we need to replace our phones. i want to switch from verizon to att to get iphones. my wife thinks the att network is unreliable compared to verizon and wants us to get blackberrys. i'd appreciate any comments on verizon vs att for network reliability. we live in boston, so that's the primary focus, but we travel a lot too.
I travel for a living, and Verizon has better coverage on average across the US. In some places it is far superior to AT&T and in a few places it is inferior. I have almost never had a dropped call with VZW, but with AT&T I expect it.
AT&T's problems are the result of over subscription of their services and in the past was due to all their mergers and buyouts of smaller companies.
Even though I find AT&T inferior, they are superior to T-mobile in coverage area. I say this because it is very hard to travel with a CDMA (VZW or Sprint) phone to Europe - GSM is the standard. I can take my iPhone almost anywhere in the world; i can't do that with most VZW phones.
As for you, I find many large metro areas unusable with my iPhone. I live near Cincinnati and have no problems, but when I travel to NYC, it takes effort to place a call successfully. iPhones and Blackberrys are very different (I think) in features and usability. I have had many Blackberrys and I just don't like them. They do email well, but are poor phones. Even the things they do well; I don't care for the way they do them.
If nothing else go the AT&T store and play with a blackberry and iPhone side by side. Decide which phone you like first. Blackberrys are mostly the same regardless of which carrier they are on.
I have both AT&T and Verizon. I use the phone mostly in NY and Long Island. I HATE AT&T. The amount of dropped calls lately is staggering on AT7T whereas Verizons performance is consistently superior. The only reason i keep AT&T is the iPhone; the day Apple does a deal with Verizon and/or a PDA comes out on Verizon that performs almost as well as the iPhone, I switch!
It's pretty much area specific - Out here in South Central California the opposite is a truer statement. I never have an issue with dropped calls, or low quality calls, with AT&T.
At work we had Verizon, and we always had issues of one sort or another, and we just burned out. I have friends with Verizon, for personal use, and they complain a little, but not like we did at work.
Everyone I know with the iPhone and that's dozens have no beef with AT&T.
I was in Manhattan a short time ago, visiting my Niece, and I had no real trouble, but for a little scratchiness. It was acceptable, overall.
I think that everything depends on where you live. I know that here in Long Island NY in my case I don't even use 3G due to the dropped calls. For some people this doesn't make sense but I keep the 3G OFF all the time on my iPhone. Some times the call will drop within a minute. In my experience and I can only speak for my self, when on 3G, I will get a drop call about every 4 minutes so that's why I keep 3G OFF all the time plus I save on battery life too.
I know it is not a phone issue because I had it replaced twice not knowing about this. Once I knew, I just put up with it.
Western Massachusetts here. No problems at all with AT&T except for the very ocassional dropped call. Coverage is pretty good although 3G varies quite a bit. Sometimes I have it and then 10 minutes later, I'm back on EDGE. Sometimes the bars will drop completely and then go right back to 5 bars. Overall though, not really a bad experience out here.
Out near Boston though, particularly at Fenway and in Gillette, I have problems when I'm at the games. It's much slower. Hopefully it won't be too bad in Vegas (next month).
It does? Then how come I had continuous coverage, with no dropped calls last week in Albany, Saratoga, Utica, Rochester and pretty much everywhere else along I90
It does? Then how come I had continuous coverage, with no dropped calls last week in Albany, Saratoga, Utica, Rochester and pretty much everywhere else along I90
I don't know if there were any recent updates there but when I've been in Manhattan, the coverage is really bad, samething in the Bronx, Long Island, Eastern Long Island is the worst, Westchester and Queens where I frequently meet with my family. It is also known that people in NY and San Francisco are the ones experiencing this coverage issue the most. But hey, I never had any 3G data package untill I had my fisrt iPhone 3G , it may be normal I don't honestly know but 25 - 35 percent of the calls I make are dropped I don't think it is normal at all. My best friend has an iPhone 3G he's having the same issue so my guess is not my phone. This only happens when I'm on 3G, on Edge everything is good and since I don't really use 3G I'm on Edge all the time.
It does? Then how come I had continuous coverage, with no dropped calls last week in Albany, Saratoga, Utica, Rochester and pretty much everywhere else along I90
Really, the only way to figure it out is to get an AT&T phone and use it extensively in the same areas you normally do. If, within 30 days it doesn't work for you, they'll let you cancel without cost. When the iPhone initially came out, there were many, I mean MANY threads dedicated to this issue. To boil them down, after many people doing extensive testing, there doesn't appear to be anything LESSER about the iPhone's ability to connect to the network over another AT&T device (like the Bold, etc). It doesn't appear any MORE capable in constant coverage than other AT&T phones either, so it really just boils down to whether the AT&T vs Verizon coverage works for YOU (as far as the iphone antenna vs other phones, you can take my word for that or look over a bunch of ancient threads -- there was a lot of concern with the original iphone because the antenna was in the place where you hold it, etc, etc., but things like that dissolved into pure THIS network vs THAT network for THIS user vs THAT user).
Our AT&T coverage is spotty where I live and my Verizon coverage is not, so therefore I think AT&T is inferior *for me*. I had to install a signal booster on my roof for the iphone to consistently work and not drop calls. This doesn't mean AT&T s&cks, it just means that in my area it doesn't have as good coverage as Verizon.
So when my neighbor was asking advice on the iPhone, I told him to borrow my old 3G for a few weeks to see if it worked okay at his house (he doesn't have a home phone -- he has Verizon with no problems), because I was still experiencing AT&T problems with my iPhone whilst at home. (At work, ZERO problems). It did NOT work for him, so he went out and got a Tour (on Verizon). That's just the way the ball bounces. Nothing against Apple or AT&T.
But unless you get someone on this thread that happens to live on your street, work at your office and frequent a very similar set of areas and establishments as you, you won't get a precise answer.
If you're out of contract with Verizon, this is moot. Just try AT&T for 3 weeks to see if it works for you.
Has anyone done the math.
In round numbers, Apple claims to have sold 21 million phones total. This, I am sure, includes all international sales too. Now, with all the levels of phone service and different prices, lets use an average of $65.00 which I am sure is on the low part of that scale. So ignoring that of the 21 million phones, that may be overseas, take 21 million times $65.00 and you get about 1.3 BILLION dollars a month in revenue for AT&T. One would think that for 1.3 billion dollars, they could invest a little more in making their service one to be desired, and not one used because we are forced to.
I know that they are investing money. With the iPhone being three years old and the amount of revenue that they have received from it, I am still disappointed by their response. I recently was told by a friend that has been experiencing a lot of dropped calls, NOT an iPhone. She went to an AT&T store and was told that the iPhones were causing her problems. They are using up so much of the resources that this was creating the problems.
All you have to do is take a look at the coverage maps between AT&T and Verizon to see the lack of AT&T coverage. And the MMS, just recently becomming available, but only for the 3G phones. Where has this service been in the past?
They actually don't break even on the iPhone until very late in the contract so your reasoning is a bit illogical. And in point of fact the iPhone has been a drain on their network and they are playing catch up. Sorry if it isn't fast enough or widespread enough for you. If you do not have good AT&T coverage in your area switch to whatever provider does have good coverage where you live/work or spend most of your time and make the choice of which iPhone to get secondary.
