Amber and I are SunCom clients, however Dave hooked us up with IRL tickets through Verizon.......................hmmmmmm , which way do I go

 

Now moving all this to O/T...



...oh wait!...sh!t, I'm not a moderator

 

Dave, you should know better (in regards to the current stock issues). Verizon's stock reflects their entire company. From wireless to landline. SunCom (TritonPCS) stock is only for our wireless share of the business (which is all we have/do).

And where did we go from being the BEST wireless provider in the Greater Richmond area to the financial health of any one company?

DaveZ, currently GSM is being added to all SunCom markets. In fact, Richmond should be the first on the air. After that, I believe it will be Norfolk and so on. This is why AT&T Wireless has a bid on the table to buy out Cingular. They have the largest GSM footprint and combined with our TDMA, we will have the best in voice transmission plus dedicated GSM for data.

 

even more offtopic but ...airgate, how solid is the conversion to gsm (and any idea how long?) I'm going to switch to att because my entire family uses it so the m2m minutes are a big bonus for me (and i get a corporate discount). i'm curious if the gsm conversion will be fast or really slow. Is it worth waiting a few months to get a new phone or service? The gsm stuff they have right now (for DC) is a little weak, only 2 gsm phones which isn't really an option as the gsm coverage areas are very small. I also cannot find a plan that would allow me to GSM roam on T-Mobile or Cingulars GSM network (even though Cingular is still TDMA in parts of the northeast). There's also only **1** GSM/TDMA dual band phone?!?! That's like the biggest benefit! All the speed of the new network, with the great coverage of the old network!

 

The budget for the GSM conversion is HUGE!!! I have seen where they have entire markets up with GSM in a matter of 4 weeks! So, I would say to hold on for another 3 or 4 months. You should see a considerable improvement.

 

airgate, thanks.

one last thing (and since you're suncom, maybe you can't answer] is there a usual time that att switches promotions? they have a nice one right now, 200 bonus anytime, 250 mobile2mobile, unlimited n+w. I want to sign up soon, just worried i might

 

too bad voicestream and cingular will be merging, not with att.
Back to T-mobile, have you looked at their coverage maps? Our area president was here a few days ago, and next to our office was a t-mobile store. He decided to stop in and check them out. According the the manager, the reason they only cover the major highway areas is because according to their market survey, only 86% of wireless users stay within that coverage map. How sad.

I don't know if you seen how much it is going to cost to change TDMA over to GSM, but it is upwards of 2 billion. I don't know how ATT is going to pay for all that. Lets assume that they won't make people purcahse enw equipment. that means every one of their users need to buy new equipment. are they going to charge the customers? or will they give it out for free? Even with the changeover, you will still have coverage issue.
They will need to go from TDMA, to GSM, to GRPS. They don't even have that final technology in major cities like newyork, SF or philly. I am glad people are so concern about having the ability to have their cell phones when they go abroad. How many people actually use that? and do you realize, that some of the GSM the other parts of the world uses, will not even be the same type of GSM that they are using here? Makes you wonder why they want to spend all that money to upgrade a system, that parts of the world don't even use. CDMA technology has increased 34% in usage across the world. It has over 127 million subscribers.

All the while these carriers are spending money to change their system, Verizon Wireless uses that money to upgrade and expand coverage. Why spend 2 billion to change from the wrong technology to a technology that is almost as competitive as the one Verizon is using? CDMA is the way to go.

according to .cingular press release They are forcasting speeds of 30-45 kbps, 1xrtt, the Data rate that Verizon has, is currently operating at 40-60 with bursts up to 144. Once they spend all their money to go to GRPS, the will need to make more money to go to EDGE.


ok.. enough from my soapbox talk.

Davez, why would your CEO want to switch to T-mobile? look at the coverage map!!!

Mgiang7, all carriers usually release new promotions around fall time.

 

dkhl,

i think a voicestream + cingular merger is a good idea. cingular has a strong west coast/south east GSM network. But their northeast network (which is a very large part of the market) is really weak. Voicestream fills that in nicely.

I'd agree with that comment with using a phone over seas. It is crazy expensive to do that. whenever we have people from europe here, they're paying out the nose per minute to use their phone. When it's that expensive i'd never us it, even if it did work! And the US doesn't even use the same GSM frequency! So you need a Tri-Band GSM phone to work in the US and the Rest of the world!


though if we're gonna b!tch about compatabilites why can't I use a CDMA Sprint phone on Verizon's CDMA network? I mean Verizon has the lamest phones (ok att too). But Sprint service is so bad, so i guess they need neat phones.

finally thanks for the tip about promotions, this one just started, do they usually last through till winter, or do they change every few weeks?

 

Is this thread OT or what?

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by dkhl
[B]too bad voicestream and cingular will be merging, not with att.