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A question for the cell phone addicts. I'm going to eventually be moving down to the area from Canada in the next few months. I'm pretty familiar with the area, but I haven't really heard too much about cell phone reception.
Basically, I've got a Verizon plan with Canadian roaming covered, and I get exceptional coverage here and in WNC (even in the Lake Lure area I get great reception). I got rid of AT&T because the reception was gosh awful. I have an unlocked GSM BlackBerry, so I'm wondering if anyone has any BlackBerry experience with T-Mobile in terms of reception. If Verizon is the only game in town, then I'll bite the bullet and upgrade to a Verizon BlackBerry.
A question for the cell phone addicts. I'm going to eventually be moving down to the area from Canada in the next few months. I'm pretty familiar with the area, but I haven't really heard too much about cell phone reception.
Basically, I've got a Verizon plan with Canadian roaming covered, and I get exceptional coverage here and in WNC (even in the Lake Lure area I get great reception). I got rid of AT&T because the reception was gosh awful. I have an unlocked GSM BlackBerry, so I'm wondering if anyone has any BlackBerry experience with T-Mobile in terms of reception. If Verizon is the only game in town, then I'll bite the bullet and upgrade to a Verizon BlackBerry.
Verizon isn't the only game in town but it's your best bet for now. Sprint and T-mobile are great for the Asheville metro area, not so much in the more rural areas. Verizon picks up almost everywhere, extreme southern Haywood county and parts of Jackson and Madison are the only places i've had trouble with coverage.
Canada huh? Where ya from? I lived in Ottawa for 2 1/2 years, I loved it there.
You will find dead areas for all carriers. If you are looking for a place out in the rural areas you need to find out which carriers work in that area before you commit to a contract.
Go with Verizon, especially if you have a tri-mode phone. One of the reasons I've stayed with Verizon through the years has been the continuing availability of tri-mode phones, given that my wife frequently travels from Atlanta to Asheville to visit her family. As mentioned before, there are some areas of Jackson and Macon counties where there's no signal, even along US 74, but they're small and infrequent -- there's at least an analog signal nearly everywhere.
My company-issued T-Mobile BlackBerry is another story entirely. Even in parts of the Asheville area (i.e., going up Town Mountain Road) I have no T-Mobile signal, though it usually roams onto US Cellular's network up there. Plenty of places in WNC where I have a roaming signal at best, and no signal at all much of the time.
If you want a reliable signal wherever you go (and this is true for much of the rest of the states, not just WNC) Verizon is the best option I've found. I often have a solid signal on my Verizon personal phone and can hold calls without dropping when my AT&T iPhone-using colleagues in the same location can't -- and broadly speaking, AT&T is the next best option. Obviously, local conditions vary, but if your "local conditions" may be anywhere on the continent from day to day, as mine can, Verizon's the way to go.
We spend our summers in jackson county. I had ATT for years and every day my husband and I would drive to the one area on the mountain that we could get service on our blackberrys. I just switched to Verizon because I was tired of seeing our neighbors and workers coming to our property receiving calls when I could not
Verizon isn't the only game in town but it's your best bet for now. Sprint and T-mobile are great for the Asheville metro area, not so much in the more rural areas. Verizon picks up almost everywhere, extreme southern Haywood county and parts of Jackson and Madison are the only places i've had trouble with coverage.
Canada huh? Where ya from? I lived in Ottawa for 2 1/2 years, I loved it there.
I'll pretty much not be in the more rural areas, but then again I consider most of Buncombe to be built up by the standards of where I live now north of Toronto.
I'm originally from Hamilton, which is a good 45 minutes west of Buffalo, N.Y. It's much more like Buffalo than Toronto (Hamilton is the half-way point). My wife grew up in Buncombe (she's there now, my daughter was born in Henderson County and is there with her; gonna be going to join them).
Go with Verizon, especially if you have a tri-mode phone. One of the reasons I've stayed with Verizon through the years has been the continuing availability of tri-mode phones, given that my wife frequently travels from Atlanta to Asheville to visit her family. As mentioned before, there are some areas of Jackson and Macon counties where there's no signal, even along US 74, but they're small and infrequent -- there's at least an analog signal nearly everywhere.
My company-issued T-Mobile BlackBerry is another story entirely. Even in parts of the Asheville area (i.e., going up Town Mountain Road) I have no T-Mobile signal, though it usually roams onto US Cellular's network up there. Plenty of places in WNC where I have a roaming signal at best, and no signal at all much of the time.
If you want a reliable signal wherever you go (and this is true for much of the rest of the states, not just WNC) Verizon is the best option I've found. I often have a solid signal on my Verizon personal phone and can hold calls without dropping when my AT&T iPhone-using colleagues in the same location can't -- and broadly speaking, AT&T is the next best option. Obviously, local conditions vary, but if your "local conditions" may be anywhere on the continent from day to day, as mine can, Verizon's the way to go.
Thanks for the feedback everyone! I'm pretty happy with Verizon -- I was able to get a contract with them from them using my Canadian credit score. Verizon owns a chunk of Telus up here, so I roam off of Telus towers. But the thing is, I actually get far superior coverage using my Verizon phone than I used to get with my Telus phone.
I wasn't too impressed with AT&T when it came to areas I'm actually going to be in permanently. I find AT&T worked great for me when I wasn't in WNC. My wife has AT&T, and even down in places like Airport Road and US 25 around Arden she drops calls (it has to be the phone if she's dropping on Hendersonville Road though; mine worked fine).
I originally switched to Verizon because of their generous Canadian roaming plan since I have been going back and forth for almost two years now. The Nationwide plus Canada plan is absolutely fantastic. The only trouble is that I can't get through to a single person at Verizon that has ever run into someone using their phone in Canada most of the time. Out of 90+ million subscribers, I thought that's a bit strange for me to be the ONLY one. Other than that, great service (AT&T gave me great customer service too).
That being said, I'm so used to the lack of customer service and competition we have here in Canada, I may not be as discriminating as a sharp-eyed American consumer!
Verizon, you'll be seeing me in soon to get a 3G BlackBerry.
My personal experience has been that the little know carier of US CELLULAR seems to provide the most comtinious coverage I have found in 20 years of cell phone usage. And I started out with a 12 pound bag phone...that was touted as "ultracompact".
I was told by my service provider that the phone manufacturer also has a lot to do with it. They advised us not to get certain brands since living in the mountains, namely Samsung. They advised us to stick to LG, Sony, and Motorola phones.
Last summer we tried a prepaid off brand that claimed to have the same coverage as verizon just so we would have coverage at our summer home but it did not work. The only phones that work all they way up on our mountain are Verizon
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