

I felt it was too much of a downgrade.

We all know the limitations of the iphone on their network so I won't go into that.

I just wanted to relay my experience after a month of use.

The build quality is excellent. Data speeds are anemic compared to ATT

That and the issues with conference calling sealed the deal for me.

Thanks for letting us know.

 

[maflynn]

I returned my Verizon iphone and ported back to ATT.

Just my experience not necessarily for everyone.

I felt it was too much of a downgrade.

We all know the limitations of the iphone on their network so I won't go into that.

I just wanted to relay my experience after a month of use.

The build quality is excellent. Data speeds are anemic compared to ATT

That and the issues with conference calling sealed the deal for me.

I had a Droidx on VZW and thought the service and quality OK, but I do think AT&T was better. I switched back when I got an iPhone and I'm pleased with AT&T. I'm also saving some $$ as my bill is cheaper which is also helpful