My contract w/ verizon is about to expire and we were thinking about maybe using another carrier, so I was wondering if anybody here locally was using, or had used, cingular and how they were to deal with,coverage etc ....

offctr,

My wife and I have Cingular.  The service is fine.  We just have the free LG flip-phones and they are crap - the earpieces aren't loud enough (or maybe my ears are damaged from gunfire).  I don't know, but my old Nokia phone was better.

I drive 79 from top to bottom and all across 76.  The only spot that I have signal trouble is the damn Cranberry interchange.  (It works good in the Garrett Forest in Western Maryland - my wife had the decency to call me on the opening day of Maryland deer season last year to tell me my 2 year-old used the potty.  She also called me about 9:00am on the first Saturday of PA deer season for something stupid - I was in a tree in the middle of Conneaut Swamp at the time).

Anyway, the Cingular service is fine, but I can't endorse the crappy LG flip-phones that they offer - go with another phone.

H

Same here; I have cingular too...I thought i was upgradeing from Cricket, but those LG phones really are shit.  Sometimes w/ a strong siganal I will lose people, I've been told by Customer Service to remove the Sims card, wait and turn the phone back on, on more than one occasion. I always thouhgt LG was a good brand too; I know their PC components kick ass, but spend a few bucks and get a better phone. I was down in the Farmington area a few weeks ago and none of my friends verizon phones would work, but the Cingular ones did. FWIW




Speed

OK guys, thanks  I will have to see if we can get a phone  upgrade into something other than the LG's
Oddly enough NEXTEL sucks @ the cranberry interchange area too.... as a matter of fact you cant talk from our office to the parking lot most of the time. Maybe they had to  take out a tower/site temporarilly till they get all the work done on the new overpass.
Then agian NEXTEL seems to not work at all the most critical times anyway so it might just be them.
wonder if those new Motarola Razr's are as good as the hype.

I have Cingular, I love it. I switched from T-Mobile in April. I have a family talk plan, I enjoy it. I have a Palm One Treo 650 Smart Phone and a Motorola Razr V3. I tested the service with an LG L1400 which was an absolutel piece of dogshit. The phone just wasn't up to my par, it was incomplete, but it did have decent RF, other than that, it was absolutely terrible. I live in an area where I do not get reception with Nextel, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, etc, but I get full reception with Cingular Wireless, and I think that's absolutely awesome. I haven't had any problems with them, although, they do not have the best customer care. I can tolerate that, due to the fact that I can now actually get a signal in my home. Buy a good phone, spend a little extra money. I know I did. I'm extremely happy with the two phones we use.