I had been with CellularOne in the SF Bay Area for a number of years (first phone: Motorola 550 flip), and have been generally satisfied with the coverage and customer service. However, the service plans seemed to be somewhat pricey for what you got compared to the competition. Until early in 2001, the CellularOne brand in the San Francisco area was a joint venture between AirTouch (now part of Verizon) and AT&T. AT&T Wireless now owns the whole thing, the situation has improved.

I'm a relatively low volume user, so the CellOne no-frills $30 "Local Area Plan" (125 mins. peak, 1000 off-peak) worked fine for me for the last few years. No-frills meaning pretty much everything was an extra cost option and after seeing what my friends using other providers were getting, I was considering a switch.

After reading reviews here on Epinions, other resources, other providers coverage maps and service plan fine print, I decided to stick with AT&T.

Now, under the AT&T "Digital Advantage Plan", the same $30 gets me 250 mins. peak (which I believe was a promo bump from 125), 1000 off-peak, 1000 mobile to mobile, voice mail, text messaging, a very large home calling area, etc. Most all of may calls are in-state or to Nevada, so I don't need the unlimited long distance offered by their "Regional Advantage Plan". I realize Verizon, Cingular and Sprint may offer even more extravagant promotional plans, but what I've got is perfect for me, and I'm no longer jealous of my friends using those carriers.

I certainly don't envy the marginal customer service by provided by those three. I know AT&T isn't perfect, but I have never had what I consider a bad customer service experience - dealing with them now, or when it was CellOne.

Also, as I frequently travel up the north coast of California where Cingular has no coverage and (I suspect) Sprint reverts to expensive analog roaming makes those two useless to me.

All of the providers, evening off-peak hours have recently gotten a bit stingier. At least AT&T's begin at a reasonable 8pm (used to be 7pm) versus 9pm for Cingular and Sprint. If you'd prefer to not call your friends after 9pm, what good are thousands of off-peak minutes?

Voice quality is typical TDMA - decent to quite good, but nothing great. TDMA is an aging digital wireless technology, and this may be a limitation to those who want bells and whistles like wireless web services and the like. It looks like AT&T is offering similar services, but I can't imagine they're as elegant as those on CDMA or GSM networks. This will change in the not-too-distant(?) future as everyone transitions to the so-called 3rd generation wireless technologies. From what I understand, that's still at least 2 or 3 (maybe more) years out. For what it's worth, AT&T and Nokia have just begun testing this new (for the U.S.) technology.



Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 30