Free phones
Written: Apr 09 '07 (Updated Apr 09 '07)
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Pros: Rollover minutes. GSM phones.
Cons: Suburban, rural, and indoor reception. Data pricing.
The Bottom Line: Rollover... Otherwise, Cingular would roll over and die.
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| felixderkater's Full Review: Cingular Mobile Phone Service in Washington/Baltim... |
Free phones! That’s how we’re all baited toward one cellular provider or the other. They offer you a cheap phone for free in exchange for one to two years of commitment. At this point, with Cingular, you are generally required to sign a two-year contract. In exchange for that contract period, you get a discount of around $250 on your phone of choice. Sometimes the discount is a bit greater after rebates and such, but this is the norm.
Before going any further, I would like to provide a bit of background on myself, mostly as qualifiers for judging cellular service. Over the past 8 years, I have been with as many providers, each year making a new attempt at finding good cellular service like I once experienced in Western Europe. I have experienced Sprint, Verizon, Cingular, US Cellular, Horizon PCS, Alltel, SunCom, and T-Mobile. From Analog to TDMA to CDMA to GSM, my experiences have changed with the advancing of technology. That being said, I ended up with Cingular for the potentially obvious reasons that the previous providers all left something to be desired, and a hope that there was indeed a truly good cellular provider in the US market.
My travels this past year have taken me to all parts of Virginia and into Southern Maryland, always with my sidekick, my Cingular mobile phone in hand. I have a SonyEricsson phone, which gets generally good reception, as do most of their phones since the t68i’s reception disaster a few years back.
So, with that background in mind, I will now discuss the ins and outs of Cingular’s service. One would assume coverage around the nation’s capitol to be superb for the nation’s largest mobile carrier. Service, however, is less than stellar by most accounts. While outside in most urban areas, you will maintain a good signal and good call quality, moving just a bit off of the main roads will bring your reception down quite quickly. Being one of two GSM providers in the country, the only other being T-Mobile at this point, there is a limited network of towers to choose from. Also, these GSM phones don’t have an analog fallback in rural areas like the CDMA providers still maintain, the biggest of those being Verizon and Sprint.
Moving inside, service further deteriorates. Should a building have thick walls, you might find yourself moving toward a window or having to step outside to maintain a call. This alone, depending on the buildings you frequent, could be enough to push some customers away.
Cingular also likes to cite their network as having the fewest dropped calls, but in reality, I have had more randomly dropped calls with Cingular than with any previous network other than SunCom. It is at least a weekly occurrence that I will be on a call and for no apparent reason, even with full signal strength, I will hear the call dropped tone, and the line will disconnect.
As far as Cingular’s customer service, I have had no issue with them. Hold times are generally short, and the representatives are in the United States. In the past year of service with them, I have only had one billing error, and they once made a mistake in my favor, saying I was eligible to upgrade my handset before the proper time. That may just be a ploy to keep paying customers under contract.
Pricing with Cingular is a bit higher than that of the other carriers, but the key here is rollover minutes. This can save you quite a bit of money. If in one month you use only half of your minutes, the remainder will stay with you for up to a year in case there is a month where your situation requires you to use the phone more. Cingular’s data features, however, are overpriced. They keep their call time fees under control and finance the rollover program with somewhat ridiculous data rates. You pay ten cents per text message, both incoming and outgoing. If you want to get mobile-to-mobile messaging for free, you have to subscribe to a text messaging package and then pay a $5.00 fee for those “free” mobile-to-mobile messages. If you have a family plan, you’ll have to pay that same fee for each line. Most carriers provide this for free.
Ultimately, Cingular is a great provider for those who live, work, and play in the city and urban areas. For those who venture off the main highways and like to explore, I would definitely recommend getting a different phone, as you don’t want to be disconnected from civilization in a moment of distress.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 120
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Epinions.com ID:
felixderkater
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Location: Virginia, USA
Reviews written: 45
Trusted by: 1 member
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