The one gripe I have with Verizon is that I can't just buy any ringtone I like I have to use "their" service through the phone. But honestly if that's the only issue I have compared to using Cingular I'm doing good. The gripes I have seen out there with Cingular are unbelievable and I am really surprised how many people just put up with the problems. I paid to get out of the contract due to just hating them. Not everyone I guess can pay to get out of it. They are scammers and in the end they will loose and Verizon will win.

I have complained to verizon about cingular having roll over minutes and they don't. I am told that they will not offer it and basically you get what you pay for attitude so they know how much people hate cingular so it may never happen.

Amen sister!!!

Exactly, but it is worth the "bones" to get my life back! Cingular was holding my life hostage! I don't mean to be dramatic, but this is how I feel. I paid $600 to get off Cingular and onto Verizon, and worth every penny. I have 3 Cingular phones for sale BTW if anyone wants them. One RAZR and Two Vsomethings....

yes I heard that the phone (RAZR for example) supports custom ringtones, but Verizon had Moto disable it in the OS and only allow Verizon's ringtone$......

My cingular phones went into the garbage!!! It wasn't even worth listing on ebay.

Yeah there is no way around it. They have pretty good tones I just don't like not having the option to buy where I want and pay how much I want. I pay like 10.00 for 5 ringtones? I don't know I paid for it a few months ago out of desperation. I have the pink Razr and it really is nice but sucks in Target. If you have a phone w/ a built in antenna, DONT GO TO TARGET!!! Their walls are very thick.

right.. with Cingular , I didn't have to BUY ANY ringtones.. using Bluetooth, I would just copy over a few .mp3s to us for ringtones.. very cool. But I gave all that up for a damn phone that works and went with Verizon as well.. the crippled phones bother me too.. but the darn phone has to work first and foremost.

Rough Rider

Ringtones
 

I pay $0 for ringtones because custom ringtones are one of the most annoying things in the universe. We have a guy in our office whose phone plays some damn song and every time it rings I want to hurl it against the wall.

Today I get a call from a customer. It was about 50% audible. Automatically I asked "Are you on your cell phone?" He said yes. I said "Do you use Cingular?" He said (knowingly) yes. Not surprised, I asked him to call me back on his landline so we could do business. No problem after that.

I just saw a cingular commercial which prompted me to post this. Cingular not only sucks, but they also practice false advertising in my opinion. Even more, they advertise their problems as if they were their strengths. Now that is messed up.

amazing how AT&T wireless had something so good, as far as a network in this town, and then Cingular rode into the ground.

TDMA Network
 

That good AT&T network still exists, you just can't use it. If you have an old TDMA account left over from AT&T Wireless it works great. You pay about five times as much as everybody else for phone service, though.

Found this on the net
 

Alltel: CDMA
AT&T: GSM and TDMA*
Cingular: GSM and TDMA*
Nextel: iDEN**
Sprint PCS: CDMA
T-Mobile: GSM
U.S. Cellular: CDMA
Verizon: CDMA

Joepole, do you know if Cingular here in Shreveport TDMA? (and I'm excluding AT&T's network for the moment) I'm talking about Cingular's network. Is it purely GSM?

Although, I really don't think the issue in Shreveport is so much CDMA vs TDMA in this case with Cingular. No matter the protocol, I think Cingular just messed up and tried to pile too many users per "hertz" of radio bandwidth. A channel can only hold so many happy customers. As for AT&T, any network that is relatively "empty" should perform well IMO.

Cingular, ATTWS, TDMA, and GSM
 

Cingular owns ATTWS's TDMA network, which isn't much used anymore as they won't take new subscribers to it, they're just supporting the legacy customers because it doesn't cost much to run and they make a lot of money per user (more than they do for GSM customers because the rates haven't changed in years). In fact, they just issued a $5-10 surcharge to TDMA customers.

Cingular originally partly grew out of Bellsouth's cell network which was also (I believe) TDMA, so they may have some legacy towers, as well, but Bellsouth's cell service was TERRIBLE here, easily the worst we've ever had. I had a friend that lived in Southern Trace that got 6 or 7 hundred dollars worth of roaming charges one month from using his phone at home.