SF Bay Area Cellular Carrier Comparison

Choose a carrier based on your specific needs. Use the tables below as a guide. No carrier is the best in every category. Do not go solely by rates; coverage matters very much. You will regret selecting a carrier based mainly on price.

Check coverage at your home and workplace, but also look at coverage and roaming for out of the area places that you visit (and along the route, if you drive there). I.e. for the San Francisco Bay Area you may also want to look at coverage for the central coast (Santa Cruz, Monterey), the San Mateo County coast, the north coast (Marin, Sonoma, Mendocino), the Lake Tahoe region, Napa, Yosemite, etc. Do not assume that the included coverage on a carrier's nationwide plan is a superset of the coverage on their regional or local plan, this is not always the case. Consider the ability to make a call at all in some areas, even if you have to pay extra to do so.

Carriers try to lock you into a two year contract by sweetening the deal if you commit to two years versus one year; this is even more reason why you should carefully evaluate the pros and cons of each carrier before making a commitment. Take full advantage of the money-back guarantees that all the carriers offer for the first 14 or 15 days of service.

Ratings are 0-Worst, 9-Best	AT&T TDMA	AT&T GSM	Cingular	MetroPCS	Nextel	Sprint	T-Mobile	Verizon
Local Digital Coverage (service available when circuits are not full)	6	5	5	4	5	6	5	9
Capacity	5	4	5	?	8	8	5	9
On-Network Roaming (including extended network on Verizon)	7	5	4	0	4	7	4	8
Off-Network Digital Coverage	9	6	5	0	0	8	5	9
Analog Coverage (on or off network)	9	9 (GAIT)	0	0	0	9	0	9
Overall Coverage	8.5	6.75	3.75	1.3	2.25	7.8	3.75	8.8
International Roaming (Europe and Asia)	0	9	9	0	0	0	9	3
Phone Selection (bought from carrier)	7	5	6	3	3	9	7	7
Phone Selection (unlocked, bought elsewhere)	7	9	9	0	0	8	9	8
Off-Peak Hours Start Time	5	5	5	9	5	5	5	5
High Speed Data	7	7	7	0	3	9	7	9
Retention Plans	0	0	5	0	0	9	0	0
Prepaid	7	8	0	9	0	5	2	5
Rates	7	7	8	7	5	5	9	5

Bottom Line on Carrier Ratings
Unless you need international roaming in Europe and parts of Asia, Verizon is the best choice for this area. Verizon is tied for the best local coverage, has the best on-network nationwide coverage (though much of the rural coverage is analog), is tied for the best in off-network nationwide coverage, and has high speed data available now.

Verizon is not the low price leader. Verizon's rates, if you go just by peak minutes, are the highest (at least on the national plans). But if mobile to mobile minutes are useful to you (friends, family, and colleagues also using Verizon) then Verizon's rates are competitive. The negatives about Verizon are 1) no international roaming (except South Korea, Canada, Mexico), and Sprint has a better selection of CDMA phones. If you are choosing a regional plan then AT&T and Verizon are almost tied, but I'd still give the edge to Verizon because of their better selection of phones (as well as their data capability).

AT&T TDMA has been deteriorating as they move 800 Mhz spectrum over to GSM. It is not advisable to sign up for AT&T TDMA. AT&T's GSM network is poor so it is not advisable to sign up with AT&T GSM either.

Cingular has rates comparable to AT&T. Cingular GSM is still not great, but AT&T's GSM is worse.

Sprint has some cooler phones than Verizon, and local coverage is good, but Sprint has much poorer nationwide on-network coverage. However at least you'll be able to roam when you want to; Sprint charges for roaming but doesn't try to prohibit it. Sprint now has a plan that allows up to 50% of the minutes to be roaming. Sprint's big disadvantage is inherent to their technology; PCS, which is 1900 Mhz CDMA, provides much poorer penetration into buildings.

T-Mobile has the best rates but has the same local coverage issues as Cingular. If you want to go the GSM route for the international roaming then T-Mobile is a better deal than Cingular. T-Mobile is sharing infrastructure with Cingular.

Nextel customers choose it solely because of the two-way radio feature, not because of coverage, high speed data, or price.

Remember that with Nextel, and with all GSM carriers, you lose the ability to make calls at all outside of GSM/iDEN coverage areas, even for an extra charge, because current GSM/iDEN phones on these carriers have no AMPS roaming capability and because GSM/iDEN coverage is not yet pervasive. This will change as GSM coverage is expanded. Interestingly enough, the state of GSM caught the attention of Consumer Reports who has a cellular article in their February 2004 issue with a sidebar entitled: "Trouble in the GSM Network."

It is important to note that these ratings are only valid for the San Francisco Bay Area.