Best Mobile phone provider in Bay Area?? (San Francisco, Morgan Hill: house, live in)

[writeme]

Hi,

I live in San Francisco downtown and I am looking for a mobile phone connection. I have been using Cingular (now ATT) since 2 years and have not had any problems yet. I found a good deal with T-Mobile with 1000 when ever minutes @ $40 per month. I am thinking of opting this offer.

Can somone who use T-Mobile say how the call quality and coverage is in the Bay Area? Else, which are the best service providers around here?

[18Montclair]

I hear T-Mobile is pretty good but I use ATT(used to be cingular) and am pretty satisfied I suppose.

[gizmo980]

Don't do it... Cingular/At&T is very reliable and reasonably priced, whereas T-Mobile is famous for dropped calls around here! I did a trial-run with them a while back, and gave up even trying to call somebody near a hill - and seeing as we live in the Bay Area, it's pretty hard to avoid hills. I'd suggest you stick with Cingular, or you'll end up being frustrated & switching back at a high cost. If you must leave Cingular, consider Verizon first, though I hear bad things about their customer service.

They should pay me for this advertising, LOL.

[sonarrat]

Verizon is the carrier of choice in the South Bay (the only carrier that reaches my parents' house in Morgan Hill!), whereas AT&T is superior in San Francisco and all the way down the peninsula, in my experience.

[rah]

You could check out MetroPCS, which has no contract, and is relatively cheap for what you get. The downside is spotty service, and it only works in the Greater Bay Area and a few other random parts of California (I've had it work in parts of the Central Valley and LA). You also have to pay full price for any new phone you get (first phone with signing up is half off).

The upside of course, is no contract, and if you don't pay you can do so at any time within the next month with no Penalty. For 60 bucks a month you also get unlimited minutes, texts, and internet. I have to say the service can be annoying at times, but in downtown SF there will be no problem at all. If you travel a lot though, forget it.

Otherwise I say stay with ATT, or check out Sprint.

[libbykt]

I've had Verizion, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile and I have just recently gone back to AT&T. In my experience, just from a service/dropped call perspective, AT&T and Verizon have the best coverage around here, although Verizon has really really crappy customer service. Well, they all do for the most part these days. Sprint is not nearly as bad as it was 5 years ago, but my friend who has them drops me enough that it's obviously still an issue. My husband just switched from T-Mobile to AT&T for work (I get his company rates, which is why I switch so often) and he gets better signal all over the Bay area.

My advice would be, if you have a good service, don't mess with it, kwim?

[kindafedup]

This is a really good question. Any comments on ALLTEL?

Do people use it there? I'd like to take advantage of their mobile to mobile.

[Trevor92]

Originally Posted by kindafedup

This is a really good question. Any comments on ALLTEL?

Do people use it there? I'd like to take advantage of their mobile to mobile.

Very few people in the Bay area will have alltel. They don't have retail stores, own any phone numbers, or natively provide service to that part of San Francisco because they do not have an airwave license for that area from the FCC. So the only way for them to enter the market is with the buyout of another provider, and down the road it may make a lot of sense for Metro and Alltel to merge, though that's just my speculation. Existing alltel customers roam for free on Sprint and Verizon.

[writeme]

How about metroPCS? Anyone using that? Does that have good coverage across bay area?

[almost human]

Had Sprint, MetroPCS, Verizon and finally ATT, we changed service in this order as service degraded, so far ATT is still the best, service wise, equipment is lacking. LG CU575 phones rarely drops calls outside, does poor job inside and only during morning. Cheap Sony Ericsson W350a will hold in/out 24x7, even on hold over 1 hour inside after 4 PM with ATT trying to get our pricy LG phone replaced. Att needs to come out with a MILSPEC Rugged phone that can take a beating in the real work environment.