WWAN- what's better, cingular or verizon?

I live in San Diego, home of verizon and definitely very strong in San Diego. My GSM phones don't seem to do as well as other people's CDMA phones.

Any opinions?

Poll: Which WWAN is better?

 

Sprint is another good choice for a good WWAN if you already carry a Palm treo. You could just bluetooth and piggyback off the phone's dataplan For Verizon Treos, you have to install a software hack since Verizon locks all their friggin phones.

 

In NYC the Verizon signal is very strong

 

i personally use both providers....cingular for voice and verizon for data. Verizon beats the pants off cingular in terms of speed. In terms of coverage, vzw and cingular are pretty much head to head, but cingular has the upper hand in long island, anywhere else in NY(especially upstate), vzw is the clear winner.

 

Thanks for the responses so far.

Pricing, seems to be moderately expensive? 60/mo for data on top of voice subscribtion and 80/mo for data alone?

 

if you have an advanced data device through verizon, you can tether it to your laptop via bluetooth or usb for an additional 15 bucks a month. Sprint allows tethering for free.

 

I have ATT currently and I have a couple of data cards. Currently I tether exclusively for my data services, because I get the same speeds through my ATT 8525. And, I do not have anything sticking out of my laptop, nor do I have to worry about multiple pieces of hardware. If I am in a city with HSDPA then I get similar coverage to yet better speeds than my Verizon colleagues. In cities where only EDGE is deployed the speed suffers but I can still achieve ~20 KB/s (Bytes) which is plenty for the quick internet surf and email grab. Your best bet is to evaluate what they have to offer in the areas you frequent and make your decision on who has the best combo. Whatever you do, do not fall prey to the commercials, evaluate and make an informed decision.

 

Okay, I ended up buying T-Mobile's, it's cheaper than both.

30/month buys me unlimited data internet through GRPS/EDGE, as well as unlimited access at Starbucks T-Mobile hotspots, which I was already using on a weekly basis anyway. Hurrah!

200.00 for the express card, use the existing chip out of your cell phone, so yeah, you can get WWAN, for only 30/month if you mind not taking calls while you're on your laptop in the boonies with no wifi but with WAN.

The alternative is buying a separate phone line to run the data, and that's more expensive, it becomes 50/month, 30 for the internet, and 20 just to maintain a bottomless connection.