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at&t really does have better 3g coverage?

mobil3gen

mobil3gen

Android Enthusiast
Thought it was interesting this morning when I read about PCWorld' study that showed At&t had a faster 3G experience.. I'm currently on Verizon and where I live its definitely much faster (apparently Idaho's armpit is where its at! :)) - wonder what this means for the commercials.. How is your at&t coverage on your android phone where you live?

link to chart here
 
speed and coverage are two totally different things...I would much rather have a solid connection than a couple more kbps
 
Fully agreed, the study did suggest in my opinion that Verizon had the better overall "experience." I was happy to see T-Mobile was tested too, I really enjoyed them as my carrier until I moved to a rural area in Idaho. My G1 was a complete brick here - and at the time Verizon didn't have the Driod or Droid Eris, but its nice to know now that I can have a sweet phone even out in the boonie-dingles.
 
That's like somebody who won $5000 at a roulette table saying, "I make more money than you per hour. So keep your sucker day job!"

And it still doesn't matter to me- my apartment bldg gets no signal and at work coverage is spotty.
 
The title of this thread is based on the same falacy that at&t is trying to promote in those terrible commercials.

Verizon: "We have more 3g coverage."
at&t: "No you don't, we support people all over the US!"
Verizon: "Uh what? We said 3g coverage."
at&t: "We have faster 3g!! Iphone! LUKE WILSON!"

Wonderful.
 
I find their marketing ploys fairly entertaining. The title wasnt stating any real truth. It's kind of ironic, but good point.
 
I had AT&T for over 10 years. They went through several itterations as Cellular South and someone else locally, before my service was called ATT. I had excellent phone service and coverage in the Pensacola area. We've spent the last two summers in Yellowstone, and no one has good coverage there, but the people with Verizon have the best that is available.

We got smart phones (Blackberry 9700) last month with AT&T. We loved the phones but the data coverage and internet access was very poor. Went on a trip to Tennessee and the other travellers with us had various phones. Verizon had the best coverage all the way up and back.

I realzied that ATT does have quality phone service in many areas but much less coverage when it comes to data. We switched to Verizon a couple weeks ago and now have the Motorola Droids. I love the internet capability but we are struggling to get used to the phone itself. My phone quality does not seem to be as good as it was with ATT, but the overall coverage is much better with Verizon. As someone mentoned earlier, there is a big difference between service and coverage! At the present, I feel like I am compromising a little phone quality for better data coverage.
 
Isn't marketing wonderful? I got a real kick out of those "there's a map for that" commercials when they first started. I will never in the rest of my life be in 99.99% of the areas where they have coverage and AT&T doesn't, and the tiny fraction of a percent of my time that I might actually be in a place where I could get a signal with Verizon and not AT&T is completely outweighed by the fact that my GSM phone works internationally and Verizon's doesn't. That's why I was willing to abandon AT&T for T-Mobile, with even less coverage, in order to get my Nexus One: as poor as T-Mobile's coverage may be, it still does fine in every place I am remotely likely to be, so it really doesn't matter.

Of course, what's important to me and what's important to other folks will be different; if you're a wilderness hiker or a Fuller brush salesman with a rural route, breadth of coverage would be your principal concern.
 
well the marketing works though even thuogh they might not be the fastest or best 3g like att says they get people to believe it. anyone normal person that is an everyday cell phone user will see that and be like wow att is good i need to go with them. im with sprint and there commercials are ok nothing special. they never really run one phone and push it to the limits they do it for a month and thats it. you always see att and iphone commercials, well not recently but they will come back again.
 
ATT is the fastest, but weak in terms of coverage. However, larger cities are reportedly terrible with ATT due to server issues.

I would rather get 3G everywhere at a modest pace then 3G in select places with quick speeds.
 
Having had at&t mytself before, nothing will convince me their service is better. I travel all over S.Florida and can't remember the last time I had no data or voice when I needed them on Verizon.
 
mrmojoz said:
The title of this thread is based on the same falacy that at&t is trying to promote in those terrible commercials.

Verizon: "We have more 3g coverage."
at&t: "No you don't, we support people all over the US!"
Verizon: "Uh what? We said 3g coverage."
at&t: "We have faster 3g!! Iphone! LUKE WILSON!"

Wonderful.
Click to expand...
But it shows that AT&Ts deceitful ways is working. Verizon has the best 3G coverage in the US hands down.
 
As we all know, where you use your phone (live, work, play) is important. I live in the seacoast are of New Hampshire. AT&T coverage was 2 bars and non-existent in my small town. I had an iPhone and finally ditched it due to that (after almost 2 years). My N1 on T-Mobile works great in my house.

Point is, even the little guy can have better coverage depending on where you are. And the "rumors" about AT&T 3G being lousy in big cities is true. Try to use your iPhone on AT&T during rush hour in Boston or San Francisco.
 
Ok before last week I had AT&T and their coverage was horrible. Outside my office I had two bars and inside my office, which is in a 12k sq ft steel and brick warehouse I had no reception. However as of last Sunday I have my new droid, I can sit in my office, with full bars, fast as can be loading, and make a call out with crystal clarity. AT&T could never do that in the Eight, I repeat EIGHT years I was with them. So they can suck it, Im taking my old AT&T phone to the skeet range and im gonna blow it straight to hell, 12gauge style.
 
I might just have to do that, will have to have someone hold my droid as it captures the AT&T phone getting blown to bits but Im sure one of the other gun nuts can hold it. Don't expect the video link for a little while though as its cold as all heck out here in southwest illinois and I don't want my finger freezing to the trigger. Don't laugh its happened before. A nice warm sunny day will work just fine.

Of course I could always take a .45 caliber revolver to it, six hollow point rounds would definitely entertain the you-tube folks for a day or two.

I have three of the phone since it was a family plan, now we have two droids and one blackberry on the new verison plan.

So one by skeet range, one by indoor range, and if I could get a quarter stick of dynamite we would strap it to the third one. Then make a video montage with John Lennon music and it would be good.
 
AT&T is used to all kinds of FAIL ....

ATTFail.jpg
 
Interesting, I don't think that we'll ever really have solid evidence, here is contradictory evidence - here

Granted not all of their networks are up yet, but still the implementation is in the works, and I do believe that Tmobile has the fastest 3G, and is really reliable, shoot I got 3G coverage last week while snowboarding, I downloaded some apps on the lift. And Tmobile twitters all the time about new cities being opened up to 3G.

I know that Tmobile was slow in the race of getting 3G, but I definitely think they were working on getting quality up, not just quantity like Verizon, and especially like AT&T. As we can see with 3.5G in the up and coming there will be the Tmobile network will have a much faster dog in the race.
 
I live in NYC, and here the issue is not so much connection speed (yes ATT is slightly faster), but connection, period. Here ATT is notorious for having beautiful Ipods, but REALLY crappy connectivity. Of what use is it to have a slightly faster 3g service, if your users either can't get on-line or experience dropped/interrupted calls, and/or delayed texts and messages?

That is the problem with ATT, as I see it, and it is the main reason I dropped them and when with verizon and the Droid. once I got it configured how I wanted it, it has been smooth sailing for me. Yes the Iphone is nice and has a few nice options the droid doesn't have, but the droid does many things better and others the same. Add to that Verizon's rock solid reliability and I really can't complain.
 
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