Verison/ATT-any real difference?

[BeyGon]

We are shopping for new phones and are with ATT now, any real reason to switch?

[HardDrive]

Verizon has a much larger coverage network. I'm with ATT now. Happy with them in Seattle. Moving this summer, so that could change.

[Head416]

My experience has been that they have equal/comparable coverage in the big city, but Verizon has better coverage as you get farther away from a major metropolis. That's how it is in SoCal at least. YMMV.

[red-beard]

AT&T works worldwide. If that is an issue...

[Gene Wilkes]

If you want to save money check out beigephone.com. I recently switched from Verizon to this company and cut my monthly service bill by more than 1/2! And STILL using Verizon!

[MRM]

One sucks and the other is horrible. That's the main difference.

[Jim Richards]

How's Sprint?

[Hugh R]

I need AT&T for travel. Verizon works much better in places like NV, AZ, CO, and NM when you're out in the boonies.

[allaircooled]

Originally Posted by Head416

My experience has been that they have equal/comparable coverage in the big city, but Verizon has better coverage as you get farther away from a major metropolis. That's how it is in SoCal at least. YMMV.

This. I work on the big wind turbines you see out in the middle of no where. In most situations I have encountered, the guys with Verizon where able to talk, text, and surf the web. The ones with AT&T, not so much. I unfortunately am one of the ones with AT&T.

[porsche4life]

Depends on where you are. Get in the boonies in OK and your chances are way better with AT&T. Really all depends on the area....

[spuggy]

Originally Posted by red-beard

AT&T works worldwide. If that is an issue...

That's a sweeping statement.

Quad band GSM phones (all of them since about 2000 or so) broadly speaking, "work" anywhere with GSM service (like, not rural India or China, which I believe still widely use CDMA outside metro areas), for voice.

Data gets complicated quickly once you want to go faster than technologies like GPRS (2G) or EDGE (2.5G). I think you'll find that high-speed data uses different frequencies in Europe, and as AT&T don't use them, their phones may not have the appropriate radio support in the chipset - particularly in older phone models. T-Mobile has compatible UMTS (3G) data frequencies with some major Euro carriers. So you can use HSDPA or HSPA+ on a T-Mobile phone with the right carrier abroad.

If the model of phone you buy has a different model # for T-Mobile and AT&T, that's really not a good sign for international data usage via UMTS. Although some recent chipsets have all 4 commonly-used data UMTS frequencies, so would work on AT&T, T-Mobile and might work in Europe, depending on the carrier you picked for the pay-as-you-go SIM...

You would certainly want an unlocked phone and a local pay-as-you-go SIM - if you thought $1 a minute international voice roaming was a rip-off, wait till you see the bill for data roaming. Ask the guy who ran up a $30,000+ bill in a week on a cruise ship, thinking his off-shore usage wasn't being charged as international roaming...

In any case, portable 3GPP technologies like HSPA+ are about all you can hope/plan for with careful model/carrier selection; global LTE does not exist. Your LTE phone won't do LTE anywhere else; spectrum fragmentation means that South America, Europe, Asia and Australia all use different frequencies from the US - and each other.

What the ITU considers real 4G LTE is not what you get in the US (regardless of what the press releases/marketing department say). "4G LTE" in the US is the LTE from the 3GPP spec, and strictly is "pre-4G", "3.5G" or "3.9G" according to the ITU-R (but which may, confusingly, also be referred to as "4G" - because carriers were already marketing it as that. Thanks for that Marketing Dweebs - and for re-defining "gigabyte" so that it wasn't 2^30 bytes. Muppets).

"Real 4G LTE" is "LTE Advanced". Beta-testing now - in a few markets in Europe. Not available in the US.

I pretty much stopped caring about data rates past HSDPA/HSPA+ thanks. Anything I can watch streamed native 720p over is way faster than I need to manage a server.

[Seabear]

I really didn't get all the techno-jive Spuggy was talking about, but, 2 weeks ago in Guangzhao, China, my Droid 2 Global with Verizon as the carrier (and all the roaming carriers) got me voice, text, and data with no issues. A bit pricey, but it al worked.
On the road here in the US my cell has much better coverage than my wife with her ATT.
But I may be prejudiced, ATT dropped me (1999) in the middle of the most important business call I ever had. I was able to re-connect, get the deal done, and get on with it, but no ATT ever again.

[porsche4life]

So you've NEVER had a dropped call on Verizon? I'll call BS on that....

[Seabear]

Call it as ya see it, Sid, but nope. Not to say it won't happen tomorrow, and no, I'm not a big time Verizon fan, but maybe I've been lucky. Whatever, I'm just saying that the one call that needed to be finished was dropped by ATT in the middle of negotiations. And that has stuck in my craw for 14 years.

[porsche4life]

I know plenty of people on Verizon, and they've all dropped calls while I was with them or on the phone with them...


However, I've never been on a business call that dropped that simply reconnecting and letting them know what happened and apologizing wasn't acceptable. Everyone uses cellphones, everyone has a dropped call. If it was that important, you shouldn't have been on a cell, especially not in '99...

[Seabear]

Thank you for your advise, I'll keep it in mind.

[Pazuzu]

Secret for the best cell service ever, from any carrier...

Pick up phone.
Turn off phone.
Step on phone.

Move on from phone.

Be happier without phone.

[Joe Bob]

AT&T uses SIM cards.....last time I was with Verizon they didn't. SO swapping phones can be a pain......verizon does have an app that stores your contacts, so if you lose the phone, you can get them back.

Lose a AT&T phone...it's on the SIM card.....which in the phone....

[porsche4life]

That is the benefit to smart phones. Keep it syncing with outlook, gmail, icloud, iTunes, take your pick, and you have your contacts backed up.

[gacook]

Originally Posted by porsche4life

So you've NEVER had a dropped call on Verizon? I'll call BS on that....

I've never had a dropped call with Verizon. However, I fairly often do get calls from people saying they've been trying to call me for hours, but it goes straight to voicemail, and when I check my call log, there's nothing there. Also, occasionally get texts from people...that they sent 2 weeks prior (literally). So, Verizon has its issues, but they're pretty good. They worked great for me in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, etc.