Phone service

Old Sep 29th, 2014, 06:53 PM
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Phone service

I have a Galaxy IIIs unit, while my wife has a simple cell phone that handles calls and takes pictures.

AT&T is our service provider, and my contract expires soon. I went to the AT&T store today with a list of items. The first was why do we have so many failed calls. I recently had surgery and, as usual, the physician called that night to see if I was still alive. The call apparently failed, as the next day we found a very late voice mail from the physician saying I should call if there were any problems. Both my wife and I had been standing by our phones awaiting a call, but AT&T apparently dropped the ball. The AT&T agent smugly fold me that they don't warrant that we will be able to receive calls in our home, but they had a device they could sell me that would boost the signal within my home. I checked the date my contract would expire, and thanked him for providing service that didn't work. Ironically, when I got home there was a lot of mail from AT&T offering me money for switching to their cable service, which I suspect wouldn't provide service in my house, just to the doorway.

So now I am seeking a new provider. We travel overseas often, but I carry a laptop to access the internet, and a GPS to provide navigation and information on services near wherever we are. So all we need is a reliable provider of phone service, primarily domestic (US) but occasionally international. With AT&T I turned off the international service when we were home, and sometimes turned it on when we were overseas (I say sometimes because AT&T sometimes neglected to make the change).

So what carrier could handle my situation well? I'm particularly concerned with complete domestic coverage, as we no longer have a land line.
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Old Sep 29th, 2014, 11:07 PM
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T-Mobile, but check your local coverage.
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Old Sep 30th, 2014, 08:56 AM
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The assumption you are making is that another provider will be better than AT&T.

It may be that one provider has a cellphone tower nearer to your home than another and that might make a difference but just how you find out that information, I have no idea.

My cellphone is constantly roaming for a signal in my home and as a result it runs down the battery faster. Then I hear a 'beep' in the middle of the night waking me up because the battery is low. Of course if I ignore it, it will beep again in a few minutes and continue to do so until the battery is dead. So my choice is to turn it off at night and miss an emergency call, or put up with the beeps.

My point is, our expectations have to be in line with the reality of cellphone service. It has its pros and cons like anything else. Dropped calls, missed calls etc. are all just part of that. Your mistake is in expecting "reliable" service.
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Old Sep 30th, 2014, 12:56 PM
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We've been satisfied with Verizon for many years.
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Old Oct 4th, 2014, 02:43 PM
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Coverage in a specific location is very individualized. The cell tower issue mentioned above is why. My husband and I have identical iPhone 5S and he has service, although poor, at our beach house and I do not. In our home town they have consistently voted down cell phone tower installations - and consequently we have poor service at home. Because of this we have maintained our landlines in both locations.
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Old Oct 5th, 2014, 07:48 AM
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Gail, interesting point that your 2 identical iPhones receive different service in terms of getting a signal.

I have the belief that each cellphone differs in terms of the strength of its internal antenna which picks up the signal from the tower. A question of luck as to did you get one with a stronger or weaker antenna.

In a condo I was living in for a while, no one got a signal in the underground garage except me. I had one of the cheapest phones you could get at the time. A pay-as-you-go throwaway basically. But it must have had a heck of an antenna. LOL
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Old Oct 8th, 2014, 12:24 PM
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In our experience, in our location, Verizon has the best coverage and fewest dropped calls. We did switch from Verizon to T-Mobile for the free unlimited data in 200 countries (which has been great) and cheap overseas phone calls. We've had just a few minor problems. We don't get data coverage at our timeshare on Kauai, though we have wi-fi inside the condo, so it doesn't matter much. I have a Nokia windows phone as a business phone (I've just closed my business to retire) and that phone drops calls all the time. We get unlimited data on our plan, which makes T-Mobile less expensive than Verizon. Friends who live in our area who have AT&T have lots of dropped calls.
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Old Oct 8th, 2014, 01:42 PM
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I asked at our local hardware store, and the owner said he had just finished evaluating a T-mobile phone, and that they would send you one for a week without charge. I thought it would be great to have a phone in my house and see it it would work reliably, so I asked T-mobile to send me one. It was an apple phone, but I was able to turn it on. It displayed one bar, the same as the AT&T phone. I walked through the house and got one bar everywhere; I walked around the outside of my house and got one bar everywhere; I walked down to the corner and got three bars. I checked their online coverage map, where you can enter your actual address. It said outstanding coverage. I guess I didn't know what outstanding means; it apparently means out standing on the corner.

I did get a few calls from T-mobile. I don't know if any were lost; no one bothers telling me about a lost call; apparently they think I don't know how to answer the phone, and they may be right. All the ringtones that came with it sound the same to me, so I was answering when anyone in the area got a call. I fixed that problem by finding a ringtone made from Pavarotti singing Nessum Dorma. The problem then became that when the music started, I would listen to it, rather than answering the phone.

Anyway, I took the phone back to T-mobile and whined about the one bar. The clerk said that almost always one bar is sufficient to complete a call successfully. I'm thinking that through. We actually have a cable phone, where Cox sold me a bundle that included the phone, and somehow reduced my overall bill by $30 monthly. It rings every once in a while, but we don't answer it because we never gave anyone the number.

Perhaps we'll use the cox phone like a land line, and sign-up with T-mobile for other use. They have a very attractive package that includes unlimited calls and data, and I'm still antsy about data (frankly, I don't know when I am using it) since the AT&T phone started using data apparently on its own and I had to remove a lot of applications to kill it.
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Old Oct 8th, 2014, 03:03 PM
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Cleveland, it sounds to me like you happen to live in a spot where no signal does well.

We had a wifi internet service come to start up in our town. They left after six months when they discovered they couldn't get a connection established to half the houses in town thanks to the heavy tree cover our town has.

Right now there is an ad playing on TV that shows 4 young people at the parking lot of a national park. They walk 5 steps and one says, 'I'm losing reception what about you?' Another says, 'yeah me to'. A third says, 'wanna go back?' They all agree it's time to go back. LOL

Maybe cellphones just aren't for you. You seem to be unreasonably unwilling to let the cellphone decide where you can and cannot go in life. ;-)
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Old Oct 9th, 2014, 01:11 PM
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We started traveling after I retired. I got cell phones in anticipation that we would become separated in some strange land, and one of us could call the other and agree how to meet. My wife, however, was reluctant to be separated, which is fine with me as we have largely common interests. So we didn't really need the cell phones. But they are handy, even in our town, since someone stole all the phone booths.

Having wrestled with AT&T and the so-called smart phone for two years, I am coming to realize that we don't need the smart phone. I have a GPS unit that works better than the smart phone, in terms of getting me where I want to go and finding a place that sells what I want to buy. I also have a laptop and can almost always find a wifi point to do what I want on usenet and the internet. By choice, I avoid the social services, like messaging and tweeting and even face-book (my wife likes facebook since we have a new granddaughter whose parents are always posting; but I think she can go without for two or three weeks when we are touresting), and I can take better pictures with my camera than with the phone.

So I think I will defy the norms, and go back to a cell phone. I do want very badly to slap this smartphone with a sledge hammer, but people tell me it is better to trade it in, or give it to an organization that distributes them to people who want one.
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Old Oct 9th, 2014, 07:39 PM
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We have much in common clevelandbrown.

My cellphone is now 8+ years old. It cost me $29 to buy it outright at a 7-11 and came with a $10 Virgin Mobile credit on it.

It has no camera, no internet, etc. It's just a phone. I have no house phone nor does my wife. Her phone cost $59, what can I say, she want for the sleeker model.

We went with Virgin Mobile because unlike others who if you have a pay-as-you-go and don't use up your credit in a certain amount of time, you lose your credit, don't do that if you put a $100 credit on it, it is good for a year. If you have them auto top-up you get a $100 credit for $90 every time your credit goes down to $10.

Between us, using our cellphones for all calls but Skype for long distance, we don't use $100 each per year.

My wife has now gone to an iPad from a laptop and likes it. She also uses it to 'facetime' with her Sister in Europe for free. Remember the days clevelandbrown when your wife getting on a phone long distance might lead to you having a heart attack. ;-)
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Old Nov 22nd, 2014, 08:24 AM
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My contract with AT&T ran out and I went to the T-Mobile store because is is near to our house. I intended to buy a cell phone and have my wife's cell phone switched to T-Mobile, but I found they had a Windows smartphone by Nokia, that cost little more than a new cell phone. Free of the tentacles of Google and the anrhoid world! And the phone can be set to make use of WiFi hot spots, one of which I have in my basement. My wife didn't want one, but I got her one anyway to cure the intermediate service problem with her cell phone.

It turns out that she really took to the new phone and is acting like a teenager since we now have unlimited minutes of calling time and while data time has a reasonable limit, we rarely use it since we hook up via WiFi. So we are all set for our family reunion in Switzerland.
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