On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 14:48:13 -0400, "Nick Danger"
<yourname@yourdomain.com> wrote in <bixsg.91$v35.86@fe12.lga>:

>I fear I might start a flame war with this ... well, actually I don't fear
>it; it might even be entertaining.

[sigh]

>Given that Verizon apparently had better coverage and we would have someone
>to talk with with our "In" minutes, I finally decided to sign up for Verizon
>and do some comparisons. I ordered three Razr phones from Verizon and they
>arrived today - V3M model. I spent a lot of time driving around the Danbury
>area and northern Westchester, and I have to report, to my surprise, that
>Cingular has had better coverage, better signal strength, and much clearer
>sound. It's difficult to tell from looking at the phones. The Cingular phone
>goes up to five bars; the Verizon phone goes up to four. Sometimes I was
>able to get a clear signal on Verizon with zero bars; other times I got a
>very staticy poor quality signal with four bars. The quality of the sound
>coming from the Cingular phone has been generally comparable to the number
>of bars. If you have zero bars, you can be quite certain that you have no
>service. In fact, it seems I rarely get a bad signal from Cingular; it's all
>or nothing.

That's a fundamental difference of the technology: With GSM (a
TDMA-based system), you get a dedicated time slot, so quality is
generally consistent given a minimal or better signal. With CDMA, you
share with other subscribers, and system performance is noise limited,
so you can get degraded or even dropped in the course of a call. In
practice these differences aren't usually significant, but sometimes
they are, as you've noticed.

>Verizon's 700-minute plan costs about the same as Cingular's, but I doubt
>we'll ever use that many minutes, so for us, the 550-minute plan is a better
>deal.

Cingular Rollover is a big advantage if your usage varies from month to
month.

>International roaming with GSM sounds like a nice thing to have,
>but in reality, it's entirely possible that I might never leave the USA
>during the lifetime of this phone. And even if I do, roaming is so expensive
>that I wouldn't want to do it even if I could.

International calling is much more affordable with local SIMs and a
Callback service -- see the FAQ below. You can have a quad-band phone
"unlocked" to make this possible.

>Based on what I've seen (and heard) so far, I honestly have to say that
>Cingular is winning. Could it be that Verizon's better coverage is all a
>myth, perpetuated by a well-orchestrated advertising campaign? I won't have
>time to travel around extensively to test the two thoroughly before one set
>of phones has to go back.

What matters is the actual service, not the technology, and there is
very good digital coverage in many areas for both CDMA and GSM.
I personally don't see much benefit to analog coverage -- I used to
carry an old D-AMPS phone in my car for emergencies (since 911 calls go
through even on an unactivated phone), but no longer.

The key is to go with the best combination of coverage in areas you
actually care about, features, and value, according to your own
particular needs, which you seem to be doing. No one service is best
for all people, even in a given area.

--
Best regards, SEE THE FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS AT
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>