AT&T USA

I have always had what I believed to be the best cellular coverage in the Pittsburgh Area, starting with Cellular one, in the late 70's?, which was bought by ?,  then Cingular, which was recently taken over by AT&T and constantly improved over the years.

AT&T has great 3G coverage over the Pittsburgh area and has never been difficult to deal with.  The only drawback is the high price.  Our last bill was appx 62.00 for two phones including 5.00 each for data service.  My wife and I get about 400-500? minutes a month with rollover and since we mostly talk to each other our rollover balance is usually about 5,000 minutes.  We just got two iPhones with an additional 30.00 data service each and unlimited texting for another 30.00, that's 90.00 a month more less 10.00,  2 X 5.00, or 80.00 plus the activation fees for both phones.  I can't wait to see the next bill, it may need to be delivered via parcel post.  If we had children we would make them get jobs, but of course, we would never give up our iPhones.

After a few maddening interactions with the customer service people at AT&T back in 2005, I switched over to T-Mobile, which immediately impressed me with its customer service--it was night and day. At one point a rep. even offered to call me back in a month to check in on a change to my account.

Unfortunately, when it came to doing what I was actually paying them for--that is, making it possible for me to talk to other people not within shouting distance--they couldn't hold a candle to AT&T, at least not in SF. Dropped calls, dead zones, etc. And when, just after a month in, it became clear that it wasn't an improvement at all, customer service turned hard-nosed, and refused to release me from my contract.

When my contract ended a year later, I promptly switched back to AT&T and managed to avoid talking to customer service for almost a year. Recent interactions have been better, but there have still been hiccups. A month after canceling my data plan, having explicitly told the rep that I had no use for it, I was bombarded with per-kilobyte service charges thanks to some invisible background process running on my phone. Some but not all of the charges were reversed, and while the rep I talked to was polite, it brought back bad memories.

All in all, it seems to me that customer service at AT&T may be coming more into parity with its mobile service, which for me has been very satisfactory.

I LOVE my iPhone!  I have had AT&T for 2 years and don't have too many complaints.  Once I purchased the iPhone though, I've had difficulty with finding an AT&T employee that could give me answers to my questions.  They would transfer me to an Apple tech, and then I'd be transferred back.  There needs to be clearer lines/responsibilities drawn between the 2 companies.  Overall, I'm sticking with AT&T because of the iPhone.

As a lot of other people have mentioned, all carriers are evil, its just a matter of finding the lesser evil and crossing your fingers.

So far, so good for me. I can make and receive calls (in the Richmond, VA area) which sounds trivial, but apparently Verizon hadn't figured that part out yet. I've yet to have any significant deadspots, even while going to God's country North Carolina for a weeks vacation.

I use an ancient SE z525 with no problems. I had been waiting for iphone 3g to come out, but have yet to take the plunge, so no comments as of yet on the data service/speed in these parts.

Lastly I give ATT high marks for phone selection merely becuase they are a GSM network and you can slamp your sim in any unlocked phone and roll (unlike Verizon).