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My wife and I are moving to Summerville in the summer. Any suggestions for cell phone carriers? In Michigan, the best thing we found is Cingular...then we switched to T-Mobile
I am also in Michigan and we are moving to Summerville as soon as we sell our house. Here in Michigan i have had all cell companies at one time or another and I have Verizon. I have visited the Summerville and surrounding area several times and have never had a problem with reception.
I've found that nobody is especially bad in my many trips to Charleston and Summerville, so if you're going there with anybody I would be surprised to hear that you're having coverage problems. I have heard the most complaints about SunCom/T-Mobile though so that is unfortunate for you, but it may not present a problem in your specific location. My own line through alltel tends to do better in the area than my work line through Verizon. Alltel's plans also tend to offer more for the price with my circle than Verizon generally offers so they may be worth checking out. Alltel also does very well if you do much traveling or hit many rural areas in SC.
In Summerville coverage is tricky. Don't just go by the simple "it works" reviews here. All of the major nationwide carriers have stores in Summervile, but mostly by the Interstate. When it gets to downtown and the residential areas, coverage varies greatly.
Being an avid phone user and 'geek' that carries phones from several carriers, I will give you advice based on drive testing using several phones. I carried phones from AT&T (Cingular) T-Mobile (TMO or Suncom) and Alltel on my extensive 3 day drive testing in Summerville and have over eight years wireless industry experience not including IT exp. so you I hope you take my review here seriously.
Alltel - had very good solid 4-5 (5 being fullest) bar coverage in the newer shopping areas near the interstate and also downtown and west/NW. In my personal opinion Alltel would be the carrier of choice here. They recently launched EVDO and have a fast data network here as well
AT&T - Awful. A big disappointment. In my home state I would promote them in the metro area. My family moved here and finds they have 1-0 bars signal in main parts of town and are roaming on Suncom towers in many parts of Summerville. Downtown coverage on AT&T (Cingular) are awful in Summerville. No jokes or pun here. It's a fact. I only got about half signal in the ATT store there. Even asked the rep in their store why they had such bad coverage and got a clueless we're improving coverage every day answer. I was staying in a rental apartment just behind the new shopping center where the AT&T store was so I had reason to be concerned. My phone displayed Suncom while I was in the apartment less than 1000 feet away from the store.
Verizon - Using Alltel they get great coverage. But why not just use Alltel then? Verizon has some towers in the area but when you drive around town and the state you end up using other providers. Alltel has better roaming agreements leaving you with better coverage when driving. South Carolina is without a doubt going to have some roaming no matter what carrier you use. Verizon users complain more than Alltel users here. If you live in Summerville, choose Alltel over Verizon if you want a nationwide CDMA provider.
T-Mobile - Surprisingly the GSM 1900 provider has pretty good coverage in Summerville. Why? Well, Suncom put a few cell sites in town to cover areas where people live work and play. If you are out of range of a Suncom site you get an At&T signal but all w/o any charges and a T-Mobile user wouldn't know who they used to begin with. I have first hand experience on using T-Mobile in many parts of the Carolinas. If you have/want a GSM provider then T-Mobile gives you the best of both worlds. Since AT&T has awful coverage in downtown and many city center parts of Summerville, SC using Suncom gives you access to a great signal in the city and good roaming coverage outside the city with no effort required from the end user. If you don't choose Alltel (who has the best data and voice coverage here) then T-Mobile is a good choice.
Suncom - See my review above. TMobile bought Suncom and is merging the network together. Unless they remove the ability to freely roam on AT&T sites in some areas T-Mobile and Suncom users should continue to enjoy great metro coverage in the Carolinas... namely Summerville for this review.
Sprint - I did not get much chance to test Sprint coverage here. Based on their online map, they do cover the area and based on my knowledge of their roaming agreements with CDMA competitor Alltel, they should offer sufficient coverage in Summerville since Alltel provides roaming coverage in this area for Sprint users (not including IDEN/Nextel phones).
We just moved from NC and I have US Cellular Nationwide plan and my service sucks in Summerville! I am lucky to get 1 to 2 bars. Now, I just have to figure out a way to get out of the contract without paying!
Husband was just there to scout area. He too is a "geek" and carried 2 cell phones. Both were fine the whole weekend - Sprint and Verizon. He stayed largely in the Summerville area, but also took rides out to Folly, IOP, etc, and didn't have a problem at all. In fact, he was on the phone almost the whole time calling back here to NH to tell me what he was seeing and have me tell him which houses to drive by.
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