Cingular Wireless in CA SUCKS!

[psycho-]

"I'm sorry, all circuits are busy" "I'm sorry, all circuits are busy" "I'm sorry, all circui00ts are busy" "I'm sorry, all circuits are busy". It not only affects cingular users, but also other carrier users like me (I'm on Verizon, never had a system busy)

Argh!

Cingular Execs should know where to shove their crappy network...


Anyone else have had a bad experience w/ Cingular?

[DoPeY5007]

Dude I am in So Cal and love Cingular over any other company

[CornMonkey]

cingular definitely seems to have a lot more "pockets." all i know is that whenever my friends w/ cingular don't get reception, i do w/ AT&T

[brainsmile]

I'm thinking of swiching to AT&T soon. I'm in SD and I always get a system busy tone

[brain]

Like I said before, if you hate Cingular now, prepare to hate them even more. Voicestream will be launching in the Los Angeles area in the next 6 months or so. They will be piggybacked onto Cingular's network which will add a lot more traffic.

[Thunder]

yep...all my friends on cingular are trying to get out...

it sucks in LA...

[DoPeY5007]

Originally posted by Thunder
yep...all my friends on cingular are trying to get out...

it sucks in LA... well I have hsed almost every service latly ( friends with others ) and my Cingular has been the best

[Anck Su Namun]

No, but I have heard the same thing about how bad they are from other people. Get Sprint PCS, they are good.

[Apex]

Sucks, I get from 0 to 1 bar of signal at my home with Cingular. Talk about useless. Even if it's not busy, it'll drop the call.

[molecularfire]

Hehehehe. I have verizon. Get great reception everywhere except in my apartment and my school (I spend around 99.99% of my time in either of those two places). :D

[kimchicowboy]

Originally posted by CornMonkey
cingular definitely seems to have a lot more "pockets." all i know is that whenever my friends w/ cingular don't get reception, i do w/ AT&T

same with me. i'm all for at&t.

[psycho-]

Originally posted by molecularfire
Hehehehe. I have verizon. Get great reception everywhere except in my apartment and my school (I spend around 99.99% of my time in either of those two places). :D


I'm on verizon, and my home doesn't get good signal. Oh well, it's not bad considering all the other ones don't get signal at all.

[brain]

Originally posted by Anck Su Namun
No, but I have heard the same thing about how bad they are from other people. Get Sprint PCS, they are good.


They are good.... for nothing. Granted they are adding approximately 400 cell sites in Los Angeles over the next year and will probably be the first carrier to offer 3G. As of now, they suck. IMO.

[Grimm]

I had Cingular in San Diego. It sucked. I switched to Verizon, much better. :)

[mojo]

i had cingular in san diego. it sucked. now i have verizon. now just the plan sucks :shifty:

[Jihforce]

Used to be a Sprint PCS customer. However, Sprint coverage isn't extensive enough and is specially poor in the San Diego area. So, I switch to nextel. 350min anytime, 3500min off-peak, 200min direct connect. All for $39.99. And that includes national long distance.
And unlike sprint, my off peak minutes start at 8pm not 9pm. Read the fine print folks. Old Sprint PCS off-peak USED TO start at 8pm. Not anymore.
Downside of using nextel?
1-Poor battery life on the phones (because of the extra features such as Java Apps and 2-way radio)
2-The nice phones aren't cheap. The cheap phones are too big.

I got me the i90c
http://www.usnextel.com/motorola/hawk2.jpg

[Sir_Froggy]

my whole family has cingular and it's all really good...maybe one busy tone or circuits are all busy a week or two but reception in my house and most other places are good.....except at Sorrento Valley there is practically no reception there

[Jihforce]

well sorrento valley is like between hills and stuff. no wonder reception is poor.

[Sir_Froggy]

reception's not poor...there is no reception

[Anck Su Namun]

hmmm interesting. I had Verizon in Maryland and hated it with a passion, although I was out in the middle of freakin nowhere. Still though their service was pretty crappy. I have sprint pcs now and like it so far although I have only had it a month.

[psycho-]

Originally posted by Anck Su Namun
hmmm interesting. I had Verizon in Maryland and hated it with a passion, although I was out in the middle of freakin nowhere. Still though their service was pretty crappy. I have sprint pcs now and like it so far although I have only had it a month.


Verizon Wireless is considered the best coverage in california.

Out there in MD, it was BAM, if I'm correct.

out here, it was former GTE and Airtouch. Both with relatively good CS and very good coverage both digital and analog.

[psycho-]

Originally posted by Sir_Froggy
reception's not poor...there is no reception

In sorrento valley, i get decent to good reception w/ Verizon :)

[molecularfire]

Is there a website that tells you which company has good reception where?

[brain]

Originally posted by molecularfire
Is there a website that tells you which company has good reception where?

There used to be a web site that told you such information. It would show maps and show where you would get good/okay/poor reception with a particular carrier. The only problem with that is not all handsets perform equally. But back to the web site... They no longer offer this service. They just sell phones now.

[psycho-]

Originally posted by freakinfreak


There used to be a web site that told you such information. It would show maps and show where you would get good/okay/poor reception with a particular carrier. The only problem with that is not all handsets perform equally. But back to the web site... They no longer offer this service. They just sell phones now.


Just remember this, if you're anywhere west of Kansas, it's best either to go on Verizon or AT&T almost all the time.

[sho.gun]

I'm on Cingular and whenever I'm at school in Northridge, the reception is pretty good. No dropped calls, very clear, etc. But when I get home, there's this one spot about 3 feet from my closet that would get reception in my room, other than that there's no network... unless I go to the garage. I also changed my antenna on my ericson T28 to one of those light up ones, believe it or not, it doesn't affect reception at all.

[Dave_7]

Originally posted by Apex
Sucks, I get from 0 to 1 bar of signal at my home with Cingular. Talk about useless.

I think it's some kind of rule... at your house... you get no signal. Or at your girlfriend's house... somehow they just know.





Dave.

[brain]

Originally posted by sho.gun
I'm on Cingular and whenever I'm at school in Northridge, the reception is pretty good. No dropped calls, very clear, etc. But when I get home, there's this one spot about 3 feet from my closet that would get reception in my room, other than that there's no network... unless I go to the garage. I also changed my antenna on my ericson T28 to one of those light up ones, believe it or not, it doesn't affect reception at all.

Well, keep in mind that the CSUN campus is pretty level and there really aren't any tall buildings to interfere. Go to UCLA where it's hilly and buildings abound, service is definitely compromised.

[kil45]

I used to have cingular, but i got no reception in the house and it was always system busy, so i switched to sprint. I get full reception almost everywhere, and there is no system busy. The downside to all this is that cingular recently expanded around here and people are getting 3 bars in the house( but they still get system busy, which makes me feel a lot better about switching).

[Windsor]

Yah, cement and bricks not too great for reception.

[brainsmile]

So which is best for San Diego?

Cingular?
Sprint?
AT&T?
Verison?
Other (please state)

[brain]

Originally posted by kil45
I used to have cingular, but i got no reception in the house and it was always system busy, so i switched to sprint. I get full reception almost everywhere, and there is no system busy. The downside to all this is that cingular recently expanded around here and people are getting 3 bars in the house( but they still get system busy, which makes me feel a lot better about switching).

Sprint should be REALLY strong in Irvine. They've had service in the Orange County area since 1996 or so. THey definitely do not have nearly as many subscribers as Cingular does which is why they probably never have system busy. Cingular on the other hand screwed the system when they started offering their unlimited mobile to mobile and their unlimited nights and weekends. They thought they would remedy that by changing the time frame of what is considered an "off peak" minute. Apparently, this still hasn't changed thigns much.

[ZrEo0]

cingular has good packages but bad reception

[brainsmile]

So how is sprint in SD? I used to have them but I used to get dropped all the time.

[brain]

I've heard good things about Sprint in the San Diego area. I used my phone (AT&T) quite frequently down there and had great reception wherever I went. Try a service out. Many of the carriers have a return policy that will allow you to try the phone and if you don't like it, you can return it. You just need to pay for the airtime that you used. AT&T's policy is 30 days, Verizon is now 14 days, Nextel is 30 days or 30 minutes, Cingular is 7 days or 30 minutes. I'm not sure about Sprint's policy. This is my understanding of the Los Angeles market. Your mileage may vary in San Diego.

[psycho-]

Originally posted by brainsmile
So which is best for San Diego?

Cingular?
Sprint?
AT&T?
Verison?
Other (please state)

My experience is that Verizon is best in SD. AT&T a close second
All my qualcomm friends say that all the employees know that verizon has better coverage.

[Jihforce]

Originally posted by Dave_7


I think it's some kind of rule... at your house... you get no signal. Or at your girlfriend's house... somehow they just know.


Haahaa So true. :heh:

[Jihforce]

Originally posted by brainsmile
So which is best for San Diego?

Cingular?
Sprint?
AT&T?
Verison?
Other (please state)

Depends on where in SD you live.
I frequently visit the Poway-Penasquitos area (used to live there) and I noticed that Cingular and Sprint aren't very good in that area.
My Nextel phone works extremenly well there. However, in La Jolla it kind of drops down a little. (It hovers around 1-2 bars)

Sprint is very crappy in the Cerritos, North Long Beach, Bellflower area. But good around the 405 freeway. Works well in Tampa Bay and in Las Vegas. But will not work inside casinos. Haahaa (I'm just sharing with you my experiences taking my phone around). Sprint works well in the SJ area, including Berkeley. Now this is using a Motorola Startac phone. I cannot assure you it will work the same with Sprint, Sanyo and Samsung ones. Oh it doesn't work well in Tucson at all. Heehee.

A good friend of mine uses Verizon and it pretty much covers SoCal extremely well. I don't know how good it is beyond that.

ATT sucks in the Long Beach area. Even on the 405. But works fairly decent around everywhere else. Even on the "grapevine" around the mountain pass north of LA. Its not bad in Vegas either.

The reason I know all of this is because my friends and I all have different plans. Haahaa. One had Cingular (sucked so bad that he got Sprint, now it sucks even worse because he moved to Del Mar) One has ATT and got dropped while driving by LB when we were talking to him on the phone. I used to have sprint and got tired of them. And now I use nextel.

Sorry for the long post. :P

[psycho-]

Verizon is gonna have this phone come out sometime this year. Finally they can provide competition to Sprint PCS and their Sanyo Phone. Finally, I can get another decent Japanese style phone.


This Sharp CDMA 1xrtt (2.5-3G) phone w/ packet switching data capabilities up to 144k has a colour screen, downloadable apps pictures and ringers (via Qualcomm BREW, sprint PCS uses J2ME), analog roaming, trimode, and speakerphone.

http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?id=14

It's already been approved by the FCC and because it's CDMA and has brew, it's pretty much slated to Verizon. If you follow the FCC link, you can take a look at schematics, internal boards, SAR ratings, the preliminary manual, etc.

In another note, check out this brew demo w/ its obvious Verizon logo right below the Colour screen

http://www.qualcomm.com/brew/demos/appdemos.html

Very cool.

[leemaj]

Originally posted by molecularfire
Hehehehe. I have verizon. Get great reception everywhere except in my apartment and my school (I spend around 99.99% of my time in either of those two places). :D

ive got cingular in san diego...doesnt work at my home or school....but verizon gets full reception in both places

[leemaj]

more specifically, i live in escondido. anyone know of a good provider? right now i get 150 day time, unlimited nights and weekends, for $29.99 a month.

[brain]

The closest thing to that would be Sprint's 29.99 plan which includes 200 anytime and 2800 night/weekend minutes. 2800 is as close to unlimited as you can get. For a little bit more, you can go w/ Verizon for $35 a month and get 350 minutes anytime, 3150 night/weekend minutes, and 250 mobile to mobile minutes.

[brainsmile]

so even if verison is good for now... I guess it'll get bad once it and cingular start clogging up the lines

[LoverOfTheNight]

Anybody here have an extra Nokia 8290 phone for Cingular service to sell?? I'd love to hear from you and buy it

Must use 32k sim chip.

[Apex]

Yeah, I guess I can sell my 8290 now. How much do these things go for?

[LoverOfTheNight]

I'll take it for $100. A pretty nice amount deal.

[brain]

Originally posted by Apex
Yeah, I guess I can sell my 8290 now. How much do these things go for?

That's pretty fair. My wholesale cost for Nokia 8290s has dropped to about $139, but that's without the SIM card. Cingular charges dealers $20 for the SIM card alone.

[LoverOfTheNight]

do you have one for sale??

but i need it for cingular service, using 32k sim chip

[brain]

Originally posted by LoverOfTheNight
do you have one for sale??

but i need it for cingular service, using 32k sim chip

Sorry, I don't have any used handsets for sale. I'm in the wholesale business. Try to move 500 of these at a time.