slvr.jpgI was with Nextel and have always been a big proponent of them in the area I live due to limited national cellphone coverage, but the price was starting to get a bit high on the monthly plans and all the good plans were reserved ONLY for new customers. What a load of poop.So, I decided to switch to Cingular, which is 1 of about 3 major cell providers that offer coverage here. Verizon is non-existant, Sprint only has 3 towers of their own, T-Mobile is ok in town, but horrible outside town.

Most of the Cingular coverage is provided through 100% roaming agreements with CellularOne, although I believe they do have a few of their own towers in town.

At home, the coverage is spotty, sometimes good, sometimes not, but it gets the job done. In town or at work, the coverage is EXCELLENT. Full signal almost everywhere.

I do plan on getting together a letter from the local business community and ask Cingular for a few more towers in key areas here. My town is expanding and will be rapidly over the next 4-6 years, so now is a good time to get started and get a loyal customer base before things really heat up. We are already a major tourist area due to having a major lake nearby, lots of people from out of town come down using many different providers, but out of GSM users, most of them are Cingular. They are not only visitors, but actually own lake homes and/or property. I estimate that with only 3-5 decent towers, all deadzones could be filled in and also create some nice overlap so we don’t immediately roam to CellOne between handoffs.

As for the phone, It is a Motorola SLVR L7, it is an amazing little sucker. iTunes works great although it is limited to 100 MP3s, the tiny little speaker has relatively excellent quality for it’s size, the screen is sharp and clear, but unfortunately not a hybrid LCD that gives good visibility in sunlight.

My Bluetooth earpiece (Mot HS-850) works fine with it of course and I was able to transfers files between my phone, PDA and my wife’s phone (Also a new Motorola RAZR with Cingular).

Cell reception is also great compared to other GSM phones I’ve used locally with internal antennas.

Out of approximately 20 GSM phones I have used, this one is the best, hands down. I give it 9.5/10.