Cingular or Tmobile

I am currently a longtime Verizon customer. I haven't had any service
problems, but my wife and I would like to upgrade our phones to one of
Blackberry's 7100 series. That dictates the we switch our carrier to
either Cingular or Tmobile. We live in the Minneapolis area.

Any feedback on the 7100 series devices?

Any feedback on Cingular phone service in this area? With this
equipment?

Any feedback on Tmobile phone service in this area? With this
equipment?

Thanks,

Steve

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› See More: Cingular or Tmobile

"PepeLePew" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>I am currently a longtime Verizon customer. I haven't had any service
> problems, but my wife and I would like to upgrade our phones to one of
> Blackberry's 7100 series. That dictates the we switch our carrier to
> either Cingular or Tmobile. We live in the Minneapolis area.
>
> Any feedback on the 7100 series devices?
>
> Any feedback on Cingular phone service in this area? With this
> equipment?
>
> Any feedback on Tmobile phone service in this area? With this
> equipment?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Steve
>

T-Mobile recently opened up tons of roaming around there. (85% more
coverage) Here is a map they gave out. With that new coverage, i hear good
things up there. Lot of the coverage isn't shown on t-mobile's maps online
and at compass.t-mobile.com but it's there.

http://web.danboy.com/850.jpg

and more info here:

http://www.t-mobile.com/morecoverage

All of the new coverage is 850mhz. Keep that in mind.

PepeLePew wrote:

>I am currently a longtime Verizon customer. I haven't had any service
>problems, but my wife and I would like to upgrade our phones to one of
>Blackberry's 7100 series. That dictates the we switch our carrier to
>either Cingular or Tmobile. We live in the Minneapolis area.
>
>Any feedback on the 7100 series devices?
>
>Any feedback on Cingular phone service in this area? With this
>equipment?
>
>Any feedback on Tmobile phone service in this area? With this
>equipment?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Steve
>
>
>
I had absolutely no complaints with my Cingular coverage in Minnesota
when I was there. Across sections of I-90 areas, where T-Mobile roaming
cut out, I was able to roam on Cellular One (Alltel, formerly Western
Wireless). In some of those rural areas, I had the *best* coverage, as
the carriers were Midwest Wireless, Cellular One, and T-Mobile.

I have quite a few friends that have T-Mobile inside the twin city metro
area, and all of them love their phones and plans.

My best advice would be to borrow a Cingular phone and a T-Mobile phone
from friends or colleagues, and see which one has the best coverage for
the places you use them. I'm not sure about roaming on one another
inside the metro area, but I would assume it's disabled. Most of the
people I know switched from Verizon and Sprint to T-Mobile, and they've
been happier with T-Mobile.

I knew of T-Mobile customers roaming with 850 coverage, I guess T-Mobile
made it official now.

TH

I don't live in Minnesota, but I want to interject my two cents that I
hope will help. In the case of the Blackberry 7100 you want the better
"data" coverage unless you are just using your Blackberry as a phone
and a calendar. I believe Cingular's high speed data coverage is much
larger. T-mobile's unlimited Data is cheaper, but I don't think it is
as fast or as large as Cingular's. If you're looking for only voice
coverage and price then you probably won't choose Cingular when you
compare the two -- especially in a large Metro area where everyone uses
the same GSM towers anyway. ON the other hand if you want good
coverage outside of the metro area you may want to choose Cingular. I
hope this helps.

I have a 7100g on Cingular. Good email, Horrible voice calls.
Audio quality not as good as a real phone (Moto V series, Razr, Nokia etc)
on Cingular.


--
Steve
<[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>I don't live in Minnesota, but I want to interject my two cents that I
> hope will help. In the case of the Blackberry 7100 you want the better
> "data" coverage unless you are just using your Blackberry as a phone
> and a calendar. I believe Cingular's high speed data coverage is much
> larger. T-mobile's unlimited Data is cheaper, but I don't think it is
> as fast or as large as Cingular's. If you're looking for only voice
> coverage and price then you probably won't choose Cingular when you
> compare the two -- especially in a large Metro area where everyone uses
> the same GSM towers anyway. ON the other hand if you want good
> coverage outside of the metro area you may want to choose Cingular. I
> hope this helps.
>

I have a 7100g on Cingular with unlimited data. Its a cool toy but unless
you need the email functionality you're better off getting a regular phone.
The 7100 series isn't very comfortable as a phone (actually ANY of the
BlackBerry phones) but its useful as a BlackBerry. Keep in mind that the
7100 series' keyboard has two letters on each key but it has the SureType
technology that's pretty good at predicting what you're typing but still not
good enough for the technically challenged. As far as signal quality - that
depends on the carriers in your area. Cingular is assimilating more and
more AT&T towers every week so if you have low coverage in your area you
might want to talk to a Cingular salesman somewhere locally and see if they
can get in touch with one of their network engineers and give you a schedule
for when they'll be moving the AT&T towers over to the Cingular network.

"PepeLePew" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>I am currently a longtime Verizon customer. I haven't had any service
> problems, but my wife and I would like to upgrade our phones to one of
> Blackberry's 7100 series. That dictates the we switch our carrier to
> either Cingular or Tmobile. We live in the Minneapolis area.
>
> Any feedback on the 7100 series devices?
>
> Any feedback on Cingular phone service in this area? With this
> equipment?
>
> Any feedback on Tmobile phone service in this area? With this
> equipment?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Steve
>

Where T-mobile works, Cingular typically also works. This is because
They both use 1900 mhz GSM but only Cingular uses 800 mhz GSM.

If T-mobile's coverage is sufficient for you I recommend it above
Cingular. T-Mobile's plans and customer service are superior in my
experience.

I recommend that you look at the coverage maps on their websites then
decide.

Dave

PS I switched to Cingular for coverage reasons.