Cingular vs T-Mobile for data

In order to tether on Cingular with support, I apparently need a plan
that normally costs $80/month and is currently on sale for about $60. It
occurred to me to check what it would cost at T-mobile.

As best I can determine, I can have unlimited data from T-mobile for a
dollar a day, prepaid without a contract, or about the same price on a
monthly basis. T-mobile has no objection to tethering. That plan also
gives me phone calls at $.15/minute. We don't use our cell phones very
often--they exist mainly as a way for our kids to reach us if there is
an emergency when we are out of the house, and for use on trips--so that
is almost certainly cheaper than the usual cell plan. The prepaid
version is especially tempting, both because it lets me test the service
without a commitment and because I want tethering mainly for our two
annual family trips.

One reason I was checking with T-mobile is that it is, so far as I know,
the one U.S. carrier that doesn't use the 850 frequency. I'm interested
in the Nokia 9300, a triband phone that is currently available only in
the European version--900/1800/1900. Cingular was supposed to have the
U.S. model available sometime last month, but they didn't, and so far as
I can tell by talking to their people have no detectable plans to have
it available anytime soon.

At this point I am considering getting a prepaid T-mobile contract,
keeping my current Cingular account, and perhaps later shifting entirely
to T-mobile if I like their service. I'm curious as to whether anyone
here has experience relevant to that plan. In particular, how does the
T-mobile wireless connection compare with Cingular's? In practice, how
much does Cingular's greater coverage matter?

Is there anything I'm missing?

--
Remove NOPSAM to email
www.daviddfriedman.com

---

› See More: Cingular vs T-Mobile for data

In article <[email protected]>,
[email protected] says...
for our two
>
> One reason I was checking with T-mobile is that it is, so far as I know,
> the one U.S. carrier that doesn't use the 850 frequency. I'm interested
> in the Nokia 9300, a triband phone that is currently available only in
> the European version--900/1800/1900. Cingular was supposed to have the
> U.S. model available sometime last month, but they didn't, and so far as
> I can tell by talking to their people have no detectable plans to have
> it available anytime soon.
>>
> Is there anything I'm missing?
>
Remember that T-mobile and Cingular roam on each other where they're not
competing. A phone without 850 won't be able to roam on Cingular
anywhere in C's 850 areas which is now their primary freq. Also most
small carriers (and there are still lots of them away from the major
cities) that converts/converted from TDMA will be on 850 so would also
be unavailable to a 900 phone. If you plan to do any traveling at all
I'd avoid a model that didn't have 850 whether T-mobile or Cingular.

I really don't understand these manufacturers that are using a tri-mode
chip instead of a quad-mode one especially in high-end pda models like
the 9300 and the new Sony Ericsson P990. They either loose a large
market in NA or have to have two models, one with 900 and one with 850,
like the iMate JAM, which makes no financial sense to me.
--
Jud
Dallas TX USA

David Friedman <[email protected]> wrote:
> We don't use our cell phones very often--they exist mainly as a way for
> our kids to reach us if there is
....
> I'm interested in the Nokia 9300, a triband phone that is currently
> available only in the European version--900/1800/1900.

You rarely use the phone, but you want to limit yourself to one phone that
doesn't work for the 850 frequency?

> Is there anything I'm missing?

T-Mobile has a very nice coverage map, but a lot of what shows up on it is
roaming. Can you roam for data or voice with this T-Mobile data plan?
Does T-Mobile cover the areas that you want? Does Cingular?

--
---
Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8,-122.5

In article <[email protected]>, [email protected]
wrote:

> David Friedman <[email protected]> wrote:
> > We don't use our cell phones very often--they exist mainly as a way for
> > our kids to reach us if there is
> ...
> > I'm interested in the Nokia 9300, a triband phone that is currently
> > available only in the European version--900/1800/1900.
>
> You rarely use the phone, but you want to limit yourself to one phone that
> doesn't work for the 850 frequency?

I rarely use the phone as a phone. I suspect that I would use a phone as
a portable web browser if I had one suited for the purpose, and I would
use it to connect a laptop to the internet on trips, of which our family
takes two long ones a year.

> > Is there anything I'm missing?
>
> T-Mobile has a very nice coverage map, but a lot of what shows up on it is
> roaming. Can you roam for data or voice with this T-Mobile data plan?
> Does T-Mobile cover the areas that you want? Does Cingular?

Both appear to cover the area where I live. According to the T-mobile
map, they cover the location of friends we regularly visit with in
Indiana who don't have a highspeed internet connection, and my wife's
parents in Ohio, ditto. I can't find a similar map on the Cingular site,
although I have a vague memory of having seen one in the past.

--
Remove NOPSAM to email
www.daviddfriedman.com

Jud Hardcastle wrote:

> I really don't understand these manufacturers that are using a tri-mode
> chip instead of a quad-mode one especially in high-end pda models like
> the 9300 and the new Sony Ericsson P990. They either loose a large
> market in NA or have to have two models, one with 900 and one with 850,
> like the iMate JAM, which makes no financial sense to me.

A few years ago, when the only U.S. GSM coverage was at 1900 Mhz, it
made perfect sense for a 900/1800/1900 Mhz "World Phone." The same
chipset that is used for a 900/1800/1900 Mhz can be used for a
800/1800/1900 Mhz phone, and these chipsets are slightly less expensive
than the chipsets that support quad band.

In most cases, the manufacturer will make two versions of the tri-mode
phone, one that is 800/1800/1900, which is great for the U.S. but lousy
for Europe and Asia, and one that is 900/1800/1900 which is great for
Europe and Asia, but lousy for the U.S.

Of course the real reason for making the cheap tri-band phones is that
it enables the pricing of the quad-band phones to remain higher. The
actual cost difference in terms of components is extremely small. But
you're right, for the high end devices, there is no excuse for what
they're doing.

In article <[email protected]>,
Jud Hardcastle <[email protected]> wrote:

> In article <[email protected]>,
> [email protected] says...
> for our two
> >
> > One reason I was checking with T-mobile is that it is, so far as I know,
> > the one U.S. carrier that doesn't use the 850 frequency. I'm interested
> > in the Nokia 9300, a triband phone that is currently available only in
> > the European version--900/1800/1900. Cingular was supposed to have the
> > U.S. model available sometime last month, but they didn't, and so far as
> > I can tell by talking to their people have no detectable plans to have
> > it available anytime soon.
> >>
> > Is there anything I'm missing?

> Remember that T-mobile and Cingular roam on each other where they're not
> competing. A phone without 850 won't be able to roam on Cingular
> anywhere in C's 850 areas which is now their primary freq. Also most
> small carriers (and there are still lots of them away from the major
> cities) that converts/converted from TDMA will be on 850 so would also
> be unavailable to a 900 phone. If you plan to do any traveling at all
> I'd avoid a model that didn't have 850 whether T-mobile or Cingular.

T-mobile has a webbed map which distinguishes between areas that depend
on roaming and those that don't, and shows which are 850.
(http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/?class=coverage)
It looks from that as though substantial parts of our annual trip across
the country are in roaming areas, but almost none of them are 850.

> I really don't understand these manufacturers that are using a tri-mode
> chip instead of a quad-mode one especially in high-end pda models like
> the 9300 and the new Sony Ericsson P990. They either loose a large
> market in NA or have to have two models, one with 900 and one with 850,
> like the iMate JAM, which makes no financial sense to me.

Two possibilities occur to me, one technical and one economic. The
technical one is that there may be some reason why it is easier to make
a phone that works well tri-band than quad--I have no idea whether that
is the case. The economic one is that it may be a device to let them
price discriminate--charge a higher price in the market where they think
people are willing to pay a higher price. But certainly things would be
easier for me if the 9300 were quad band--I expect I would have bought
one about a year ago, when it first came out.

--
Remove NOPSAM to email
www.daviddfriedman.com

David Friedman <[email protected]> wrote:
> I rarely use the phone as a phone. I suspect that I would use a phone as
> a portable web browser if I had one suited for the purpose, and I would
> use it to connect a laptop to the internet on trips, of which our family
> takes two long ones a year.

My Cingular Motorola v551, with Opera Mini as an add-on browser, and
Google.com/glm as a map and routing assistant, is quite capable.
The built in browser is frustrating for anything but the Cingular-supplied
weather and news. It is severely limited in what it can browse. The Opera
Mini will display almost anything, although it's hard to navigate through
all the crud that you usually ignore on the sidebars of a web page. Those
two are pretty lightweight for data usage, so an unlimited plan isn't so
important. The Google maps take a lot of data though, typically 300k for
one simple navigation session. An unlimited plan is advised by Google.

An alternative would be a laptop card and an internet phone.
I use Skype, which is great to other Skype users around the world. The
gang at home could use Skype as well, and it would be free. For outbound
or inbound dialing to a POTS phone, Skype hasn't been so good for me, with
long delay, but people that I know in Europe use it, one from a wireless
PDA. That might improve with eBay buying them. Outbound Skype to a
regular phone is about 4 cents a minute (currently priced in Euros).

The urgency of emergency would be missing with that arrangement, but might
be suitable.

So why this particular phone? My area is 850 roaming, according to the
T-Mobile chart, so you'd be out of luck for voice. Does the data roam?
www.t-mobile.com/morecoverage says that GPRS still works on 850, so I guess
so. My Cingular data doesn't seem to roam, but I don't know if that is
just because the only place I've had the voice roam doesn't have data
coverage, or not.

I haven't found any maps as nice as the t-mobile.com "personal coverage"
page, and I hadn't noticed that it pointed out that my area was 850 instead
of 1900, until pointed out in this thread. You can almost see the towers
in the circle of "Great" coverage. There's no signal strength indicator
for the roaming areas, though.

I did get a personal map sent to me by ATT-ws once, but that was from a
phone call to support, asking about coverage at my new house.

John Navas said that Cingular and T-Mobile share towers in the bay area.
If that's true, the T-Mobile site is pessimistic, unless they show roaming
where roaming is stronger than theirs. I can get Cingular at my house, but
it trips over to roaming very near by.

The map shows "fair" at my old house, where Cingular TDMA was very spotty,
and the "good" corresponds to my recollection of where the phone actually
worked. GSM seems to be quite a bit better in that area.

--
---
Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8,-122.5

In article <[email protected]>,
[email protected] says...
>
> T-mobile has a webbed map which distinguishes between areas that depend
> on roaming and those that don't, and shows which are 850.
> (http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/?class=coverage)
> It looks from that as though substantial parts of our annual trip across
> the country are in roaming areas, but almost none of them are 850.

Ok, but note that most of the "noservice" areas will eventually be 850
GSM as the small carriers convert. Minus the few that may go from TDMA
to CDMA instead of GSM.

That's the most accurate GSM map I've seen. Much more realistic than
Cingular's version which shows GSM everywhere they have a roaming
partner regardless of whether the carrier has physically converted. The
"noservice" areas in north Texas looks close to what I've experienced on
Cingular--where there simply isn't any GSM yet although TDMA/AMPS works
fine.

One last consideration. I've had mixed results while roaming with CSD
data on TDMA and GSM. Some partners support it but others don't--
apparently data is NOT required in the roaming agreements. I would
suspect GPRS and EDGE will be the same--it may or may not work where you
roam.
--
Jud
Dallas TX USA

In article <[email protected]>,
Jud Hardcastle <[email protected]> wrote:

> In article <[email protected]>,
> [email protected] says...
> >
> > T-mobile has a webbed map which distinguishes between areas that depend
> > on roaming and those that don't, and shows which are 850.
> > (http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/?class=coverage)
> > It looks from that as though substantial parts of our annual trip across
> > the country are in roaming areas, but almost none of them are 850.
>
> Ok, but note that most of the "noservice" areas will eventually be 850
> GSM as the small carriers convert. Minus the few that may go from TDMA
> to CDMA instead of GSM.
>
> That's the most accurate GSM map I've seen. Much more realistic than
> Cingular's version which shows GSM everywhere they have a roaming
> partner regardless of whether the carrier has physically converted. The
> "noservice" areas in north Texas looks close to what I've experienced on
> Cingular--where there simply isn't any GSM yet although TDMA/AMPS works
> fine.
>
> One last consideration. I've had mixed results while roaming with CSD
> data on TDMA and GSM. Some partners support it but others don't--
> apparently data is NOT required in the roaming agreements. I would
> suspect GPRS and EDGE will be the same--it may or may not work where you
> roam.

The T-mobile map has a note to the effect that roaming partners don't
always support data.

--
Remove NOPSAM to email
www.daviddfriedman.com

Jud Hardcastle wrote:

> That's the most accurate GSM map I've seen. Much more realistic than
> Cingular's version which shows GSM everywhere they have a roaming
> partner regardless of whether the carrier has physically converted. The
> "noservice" areas in north Texas looks close to what I've experienced on
> Cingular--where there simply isn't any GSM yet although TDMA/AMPS works
> fine.

It's very impressive how honest T-Mobile is being regarding coverage. My
friend went into a T-Mobile store near me, ready to sign up, and the
salesperson put in his address and showed him how poor coverage would be
at his house, and convinced him not to sign up.

Now his two kids each have Cingular cell phones as toys to play with,
and he's on Sprint.

That map also shows me why T-Mobile so desperately wants to put in a
tower in my neighborhood--it would turn a lot of "none" to "fair" into
"Great."

David Friedman <[email protected]> wrote:
> The T-mobile map has a note to the effect that roaming partners don't
> always support data.

www.t-mobile.com/morecoverage says that GPRS works on roaming 850.

--
---
Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8,-122.5

In article <[email protected]>, [email protected]
wrote:

> David Friedman <[email protected]> wrote:
> > The T-mobile map has a note to the effect that roaming partners don't
> > always support data.
>
> www.t-mobile.com/morecoverage says that GPRS works on roaming 850.

"Data coverage is available in all areas except select roaming
locations."

--
Remove NOPSAM to email
www.daviddfriedman.com

Jud Hardcastle wrote:

> That's the most accurate GSM map I've seen. Much more realistic than
> Cingular's version which shows GSM everywhere they have a roaming
> partner regardless of whether the carrier has physically converted. The
> "noservice" areas in north Texas looks close to what I've experienced on
> Cingular--where there simply isn't any GSM yet although TDMA/AMPS works
> fine.

I like the T-Mobile maps because the bands of coverage quality give you
a very good idea of just where their towers are located. The battle
against T-Mobile in my neighborhood has been raging for years, but there
really is no other location that T-Mobile can go to to solve the
coverage problem. Remember that 1900 Mhz covers a much smaller
geographic area per tower. On average, 800 MHz sites are spaced about
6-8 miles apart and 1900 MHz sites are spaced about 2-2.5 miles apart,
unless capacity constraints necessitate closer placement (which is often
the case in dense urban areas). It's really the suburbs that suffer
under 1900 MHz because so many people object to cell towers close to
their homes.

> John Navas said that Cingular and T-Mobile share towers in the bay area.
> If that's true, the T-Mobile site is pessimistic, unless they show roaming
> where roaming is stronger than theirs. I can get Cingular at my house,
> but
> it trips over to roaming very near by.


In california (and nevada??), t-mobile and cingular shared the 1900mhz
network. Since cingular bought attws, cingular decided to use the 850mhz
attws network there and give t-mobile the 1900mhz network. Cingular
customers currently can use the 850mhz network and the 1900mhz network
(until t-mobile gets full control or something. a few years). There are
opinions regarding this. Ive been told the 1900mhz network was better but
ive never been there.

Out by me, i roam in western illinois occasinally. When i go out that way, i
frequently roam on Iowa Wireless, onelink pcs and "USA 040". I can get a
usable gprs signal on iowa wireless and usa 040. (onelink pcs is ok since
its roaming coverage inside an area already filled with t-mobile.) My last
trip i used about 10mb of gprs data over the weekend. (on the $5.99
tmobileweb plan. Hooked up to a laptop. Yes it works, for me.) and i have
never been charged for using data while roaming.

There isn't any 850mhz roaming that i go. I do keep a nokia 6010 just
incase. ( and i have not used it ever. I love my k750 too much to get a
phone with 850mhz)

The coverage maps near me show less coverage usually than is there. That's
ok though. I rather it show less than too much coverage. My house is listed
as "fair" yet i get a full signal or one bar less.

[POSTED TO alt.cellular.cingular - REPLY ON USENET PLEASE]

In <[email protected]> on Mon, 12 Dec 2005
15:36:02 GMT, Jud Hardcastle <[email protected]> wrote:

>I really don't understand these manufacturers that are using a tri-mode
>chip instead of a quad-mode one especially in high-end pda models like
>the 9300 and the new Sony Ericsson P990. They either loose a large
>market in NA or have to have two models, one with 900 and one with 850,
>like the iMate JAM, which makes no financial sense to me.

Two models turns out to be cheaper, since tri-band is significantly less
expensive to make than quad-band.

--
Best regards, SEE THE FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS AT
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>