T-Mobile in Southern California?

[bachviet]

I'm looking for a new cell phone carrier 'cauze I'm tired of AT&T bad reception. How is T-Mobile reception and service in SoCal? Thanz!

[hapoo]

at&t sucks in socal?? Which parts do you live?

Since i'm going to irvine i was going to get a mobile phone and i was actually looking at getting it with at&t. If anyone lives in the area... what service is best?

[bachviet]

Originally posted by hapoo
at&t sucks in socal?? Which parts do you live?

Since i'm going to irvine i was going to get a mobile phone and i was actually looking at getting it with at&t. If anyone lives in the area... what service is best?

I live in Garden Grove and travel between Irvine, Westminster, Santa Ana, and Garden Grove. AT&T is okay around Irvine but sucks in Garden Grove or Westminster. I can't get reception or bad reception around my gf's house in Westminster (outside). I would go with either Sprint or Verizon but their phones are expensive comparing to T-Mobile. I heard horrible stories about T-Mobile but I still want to get more opinions!

[Acy]

How about Cingular? I live in SD and whenever I drive up to LA, I don't have any problems with it.

[eSDee]

I think psycho- is the man for this subject. In my experience, Cingular and Verizon has best service in SoCal.

[p3rsian]

Originally posted by Acy
How about Cingular? I live in SD and whenever I drive up to LA, I don't have any problems with it.

your kidding me right ??
i live in sd, have cingular
by far the worst cell phone service i used.
service is poor and bad. you can talk if u want to stand some where and not move. but if u drive it really sucks cant hear a thing.
brother had cingular and he switched to att. now thats what i call service it rulz.
if u want good coverage and service go for verizon.
t-mobile and cingular use the same service here in so cal.
they suck !
they really do
go for att or verizon
stay away from sprint also.
dont make the minutes that cingular is advertising (1000 for 39.99) fool you.

[eSDee]

In all fairness p3rsian the phone can make a difference. I had cingular for 2 years and I had great service area, just expensive as a mug. Then they started their nites and weekend special and everyone jumped on the bandwagon which overloaded their service, which is why I switched to Verizon.

Verizon. Good service area, ugly phones

[kimchicowboy]

i've been very happy with my sprint service in LA. in fact, i get better reception in my apmt than when i had at&t and better reception than my roomie who has verizon. the only problem are some parts of UCLA where i had problems with at&t anyhow. but all throughout LA, i haven't had a problem.

[avlena]

If you're around UCI, Cingular gets great reception, cause they've managed to install an antenna on campus. Same with UCLA i've heard. but trust me on this one, the pain of their customer service is SO not worth the trouble...i like Verizon because their customer service reps are polite, and don't try to argue with me when i have a problem. With Cingular, I regularly had to call in with complaints, usually about once a month. cheap, yes, but not worth it. in terms of reception, on campus it could be better, but other then that it's great, and i get less dropped calls.

[shabubu]

You can buy the phone and use it for 14 days with T-Mobile (as with most companies) and test the reception in your area...I have SprintPCS and tried out the T-Mobile service in San Diego..I was really pleased...I got reception in areas where Sprint didn't. I cancelled with T-Mobile only because I didn't like their basic phones and didn't want to pay a minimum of $199 for the phone I wanted.

[p3rsian]

Originally posted by eSDeeLoco
In all fairness p3rsian the phone can make a difference. I had cingular for 2 years and I had great service area, just expensive as a mug. Then they started their nites and weekend special and everyone jumped on the bandwagon which overloaded their service, which is why I switched to Verizon.

Verizon. Good service area, ugly phones

i have the nokia 8290 now and im getting the new 8390 next week.
lemme put it this way it might help

CINGULAR
pros: Great Plans, alot of minutes. free phone
cons: worst customer service, worst reception

At&t
pros: goood customer service, good reception , free phone
cons: pricy, plans not cheap

T-mobile: same as cingular , u can get free phone at amazon.com

Verizon:
pros: Great coverage, good service, decent price
cons: no free phone, not as many minutes as cingular

[psycho-]

I currently have both Verizon (on a kyocera 2235) and a T-mobile (on a Samsung SGH-S105). Both are good RF performing phones. As for the service, i only trust my VZW service....T-mobile is too unreliable.

Sprint is horrendous in SD. It's still pretty shady up in LA, but gett much better.



As for phone service in LA, I would still only go with VZW if I wanted a reliable service.

I wouldn't trust AT&T Wireless GSM (has to deal with their migration and spectrum allocation that would lead to unreliable service). Their TDMA shoud still be okay but they have been recently unreliabile as they are tweaking towers to add on GSM equipment.
I don't trust Sprint because of their poor coverage overall and customer service. Low BTS density hurts them too.
I don't trust Cingular/T-mobile becuase they have low BTS desnity and they're using GSM.

[avlena]

Originally posted by shabubu
You can buy the phone and use it for 14 days with T-Mobile (as with most companies) and test the reception in your area...I have SprintPCS and tried out the T-Mobile service in San Diego..I was really pleased...I got reception in areas where Sprint didn't. I cancelled with T-Mobile only because I didn't like their basic phones and didn't want to pay a minimum of $199 for the phone I wanted.

actually, come to think of it, Verizon offers the same thing... 14 days to return it for full money back, no fines. :-p couldn't hurt to try it out! They're really nice about it... and i went through radio shack, and they were really helpful. i was having probs with reception in my apt, and they let me borrow 4 different phones for the afternoon to test out the reception and see which was best!

[Jihforce]

Nextel: I use a nextel. I get wonderful reception almost everywhere in LA. There's only one place I had poor reception in. North Redondo Beach and this one block area next to Long Beach airport. When I'm in OC, I have no problems, same for SD.
I pay about $40 bucks a month. 300 anytime and unlimited nights and weekends with long distance included.

Sprint: I used to have a sprint phone. I hated it, you only get good reception near the major freeways. if you go away from it then your signal drops significantly. My fiance as Sprint. It seems ok. Then again she's only paying 15 bucks a month. So can't complain. However, I know that sprint's towers are kind of messed up. Like the time on yoru phone is inaccurate. My fiance, and two good friends of mine had that problem with their phones.
My sister also has Sprint (my old phone). She can hardly use it...whats ironic is that she lives about 1.5 miles from a sprint service center and has only 1 bar at home.

Verizon: By far the best coverage around. My good friend has it and he can talk almost anywhere he wants. He's got reception in the most remote places. Which is amazing. Their plans are pricey tho. Which is why I opted not to go with them.

Cingular: I call it Sin Lugar aka "without a place". My cousin has it. Its funny because this phone gets reception in the weirst places. and of the more important places, you can't get any reception whatsoever. I like their whole rollover minutes idea...and i hear their plans are pretty reasonable tho.

T-Mobil: No clue about coverage. but their plans are very generous. Phones are not too expensive. If its good enough for Katherine Zeta-Jones, then MAYBE is good enough for us?

AT&T: All my coworkers use ATT, but it seems that once you leave the South Bay area and into Long Beach and below, the coverage kind gets patchy. I can't knock these guys too much cuz i own some of their stock So with that said, they are alright.

[psycho-]

Verizon: 700 minutes anytime, unlimted nights and weekend, 1000 mobile-to-mobile, 100 text messages, unlimited mobile web, minute-use 3G data, insurance, enhanced vm w/ group messaging, pager forwarding and such.

55/month or so

[Grimm]

I was on Verizon. I am on T-Mobile now.

I live in San Diego. Coverage is a little better than Verizon for me, but I occationaly have some difficulty dialing out. It has been few and far between so it's no big deal. T-Mobile is the better deal for me, I live and work in covered areas, and I was tired of being mugged every month by Verizon. I cut my bill in half, and get to talk more now... Color me happy.

[bachviet]

Verizon offers good service and coverage but its plans and phones are expensive. I'm looking for 2 phones and I don't want to pay more than $70 for it (with national coverage)! Another plus with T-Mobile is the free phone and Samsung S105 is my choice right now.