Rand Wacker

This Engadget posting made me remember that I’ve been meaning to complain about the new cell service I’m getting from Cingular wireless. We combined our phone accounts to take advantage of free mobile-to-mobile calling, and because the Cingular coverage was a bit better in two key locations: home and work. Since the switch though I have been less-than impressed with the overall call quality/stability, their lack of reasonable data plans, and no WiFi plan like the all-I-could-eat HotSpot account I had with T-Mobile.

Another thing I miss about T-Mobile, believe it or not, is their customer service attitude. They always seemed to understand that they were more than just a purveyor of handsets or a simple wireless phone company. They let you use their network for whatever kind of voice/data you wanted too. I prefer their $20/month all-you-can-eat GPRS plan to Cingular’s “please sign in blood for $80 per month” plan and Sprint’s draconian “if we catch you hooking the phone to your laptop we will back-bill you for whatever hundreds of dollars we think you owe us” policy. T-Mobile was even willing to send me the SIM unlock code for my T610, two years after I bought the phone from them and several weeks after I had already switched my number!

Alas, like I said, with T-Mobile I got practically zero reception at home or sitting in my cube at work, so the core feature wasn’t working. In that department Cingular wins, so I’m stuck with a new crack dealer for the next couple of years.