Honestly who has better service... Verizon or AT&T

[erikfig]

Verizon. 10 characters

 

[Josefius]

helllo...

i'm new to the droidforum. to stay on thread...i've been with verizon since it was contel...that means bag phones, "bricks", and then Treos...just upgraded to the droid from a centra....bit of a culture shock, but i think i will enjoy it.

the service i get from verizon has always been top notch...i have a number of friends who have been on sprint, at&t, other services...most (who pay for the service themselves) have moved to verizon. main reason is coverage area...

r3

Not to be off topic, but I noticed in your profile you have your phone number for "Phone". you should put the model phone you are using, not your phone number.

 

[takeshi]

There is simply no answer to this question. In addition to the fact that quality depends on where you are, the question of "quality" depends upon whether you're talking about voice, data, service availability, or quality when service IS available.

The major carriers all differ on all of these dimensions and in any one place one carrier may have great voice quality and lousy data quality.

^ This.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see this thread again. This topic rears its head all over the place but there's no single answer except from the marketing departments of the carriers and fanboys.

Always select the carrier based on real world (not coverage maps) coverage where you need it is as close as you can get to a one-size-fits all answer.

 

[hazydave]

ATT states in their commercials they cover 97% of Americans.

And they do.

What they're not really telling in you in those ads is that "cover" is not the same thing as "cover with 3G".

When Verizon does an attack ad, they're showing AT&T's 3G map. When AT&T does a "we're covering you" ad, they're showing their own 2G map. Apples and oranges, really... if you're AT&T.

They can't come after Verizon with the same kind of attack because every Verizon cell is a 3G cell... had been for some years (the last upgrades were on the Altel network, which was already well into upgrades before the Verizon acquisition). This is due to several factors. For one, Verizon has been CDMA for a long time, while AT&T/Cingular had about half the network still on DAMPS... a switchover only completed in 2008.

The other is plain old technology... Verizon's EvDO (3G) works in the same 2.5MHz bandwidth that 2G did. So there's no need for additional spectrum, or a major overhaul of their transmitters, etc. For AT&T, going to HSPA they need at least 10MHz per channel, 20MHz for the full speed options. So they had to secure more bandwidth in some areas, and in other areas, they may simply not be able to play well.

Then there's range. Verizon and AT&T both have 850MHz blocks in most areas, as well as the 1900MHz blocks everyone else also owns. AT&T having both allowed them to use both for 3G... 5MHz in each band. But 1900MHz has natural propagation limits versus 850MHz, as well as being blocked by foliage and building much more readily... this is why everyone got so excited and spendy when the 700MHz auction was held (this is where AT&T and Verizon both plan to roll our their LTE-based 4G). So for the same towers, Verizon 3G may be slower (AT&T's capping full HSPA+ at just over twice the speed of Verizon's EvDO... the telcos get to decide just how fast your handset can ever go.... T-Mobile's setting limits about twice as fast as AT&T's... whether you actually ever get higher performance, I don't know).

The other problem goes back to AT&T Mobility and the DAMPS thing. DAMPS towers were farther spaced than Cingular's GSM towers, which themselves are farther spaced than typical GSM coverage in Europe. Some of that's based on population density, but in fact, DAMPS just had greater range than GSM. So some of AT&T's coverage is just plain sub-par.

However, 97% of the population is not evenly distributed over the 48 states, they are in the heavily populated cities grouped together. ATT makes it sound like they are covering 97% of the area, where in fact they are covering the current population.

Yup. And get used to it... they're all going to be making these kinds of claims with the 4G rollout. Sprint is currently covering at least a large part of Philadelphia with their WiMax (at 2500MHz) service... they're the same consortium, same network as Clear and Comcast on this. And all their 4G cells (which are totally new cells, of course, not upgrades to existing ones) are going into population centers. If they just cover cities and near suburbs, they get about 80% of the US population at home.

Me.. I'm still waiting for cable or FiOS or DSL where I live... but Verizon 3G is pretty strong (rural South Jersey)... I'm 2-4 bars inside. Sprint doesn't make it down my driveway, T-Mobile doesn't make it into the house (both of the guys on 1900MHz-only for 2G.. I live in a forest). AT&T works here, even indoors, but it's sketchy.

I like the voice quality of Nextel/Sprint and I used them for 10 years, but when I started traveling the States, Verizon simply kicked butt on coverage.

I was on Nextel before the Sprint merger. Their signal was decent, but their hardware was flakey (at the gigantic phone I had), and they had abysmal customer service.. they were billing me double for six months, they messed things up repeatedly, and the phone never worked right.

I was on T-Mobile, very nice people, excellent customer service, etc. But the signal was gone as often as it was present... they just, at the time (5+ years ago) didn't have the coverage.

I can deal with a scratchy conversation, but I cannot deal without a signal.

I drove from South Jersey to Boston and back, listening to Pandora on my Droid, without a single glitch. I can't say I've never had a dropped call, but certainly never on the Droid, and I can't think of a time it dropped on my Treo, at least not without a corresponding crash of the Treo itself (yeah, sadly, PalmOS was kind of buggy, even after all that time...).

 

[nateccnn]

I know the comparrison is between ATT and VZ. But I moved over from Sprint. When on a Sprint phone in the urban areas of Nevada I was always roaming on Vz's network. Never had an issue with roaming on ATT's network. It seems like if there was an ATT network there was also a Sprint signal. But when I could not get on either, there was always a Vz network.

In the ads you referenced, pay close attention to what they say. ATT says they cover 90 some odd percent of America, but they don't say they have 3g over 90 some odd percent, do they? It's one thing to have call service but an entirely different thing to have 3g when using the internet resources.

Nate

 

[nateccnn]

I drove from South Jersey to Boston and back, listening to Pandora on my Droid, without a single glitch. I can't say I've never had a dropped call, but certainly never on the Droid, and I can't think of a time it dropped on my Treo, at least not without a corresponding crash of the Treo itself (yeah, sadly, PalmOS was kind of buggy, even after all that time...).

Wow...I had a Treo 700P on the Sprint network. That phone never dropped a call. Never crashed. Not even sure I ever re-booted it the whole time I had it. Maybe once when I was on an alpine hike and wore the battery down. I do recall having to charge it when I got back to my truck at the trailhead 6 days later.

In my opine, Palm had the most stable OS on the market at that time. Much less buggy than Android. Their biggest fault was inability to advertise/market.

Nate