Is cingular all that bad?

Nobody is gonna be 100% happy with ANY carrier. A poster needed to tell he's not going to get an iPhone 'cuz Apple wouldn't repair his water submerged iPod. :shake:

If where u live are not near a Cingular tower, then your reception maybe spotty vs someone who has a tower next door has nothing to complain. That is all there is to it. Most complaints are SUBJECTIVE.

bobb hit it on the head. Most complaints of any cell company come from two areas

1) Bad reception where they use their phone the most
2) Bad experience with customer service due to billing errors or some other snaffu.

A third possiblity, depending on usage is the likes of their wireless web features. Edge is supposedly slower than either Sprints or Verizon's offering for wireless "broadband"

When looking into a new carrier it is very important that you take full advantage of their trial period and use the phone often where you are going to be using it the most in the future. What carrier is good and which is bad is very much a subjective experience from user to user.

I did no choose cingular because they have poor reception in areas in the United States I travel often, while Sprint had better service in those areas and a much better deal for early nights and weekends.

Cingular as a whole isn't a bad company, but the user experience with the company will be different pending your location. (and the tech you use with them).

I have Cingular and have been thrilled with their reception. I live in Los Angeles, and have never seen less than 3 bars of reception (out of a possible 5) and have never once had a call dropped on me.

Every single cellular company has customers who love them, and customers who hate them.

In Chicago, most people around here aren't fond of Cingular naming it the worse carrier in our city. It's not so great, here the best is verizon, US Cellular or T Mobile.

A friend of mine somewhat likes his cingular service on his RAZR though. Stating that it was okayish and dropped calls on him every now and then within his day.

I liked VZ too, but too bad all the new/cool phones are GSM.

Had Cingular's pre-pay for years since it was AT & T

Not one dropped call.:cool:

a few dollars more tho.

IMHE, "Cingular service is wack"...

...will be the De Facto excuse for not copping iPhone

...used by both broke MF'r's...

...and people who really want the phone, but too cheap.

To be fair, when Cingular first implemented GSM, they had spotty service. The transition from TDMA was difficult. Not only that, but when they first implemented GSM, they used the 1800 MHz (or 1900 MHz) frequency only and that's all the phones supported. This gave horrible reception indoors. A while back they added 850 MHz (900 is what is used in Asia and Europe) and that works better indoors. Lower frequencies travel through walls better.
At work, I used to only get reception in my office next to a window. Now I can go down to the first floor bathroom in the middle of the building and still get reception.
So reception wise, not only does ATT/Cingular need to support both frequencies in a particular area, you also need it supported on the phone. Older phones like mine did not support the lower frequency. The iPhone fortunately supports them all so reception should be much better. Only time will tell.

the presentation the CEO of Cingular gave at Macworld was bad

Well me personally, i have no problem with Cingular. I live in such a rural area, my town only has about 500 people in it, and i get AMAZING reception with them. Everywhere i go i get great reception with them. Sprint or Verizon doesnt get good reception where i live. I do a lot of traveling with school, because of basketball or football games, and mind you i am in southern Texas is basicaly the middle of nowhere, and i never once have dropped a call. Also, the Costumer Service with them is great. I called once so i could change my plan, because a better deal came out and it was cheaper, and the representative told me there was a plan for 550 minutes if i remember correctly, and i agreed that is was a better deal. The lady told me taht she needed to go talk to her manager or whatnot, and then she came back apologetic that the plan had expired and they no loner had it anymore, HOWEVER, she informed me that they would upgrade me to a 700 minute a month plan and credit me for the difference from the old 550 plan so i could still pay the same amount of money. Basically, i pay like $10 a month less now and get 200 more minutes, because my old plan was 500 minutes a month. They are also very good about changing your contract without renewing it. Cingular is great for me, however i hope they do not force you into paying a serice fee for internet usage or wifi, because then i would nto consider the iPhone as an option, even tough my contract expires in June. I have wi-fi everywhere i go, and i dont want to pay 40 dollars a month for internet fo something i can get for free. I also heard something that they are gonna charge $99 dollars a month for wifi use, which would be ridiculous because you are paying for that bill yourself every month for home use anyways. IDK, that would be my only woe about Cingular if it happened, but i am exstatic bout the iPhone and cannot wait for it to come out. It make my V3i look so paltry.

Sincerely

Cingular used to be really bad. It's gotten better these days.

We had a Cingular account for years (before it was Cingular in this area). Reception was horrible and customer service was worse. Switched to Verizon less than 2 yrs ago and it's been night and day.

Also had AT&T landline and cable and broadband. Their customer service stunk too especially during the changeovers.

I wouldn't go back to either of them if you paid me.

I haven't had Cingular before (and I'm kind of irritated to know that the phone will be released on Cingular up until 2009), but I was hoping that Apple would've made an exclusive deal with another wireless carrier other than Cingular--it was foolish of Cingular to pay money for exclusives, IMO other carriers should be honoring Apple's first cell phone entry in the market. It's just sad to know that there are carriers who are willing to pay foolish money for exclusives while other carriers will benefit from Apple's first cell phone entry.