I've been with Nextel for about 10 years now and I must say, the service is getting worse and worse. Dropped calls, voice mails more than a week late and overall the service in my area is horrible. I can't get a signal at my house. Then I hear they took down one of the towers up where I work and the one that was supposed to go up in my town is still not there. I also hear that Sprint is going to do away with Nextel all together. All that combined has me in the market for a new phone and carrier. I'm seriously considering, pretty much made the decision, of switching over to Sprint. I'm told the service is much better in my area. Plus, they have a way better selection of phones with the features I want / need. And....the biggest thing is that I can switch from Nextel to Sprint and not get charged any early cancellation fees from Nextel. I've looked at the plans and it seems I can get a decent plan with 2 phones for less than what I pay now.

Two questions... does anyone have/had Sprint and how do you like it? Also, what brand phone should I stay away from if any? I'm looking at the Katana made by Sanyo. Any info on this phone??




BREW

 

You can switch with out any cancelation fees, because they are the same company. They use the exact same equipmment so you'll be getting the same service.

 

Brew,

The quality of service varies by area. For example, just about every carrier sucks in Los Angeles because of the terrain. That said, I will give you my experiences.

I used to have Nextel (about a year and a half ago). Their walkie talkie feature seemed to work just about everywhere, but their cell service got to be pretty bad, and their customer service was marginal.

I then switched to T-Mobile mostly because they had incredilby low rates. Something like a trillion minutes for a dollar. Their coverage in Lost Angeles was slightly better but not enough to make a big deal about. I will say their customer service is second to none. Toward the end of my contract their coverage got worse it seems. Lots of dropped calls. On the other hand, my best friend moved to Florida and his company has an account with T-Mobile and the coverage for T-Mobile there is awesome (so just because it sucks one place does not mean it sucks everywhere).

In March I switched to Sprint. If you hear people tell you they use the same towers as Nextel do NOT believe them. They don't. Even though they own Nextel they do not use the same system. Nextel continues to suck in Lost Angeles but Sprint coverage here is awesome. I have rarely had a call drop now that I am with Sprint, even in the canyons where coverage is difficult. Their customer service is OK (although I have not really had occasion to use them other than to cancel the Web/TV features I got when signing up.

I have the Samsung A900 phone which I like a lot. It's slim, weighs nothing, and works very well. It is web capable and "TV" capable, but I cancelled those after the free one month period as I found them to be useless. I just wanted a phone and service that worked well, and these do.



Sprint's costs are higher than T-Mobile but cheaper than Verizon (the most expensive). My plan is OK, the unlimted mins starts after 7:00PM and unlimited on weekends and unlimited to other sprint customers at all times.

No matter where I have roamed I have always gotten great coverage, including a number of little towns in the midwest in the middle of friggin nowhere . . . great coverage. So make of that what you will.

Like I said, your experience may differ, but they work well for me.

 

WRONG
(Thanks for playing)

Oh man, you gotta love this:

"This forum requires that you wait 60 seconds between posts. Please try again in 1 seconds."

1 Second ?!?!?!?!

 

It's not the exact same equipment, maybe it's going to be, but it isn't yet and I though the two companies used different technology. The reception is different. My wife has Sprint and I have Nextel and even in a major metrepolitan area she gets better reception.

I haven't had the viocemail problem but text messages can sometimes take a day to deliver or recieve.

I looking forward to switching someday as well.

 

Well good god... how long does it take them? They merged atleast 3 years ago when my wife was a Sprint/Alltell/Cingular rep.

 

Kobi, I hear ya bro. The service was pretty good a few years ago, but it has gotten worse over the last year or 2. I just got off the phone with them. I called to ask if anymore towers were going up in my area and what my options were. He told me they could send a tec h out to test the signal in my area. If in fact the signal is not good ( which it isn't ) I can cancell my contract with them and not be charged any fees. I also have the option to switch over to Sprint with no fees as well. He asked if the walkie talkie feature was something I needed and proceeded to tell me they are testing a new phone right now which will be out in October. Basically it's a Sprint phone with the walkie talkie feature that will use the Nextel towers to transmit the direct connect signal. Now that I could deal with, as long as I can get a good cell signal and was able to use the phone, I could deal with loosing the direct connect signal while at home or for a few minutes here and there in the dead spots around here. So for now I may just wait until October to see if this new phone/system comes out and then I will make the switch.



BREW

 

Hey Matt, what he just told me is that Nextel and Sprint will always be 2 seperate companies. They are not doing a comlete merger and getting rid of one or the other. Who knows if this is true or not, but it's what he just told me.


BREW

 

Another vote for the A900 and Sprint. There are very few places I can't get service at...

 

Brew, I agree 100%. I have had Nextel for about 3 years and the service seems to be getting worse here in Hampton Roads. There is one thing I don't understand. My wife has a company Sprint phone and I take that on the road with me to NC when I go and I always have signal, and my nextel sitting right beside it has no signal at all. The guys in my office all have Nextel and the same phones (contract), but mine is personal and I can't get a decent signal in the office, even though they can. What gives?

 

Wife just informed me that they were told it wasnt a merge that Sprint bought Nextel. Well what good did it do for sprint to buy them out if they aren't going to atleast share towers? The company she worked for still doesnt carry Nextel, so they may maintain a seperate identity. However if I owned two companies I'd make them both a huge network utilizing merged resources from both to make them both bigger and stronger than any of the others. Maybe it's just me, but that only makes since to me.

Ohhh yea, I've used Alltell for the last 5 years and have no desire to change. Service is only getting better and ALOT more things are becoming free. (As if we didn't get more free stuff than everyone else to begin with anyway.)


My choices in order of whats available here, Alltell, Nextel, US cellular, Sprint or cingular as a last resort. Only reason Sprint is last is because I have a personal vandita against the company... I still own shares in them too, I own shares in all except cingular because I hate them more than I do sprint. Sprint service is probably fine, I just want to see the company fail. Cingular I want to not only fail but get squashed, absolutly smeared into oblivian never to emerge again.

 

I have had Sprint for several years with no major complaints.

 

I had Sprint for a couple of years and thought they sucked ***. I ditched them as soon as my contract was up and switched to Cingular. Been very happy ever since.

 

Hmmm. Can you say "somebody has issues"?

Dude, I own a lot of Sprint so on the off chance that you decide to head up to Leawood and do some damage, let me know ahead of time so I can sell it short.

(Hey, you gotta love the free EMBARQ shares you got . . . FREE MONEY!)

 

While Sprint and Nextel are the same company they are NOT the same technology nor are they compatible.

Nextel uses a unique system (iDen) designed by Motorola. Different towers and different phones.

Sprint uses GDS; a much better system than iDen but not generally as good as CDMA (Verizon and others).

As the number of users of Nextel increase in an area their ability to handle the of users is quickly reduced and the number of dropped calls increases.

GDS and CDMA handle this workload more gracefully but even they will eventually max out.

I would recommend Verizon on the east coast but as Kobi said coverage varies on local levels tremendously.