Which Phone Carrier for the PNW?

[5Toes]

^ IMO AT&T has a bad, bad worst phone selection...

Its going to be a family plan with 3 phones, one of which will be a smart phone. We dont travel much out of state, maybe once or twice a year at most so coverage outside of Western Washington in general is not that important.

[Keith M]

I like my iPhone with AT&T. I travel around and I don't recall one dropped call. I even had decent coverage when I was in Alaska. International rates are high but that doesn't concern you.

[5Toes]

We currently have AT&T... but it so damned expensive. iPhone is nice and I like how popular it is but I think android is right for me.

[HarukoE30]

We currently have AT&T... but it so damned expensive. iPhone is nice and I like how popular it is but I think android is right for me.

5Toes, the way you go about your car makes an iPhone right up your alley If AT&T is expensive that counts Verizon out, so just Sprint or T-Mobile.

[djjerme]

Have Verizon today, but I am getting ready to switch to Virgin, because it's almost half the cost. Verizon does have the best network IMHO, and have never had problems with reception and dropped calls, but the cost is just horrendous.. Either way, I would strongly suggest looking into the cost of each plan, and also pulling a report of the minutes you use vs. text vs data usage. I tend to TEXT and use up DATA a lot, phone calls - not so much.

[5Toes]

^ us too. I will be using data all the time... also Virgin is nicebut the phone selection sucks.

[DrJosh]

5Toes, the way you go about your car makes an iPhone right up your alley If AT&T is expensive that counts Verizon out, so just Sprint or T-Mobile.

Hahahaha I agree.

[kennyvb]

I have Sprint. It's cheap but I do get a lot of dropped calls...so much that I'm looking to move to a place with better coverage.

[george graves]

I'm on "Straight Talk" - I only pay $30 a month for like 1000 mins. No contract.

They have android phones for $150(for a no-contract phone, that's a heck of a deal), and unlimited voice/text/web for $45 a month. It's all piggybacked on the sprint network. Coverage is good, call quality is normal. Customer service I hear stinks, but I've never had an issue to call about in the 2 years I've been on it.

[5Toes]

I would love to get an unlocked phone... only problem is that you can only use AT&T or TMobile I hear... Sprint and verizon use a different kind of network so that doesnt work

Unlocked phone plus straight talk but would be cool!

[george graves]

You can't unlock it and take it to another carrier. You can "root" it so you can do what ever you want, including tethering.

You have to use one of their phones.

[5Toes]

I understand that George, but you can buy from like Newegg an unlocked phone that will work on any carrier that uses this global type of network. THese unlocked phones also work in Europe

[george graves]

Well, it won't work on straight talk, like I said.

[Slangbox]

I understand that George, but you can buy from like Newegg an unlocked phone that will work on any carrier that uses this global type of network. THese unlocked phones also work in Europe

What you're referring to is GSM vs CDMA. AT&T and TMobile use GSM, while Verizon and Sprint use CDMA. GSM dominates the rest of the world.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-gsm-and-cdma.htm

And George, rooting and unlocking are two different things. An AT&T iPhone, for instance, can be used on the TMobile network. This is done by jailbreaking the iPhone (the equivalent of rooting on Android), and then unlocking the phone via a separate process. You would then use a TMobile SIM card.

[\ramblings]

[5Toes]

^ yup.