In five of the six regions in call quality performance. http://www.wirelessiq.com/content/newsfeed/9717.html

You get what you pay for.

Where I live that would be zero with Verizon. ;) I don't have much faith in any of these surveys anymore. I think the same people get getting them over and over again.

Verizon is #1 for coverage in Baltimore/DC. In fact, there's never any arguing it. But these days with roaming plans and such, coverage is becoming a moot point. I'm with Sprint, and I can now data roam on Verizon (1X, but hey, it's still latched on there)...

Much cheaper plan, all the coverage I could ask for. This is one helluva smooth sail.

No shock or surprise here...I've always thought Verizon is the best ALL around carrier in the nation with coverage. Perhaps I might give them some consideration one day if I ever leave T-mobile, I just don't know if I could bring myself back to Cingular.

I always kind of envy people who go from GSM to CDMA. It's easy for me to not leave CDMA for GSM, because I'm pretty comfy here. I've never REALLY known the true joy of SIM cards. That's gotta be one hard "feature" to give up, when moving from GSM to CDMA.

Verizon's losing point is their pricing and pretty shoddy plan offerings. Like any carrier, though, you've gotta take the bad with the good. If it's important to you that you have coverage pretty much everywhere, then you'll pay what you need to in order to get that (within reason, of course). There are worse things (i.e., Cingular) than high prices.

Well I can't imagine life without a sim card and love the pure joy of being able to move handsets at will. However, thats only a mild invitation to keep the service if the service isn't exactly what I want. T-mobile, while its pricing is great and I really have no complaints about the service has people spending less time on the phone with me. While I keep them and don't look elsewhere for the mere purpose that I am employed by them I would zero problem switching carriers. Sprint, while I am sure their service is great in the Chicagoland area and I know paddyoc will yell at me if I say otherwise is the other carrier whom I don't know anyone on. For me, its us cellular, Cingular and Verizon. US cellular, while their rates are awesome, often little in the way of high speed services, something I miss constantly. Cingular, well I just can't imagine their terrible voice quality. Verizon has some excellent services and sometimes after working for them, I feel they get a bad rap. Their prices are not any higher than Cingular's and if they are its a max of 5 dollars on some data pricing.

I wonder if I could live doing a 1 year agreement, picking out an exellent phone with as advanced of services as I can get and living with it for a while on CDMA. Its a question I'll be pondering as I prepare to make an exit from T-mobile.

I have Cingular and have zero problems with them. They give me coverage in places where Verizon and TMobile don't. It all depends on your location. I also don't want to go back to the days of not having a SIM card. It's so much more convenient to do my own phone swaps now.

While I agree with that to a point, I live in the Chicagoland area where everybody has saturated coverage. It comes down to your specific neighborhood, address, place of work etc. Its safe to say that everyone has adequate coverage around town but when I'm making my pitch I just tell people honestly when they ask me what differentiates say Cingular and T-mobile service wise. Well very little actually if you just want to compare it actual service, leaving pricing, "services" out of the picture, its a different frequency and thats really it. Theres no magic bullet that makes one better than the other, some may say the frequency but that has been argued to death.

On another note, I love and enjoy swapping phones as often as I want but when push comes to shove, I'll pick other factors. I have zero problem paying full retail for a cdma phone, which often relates to how much I buy my unlocked gsm phones for. Its not a whole lot different pricing. I think when it comes down to it, eventually I may be able to settle on one phone and one carrier based on factors other than my desire to swap sim cards whenever the mood strikes.

All I know is that VZW ranks highest with me, and it's because of their coverage, not the fact they indirectly cut my check. :)

I gotta tell ya man, I didn't think I came across as THAT gung-ho, but I splurged and got an unlocked krzr, I trying out T-mob ToGo, the service is ok, but not as comprehensive as Sprint around here.

At this rate, I will most likely try out Beyond GSM....

Beyond uses Cingular's coverage area. Do you have good coverage with Cingular where you live?

Meh. Not really. T-mob ToGo service is similar to Cingy. I'm aware that Beyond Gsm uses Cingy, but I thought they ran off of what were old AT&T Wireless towers......but I was joking around. Coverage isn't the most important thing with my GSM phone, that is why I still use Sprint service primarily. I love the krzr, and the Sprint version was horrible, so I got myself a toy.....

Well Said!

My experience mirrors yours, I have had truly exceptional RF reception from Cingular. It is very, very rare for me to experience a dropped call. In addition my usage expands further as I travel to the UK, and other countries annually for work. Plus I rely on the convenience of being able to swap sims and use all kinds of different phones. That's the fun part for me, as a true mobile phone enthusiast.

I cannot imagine not having a GSM phone. The rest of the world is GSM and I would not be able to communicate without GSM. So in the final analysis, I'm very happy to have Cingular as my service provider.