I think everyone agrees that no carrier has coverage
everywhere and that all carrier's coverage does not
coincide. So one should first decide what your priorities
are, who offers it, and if more than one carrier then
consider price and plans.

-Quick

Nick Danger wrote:
> I fear I might start a flame war with this ... well,
> actually I don't fear it; it might even be entertaining.
>
> A couple weeks ago, I finally decided it was time to move
> up from my two old AT&T TDMA phones. I also needed a
> third phone, so that required some sort of a new plan. I
> got three Razr phones with a Cingular family plan (550
> minutes). One handy feature that my old phones didn't
> have was the ability to sound a tone whenever it passes
> in or out of a no-service area. While driving home one
> day on the secondary roads, I found that I was in a
> no-service area for almost half of my 25-mile commute.
> During this time, I saw other people talking on their
> phones, so it appears someone was getting service. Also,
> I found that almost all of our friends had Verizon and
> claimed that they got great service everywhere. This is
> in Northern Westchester County, NY.
> 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.
> 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. The V3M
> has more features and a more refined looking user
> interface, but I'm really going to miss the ability to
> transfer photos and [url=http://www.unlimitedcomplimentaryringtones.com]Ringtones[/url] by Bluetooth. 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. I do wonder how much of a contribution
> the analog towers make to Verizon's much-vaunted superior
> coverage. In rural areas, it appears much of the coverage
> is analog, which would do me no good with an all-digital
> phone.
> 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.