Your mileage may vary
Written: Apr 19 '01
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Pros: Customer Support, calling plans, phone choices.
Cons: TDMA
The Bottom Line: Service is good in terms of cost and quality with Nokia 8260, but as with all phones and services, your mileage may vary.
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| lwallach's Full Review: AT&T Mobile Phone Service in Washington/Baltimore |
Initial reasons for subscribing:
I have been a long time Bell Atlantic/Verizon cell phone customer and was fairly satisfied with their service, but not so with their pricing plans. My contract finally came due recently and I decided to try out AT&T. Though I knew that TDMA was inferior to CDMA, I have had friends who said they never had a problem with reception. I got it also because the regional plan for $50 a month fit my needs very well - East Coast roaming and national long distance included you get 400 minutes of peak time 1000 minutes off off-peak. I was paying $50 per month for 400 peak minutes and unlimited off-peak minutes under Verizon, but long distance was an extra $.15 per minute and roaming an extra $.39! I realize that I purchased this a year ago and so Verizon's prices have come down since then, but the problem with all of these carriers is that you have to sign up for a year's contract and if you decide to change your plan, at least with Verizon, to a newer, cheaper one, you have your contract extended a year from that change. ATT told me that they only do this extension for special promotions, but not for simply newer general plans. Also, if I had switched plans on Verizon, they would have taken away my unlimited off-peak time, and that would have gone away once the year's contract was over anyway. Ugh, contracts are ridiculous! The other reason that I chose ATT over the other carriers was something that was admitedly superficial - they offer the Nokia 8260 as one of their phones. A couple of my friends have these and I really liked them. I had a Startac which works fine, but thought the nokia would be a nice change.
How it's going so far:
Well, I've only been using the phone and service for three weeks, so take this for what it's worth. I am satisfied. I think I've had one dropped call so far, but otherwise haven't had any problems. The reception seems a little worse in general than the Startac on Verizon. But I used to have a terrible time receiving signals with the Startac at work and I now have no problem with the Nokia.
General thoughts:
As the subject of the message says, I think you can only take this review or any here so far. Many people complain of poor reception on one plan or another, blaming the plan, but I think it's both a function of the plan and the phone you are using with it, and of course different parts of the DC Baltimore area are going to differ in terms of coverage. Some areas are going to be better for Verizon, others better for ATT. The best thing to judge something like this is to find a friend who lives and works as close to you as possible. Also don't assume that if you buy a different phone from theirs you will get the same success(or failure) rate.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 50/month
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Epinions.com ID:
lwallach
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Location: Vienna, VA, USA
Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
I'm a 32-year-old single web developer born and raised in New York City.
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