Cell Service

[jayman]

My contract is up with Qwest and I’m looking for alternatives to cell service with good West Seattle cell reception. I’ve read the news on Clear Wire moving into WS, so they may be a choice. I’ve heard T-Mobile, Cingular and Virgin may be good? I live in the Admiral District and would like the same good coverage we have experienced with Qwest but with better Nationwide service and phone options.

Please offer your cell coverage experiences in West Seattle.

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[WSB]

We are on the other side of West Seattle but use the phone while driving, er, riding in the car, and have had good coverage with Verizon for months. We have another line which is with Virgin Mobile, which as I understand it taps into the Sprint network, and it’s had more dropouts around WS.

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[JayDee]

While there is always that “dead zone” between the top of the hill and the bottom (right around “Alki Mail and Dispatch”), I have found Verizon to have the best customer service, and the best coverage in general. From my understanding Clearwire is only an Internet provider of slower-than-DSL speeds (Clearwire is a tad coy about actual upload speeds…)

I do not know about your area–I’d quiz your neighbors if you are looking into it. There was/is an odd dead spot in Verizon coverage in the Alaska Junction if you hang there.

While this sounds lukewarm, I’ve gotten better customer service from Verizon wireless than any comparable utility.

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[credmond]

Cingular seems to have a good signal anywhere I’m at in West Seattle or other parts of town. It gets a little weird down in the valley between Gatewood Hill, and the highlands of Westwood to the north and Arbor Heights to the south, and by weird I mean two cell conversations, mine and another one I can hear. But that’s the only spot where Cingular/AT&T Wireless seems to have a problem and I attribute it to too many cell towers trying to cover the hills. I believe they’ve got repeaters all over West Seattle. Service is fine in Admiral, the Junction, Pigeon Point, Genesee, Delridge, Alki and Endolyne (a tough spot for some carriers) and elsewhere. I’d opt for the “no roaming charge” plan since that way you’re bound to get a carrier no matter where you are – that’s my plan and I think part of why I have such good “coverage.” Plus, Cingular/AT&T have rollover minutes – that’s a very handy thing if you only talk in batches and not continuously. YMMV.

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[acemotel]

I recently switched to ATT and I’m a happy camper. Reception is great everywhere, no dropped calls. The customer service is excellent. The sales person even gave me his private cell phone number to call in case we had trouble setting up one of our phones. He also worked to get us a special refund when the price of the phone dropped a few weeks after we bought it. I’m so happy to leave Verizon, where I had been a customer for years and years. One of my kids’ phones malfunctioned four months after he got it, and they were NO HELP at all. All those many years of faithful bill-paying were worth nothing. Of course, now that we’re all gone, they want us back, desperately.

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[Ken]

Cingular AT&T merger created nearly overwhelming coverage in West Seattle. The original AT&T sites were first leased by cingular before the merger and filled in by Cingular in the months leading up to the merger. Cingular was much better at camouflage than AT&T so they got approved with few problems.

That said, the model of phone it self is often the issue. Some have better reception and reach than others.

There are also traffic issues around certain times due to so many people using them during morning and afternoon rush, sometimes you will get “network unavailable” errors along some of the commuter routes due to cell traffic overload.

Those NIMBY’s who proudly fought cell towers in residential areas in the late 90’s can claim at least partial credit for some of the remaining dead or low signal spots.

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