Trouble in Paradise with AT&T Wireless

[Derek Snyder]

There's been a lot of news out there lately regarding AT&T's recent actions. They are trying to get their customers on the east and west coasts to lose their 1900 mhz only phones in favor of 850/1900 mhz models. On paper, this seems like a good idea since it will help fill in some of the gaps in coverage they may have (pending the completion of the Cingular buyout). However, this news means that they are asking for all their east and west customers to replace their feature-rich phones, and replace them with inferior models.

This could stand to be an issue for Microsoft, since most all of their Smartphone and Pocket PC Edition phones lack the 850 band.

In my opinion, this seems like a tragic mistake. Never should a company insist that it's customers move backwards with the devices they are using; asking them to give up their t68is and 3650s in favor of far less feature-rich models. Will this be cause for a lot of new T-Mobile customers? What about Verizon-- is anyone hearing me now?

[adamz]

http://people.ku.edu/~cinema/wireless/cing-attws_800_850.htmlhttp://people.ku.edu/~cinema/wireless/cing-attws_800_850.html

I'm not too confident on the accuracy of those coverage maps.

Anyway, Verizon still has inferior phones as far as I'm concerned. I still maintain that I will never buy another phone without Bluetooth.

Is 850Mhz only being used in the US? Or South America as well? I thought the whole deal about GSM was that it's a global standard. Now American companies are developing ANOTHER different type of network? *sigh*

[Pony99CA]

Originally posted by Derek Snyder
In my opinion, this seems like a tragic mistake. Never should a company insist that it's customers move backwards with the devices they are using; asking them to give up their t68is and 3650s in favor of far less feature-rich models.
I wouldn't go so far as to say "never". It depends what features you'd be giving up on the "inferior" phone.

Also, one could argue that, if you get better coverage with a dual-band phone, it's the "superior" phone. The primary purpose of a mobile phone is to make calls from anywhere. Those features that might be lost are generally bells and whistles.

For example, if I'd have to give up a camera, I might not be too worried. However, if my phone was also my primary PDA, and the new phone didn't have PDA capabilities, that would concern me.

Ideally, AT&T would have equivalent dual-band models of all of their current phones coming to market soon. However, without knowing what the trade-offs are, I can't really say whether AT&T is being reasonable or not.

Steve

[Kevin Kulic]

Nice. I just got an MPx 200. Oh well, I was planning on geting the MPx when it comes out anyway... BTW, I had TMO for a year and they sucked, as did their customer service. I never knew ATT had such a bad customer service rep, but I've had them before and they were fine (though their data plan "MMode" stinks - I paid $.03 a kb before getting them to refund me and fix it!). TMO can offer great plans, but coverage in NY stinkos big time, in my experience.