Review of Cingular Wireless

I recently switched from Sprint PCS to Cingular. Here are some of my experiences with Cingular's service. I will be posting separate reviews in the coming week about my phones and my experience with Sprint over the past few years.

Background and Technology
Cingular is a nationwide mobile phone carrier. Unlike most American carriers, Cingular uses GSM. GSM is a set of digital standards that is used by approximately 70% of the world's cell-using population, and is most widely deployed in Europe and Asia. I have discovered there are some advantages to GSM:

• Every GSM phone has a "SIM card" in it. This card carries information such as your phone number, cell provider account, and wireless networks to use. It can optionally also hold phonebook entries. If you wish to switch phones, all you have to do is pop the SIM card from one to the next, and your new phone is instantly live and active on the network. Very nice system.


• PC communications (using your phone as a modem, downloading phonebook entries, etc.) seem to be standardized across GSM phones


• Data communications (Internet browsing from your phone) also seems to be fairly well standardized in the GSM world

It seems that the coolest, smallest (and also best-priced) phones come out first in GSM. I suspect that's because the GSM market is much larger than the mostly North American CDMA market.

Terah and I signed up for the cheapest 2-phone plan from Cingular, a $60/mo "FamilyTalk" plan with 500 anytime minutes per month (that roll over to the next month if unused), and unlimited nights/weekends and mobile-to-mobile calling. We both have Motorola v551 phones.

Click here to read the full review...

Why We Chose Cingular
We live in a rural area, so there are not a lot of choices. The four wireless carriers available here are Sprint, Cingular, Alltel, and Cellular One. Cellular One was out of the picture for many reasons. I'll talk about the problems with Sprint in a separate review. That left Cingular and Alltel. Alltel seems to have nice coverage in our area by looking at their maps, but friends that use Alltel give a very different picture. So that left Cingular. Also, their use of GSM was a plus.

Ordering, Activation, and Porting
We wanted to keep our existing cell phone numbers. To do that, you "port" your number from one carrier to the next. You sign up with a new carrier, then they electronically notify the former carrier of the change, and cancel your service with the former carrier automatically.

I placed my order over the phone on a Thursday. Cingular's phone sales reps seemed very knowledgable and were more than happy to answer my questions about SIM cards, the mechanics of porting, and even how I could switch back to Sprint without penalty if I were unsatisfied with Cingular during my first 30 days with them.

I know that the cellphone industry has a (justified, imho) reputation for having poor customer service, and Cingular probably has its share of bad apples as well. But I was impressed that almost every person I've talked to at Cingular is willing to give me their full name and extension number (and not just the people in sales). I like this, and it makes things run more smoothly.

In this case, the person that answered my questions gave me his extension number. I placed my order with him later in the day, and he was able to give me $30 off our phone even though the $30 off sale had expired the day before.

Friday afternoon, someone from the Cingular number porting department called. There was a problem porting our number in from Sprint. Turns out the original salesperson made a 1-digit typo somewhere. Theoretically everything was fixed by Friday evening.

Monday, our phones arrived, but the automated activation line wouldn't work. Cingular reps were quite confused about what was going on in their billing system. Turns out that one of our numbers ported in, and the other one somehow got "lost" somewhere. Once that was fixed, one phone got activated. The other one wouldn't; it's SIM card was deactivated due to too many attempts to activate it. So I had to go to a Cingular store Tuesday and get a replacement SIM card.

This was rather annoying, and of course I wanted my phone activated ASAP. On the other hand, everyone I spoke to was polite, and took whatever time it took to look into and do what they could to solve the problem. Nobody just hung up on me or transferred me to a busy signal like Sprint did so often. However, Cingular obviously has some problems with their billing system, and probably also with training their people.

Signal and Network
Overall, in this area, Cingular does a better job than any other national carrier of providing a signal outside of big cities and major roadways. They do this partially with their own towers and partially with agreements with other cell providers. It's important to note, though, that with Cingular, you don't really know when you're on their towers or someone else's. Everything acts the same either way, and there are never roaming fees with Cingular unless you leave the United States.

Call quality once a signal is established is pretty much on par with Sprint. I'm happy with Cingular's coverage. It seems that it sometimes takes longer to connect an outgoing call, though.

We live in an area that is on the border between different towers, with both Cingular and Sprint. Our Sprint phones would sometimes jump from high signal strength to very low signal strength (or vice-versa). The Cingular phones seem more stable, but also a bit slower to react to changing circumstances.

Some exceptions to the above apply with data services.

One downside to "no roaming" is that when you're in a part of the country where Cingular (or its partners) don't provide coverage, you have no signal whatsoever. There is no off-network roaming with Cingular, and that cuts both ways -- no exhorbitant roaming fees, but also no coverage in some areas.

In my state, these areas are mostly the sparsely-populated rural areas far from highways. The sort of place we get to a few times a year for camping trips and the like. We will be keeping one of our old Sprint phones for use in emergencies. (By Federal law, all cell phones -- even one with no active account -- must be able to dial 911).

I believe that the reason for the lack of coverage in these areas is that GSM phones work with GSM only. Many of the off-network roaming carriers in my state still use analog (AMPS) technology, which has numerous drawbacks. Cingular's phones speak GSM only, so where there are no GSM towers, there is no GSM signal.

Cingular company-owned stores, sales reps, and customer service reps have access to detailed street-level coverage estimation systems and are a good resource if you have coverage questions.

Plans, Pricing, and Contracts
Cingular publishes current information about their plans and pricing at their website. In our area, no "regional" calling plan was available. The National plans have no roaming charges anywhere in the USA as described above.

Their plans that include two phones start at $60/mo for 500 "anytime" minutes. My wife and I don't need that many anytime minutes, but went with that plan anyway because it's the cheapest. All of the other companies that I checked had their 2-phone plans priced at around $60 to $65 as well, so it's not like Cingular is any worse.

Most Cingular customers will be signing a 2-year contract when establishing service. I've found Cingular's contracts to be less restrictive than Sprint's. Here are some examples:

• If you purchase a phone on your own (from eBay, for example), you don't need to extend your contract just to activate it on the Cingular network. All you need to do is swap the SIM card from one phone to the next. I believe that you don't even need to tell Cingular that you have a new phone. However, if you expect to buy a phone from Cingular at the discounted price, you will need to extend your contract. (They will sell you a phone at full retail price without a contract extension)


• According to a Cingular retail employee, you can change your Cingular plan in the first 12 months of a 2-year contract without extending it at all. Between 12 and 18 months, changing your plan will cause the contract to expire one year from the date of the change. After 18 months, I'm not sure what happens.

Cingular also has a feature called "rollover minutes". If you don't use all of the minutes in your plan one month, they are still available to you the next month, in addition to your regular allotment that month. Very nice feature if you ask me.

Cingular has a 30-day "grace period" after the initial activation of your service. During this time, you can cancel your Cingular service, no questions asked, and not have to pay any penalty. You can also exchange your Cingular phones, again no questions asked, if you're unhappy with the phone you purchased. (I have done the latter).

Customer Service
I was a Sprint customer for many years. I was generally happy with their network (except for the poor coverage in rural areas), but their customer service was very bad for the entire time. I've written before about times they over-charged me by hundreds of dollars, made various mistakes with setting up my account, etc.

For awhile, it was just something to live with. I didn't have to call customer service all that often, and as I've said, if you have a signal on the Sprint network, you usually get good service. (Except for the occasional trouble with the voicemail indicator).

But when you do have to talk to Sprint, it is never a pleasant experience. They tend to mess up any change they attempt, give conflicting information, are often rude, etc. As a result, I try to call Sprint as little as possible. And this customer service problem is the main reason they lost us -- we wanted to get a new phone, Sprint requires a contract extension when this is done, and we were tired of having to deal with a company that takes so much time and energy to deal with. (The better Cingular coverage for rural areas was the other main resaon.)

With Cingular, it's been entirely different. As I mentioned above, I did have trouble getting my phone activated. However, Cingular employees always admitted when they were confused, and never just told me a lie to make me go away. They also almost always volunteered their full first and last name and extension number before I even asked. I was never once hung up on or transferred to a non-existant number. In short, I am not afraid to call Cingular, fearful of what weird problem they will cause on our account for daring to ask a question or give them some money.

Cingular stores seemed generally better than Sprint's, with wait times before speaking to someone usually around 15-20 minutes (Sprint's could be an hour or more). The store employees generally seemed competant. Some weren't exactly friendly and polite, but nobody was downright rude, either. The Cingular store people don't appear to work well with (or even get along well with) Cingular phone sales and phone support people. I heard a Cingular store rep several times complain about customers wanting help with a phone that they bought online or over the phone. Apparently, Cingular stores are mostly independant as far as revenue is concerned, and they don't like spending time helping people that didn't buy from them. (Though in each case, after griping about the problem, the store employees did wind up providing help.)

Cingular really ought to fix this, since most people would assume that if you buy from one place owned by Cingular, another place owned by Cingular ought to be able to help.

In one instance, I had a problem with the Internet access on my phone. I called Cingular customer support. The rep couldn't figure out why I was having trouble, and sent me over to technical support (their "tier 2" support, I guess). After bouncing around a bit between divisions, I got another rep who stayed on line with me while I talked to technical support and made sure that they resolved the matter. I appreciated this, and while I was annoyed at being sent to the wrong division to start with, everyone was polite and helpful when they sent me to the proper place.

If Cingular continues to provide generally good service, I think they will go a lot farther towards ensuring customer loyalty than Sprint could ever do.

Data Services and Internet
Cingular offered me $20 off a phone if I signed up for a $5/mo Internet package (which we can cancel at any time after the first month), so I signed up and have tried out their data services.

There are two data services available from Cingular: GPRS and EDGE (aka EGPRS). GPRS is the older and slower service, and EDGE is the newer and faster one. There is no practical difference between the two except for speed, and no other user-visible difference either. Some older/cheaper Cingular phones support only GPRS, while most newer ones will work with both GPRS and EDGE.

Cingular tech support told me that all Cingular-owned towers nationwide support EDGE these days. However, even though your phone says you're on the Cingular network, you may not be associated with a Cingular tower. Some non-Cingular towers may support GPRS only, or perhaps no data service at all. Note that on the Cingular coverage maps, you can't distinguish non-Cingular towers from Cingular ones (since you notice no differences with voice coverage either way). Cingular sales and support reps *can* distinguish between these, though.

I had a couple of weird problems at my home. First, my phone would sometimes show EDGE available, sometimes GPRS available, and sometimes nothing available. Secondly, even when the phone showed GPRS available, I couldn't get online (I could only get online when EDGE was showing as available.)

It turns out that both of these were due to my particular location. As I mentioned, our home is at the edge of the coverage area from several different towers, so over time, phones at our house may "bounce" from one tower to the next as they try to get the best possible signal. Apparently, I would sometimes associate with a non-Cingular tower. Again, this is not noticable for voice (all regular voice features work transparently either way).

However, one of the non-Cingular towers indicated it supports GPRS even though it doesn't relay GPRS data on behalf of Cingular customers.

So, the bottom line is: the availability indicator on your phone is sometimes unreliable.

My understanding is that the non-Cingular towers are mostly in rural areas; metropolitan areas and many highways have the Cingular-owned EDGE towers. However, I don't know if this holds network-wide.

Cingular is probably one of the best American text messaging companies due to the native SMS support in GSM. However, I have no need for text messaging, so I haven't tested it.

Online Account Access
Like most companies, Cingular provides a website where you can access your Cingular account online to check your usage, billing, etc. It appears to be somewhat more accurate and informative than Sprint's, but otherwise fairly standard.

Referral Program
If you refer another customer to Cingular, you and the referred customers both get a $25 Visa gift card. See referral.cingular.com for more details.

Miscellaneous
For some reason, Cingular phones seem to introduce audible buzzing into computer equipment when they're close to the computers (within 5-15 feet or so). It's a strange effect that no other phone has ever cased, as far as I know. I even had this appear on two of our traditional phones. I'm guessing there's some sort of interference based on the transmission frequency used on the Cingular network, but I don't know. It didn't seem to have any negative effect aside from the audible effects from speakers, and the problem is trivially addressed by moving phones away from speakers and systems.

Resources
Helpful resources:

• The Cingular website


• Howard Forums


• Cingular company-owned forums


• Phone Scoop