Mobile phones in Seattle

Mobile Phone Service

Disclaimer. Please bear in mind that these are excerpted/digested from uw-cs.grads newsgroup posts relevant to choosing mobile phone service. These messages do not represent anything beyond the personal opinions of the posters at the time of writing, and your experience might vary. (Feb 2004)

service availability in Allen Center

• AT&T: if you're new to mobile phone service, consider AT&T's prepaid plan. its 25cents/min, but if you barely use it, it's only $3.33/month. and, you can route your email to SMS for free, so it's like a cheap blackberry. (it's 10cents/sms to send). a good deal since AT&T has the best coverage in the allen ctr. [kepart, sep 2004]
• Verizon: works on Floors 1 and 6 (at least) [kasiaw]; also on Floor 4 and atrium [lizhang]
• AT&T: works fine, but weak signal [amol]; "performs very well...even some signal in parts of the upper basement" [spencer]; no signal in most of building [sbfan]; great (analog/AMPS) reception throughout building [karthikg via sbfan]
• AT&T GSM: 2--3 bars in Floor 4 office, up to 1 bar in breakout areas, no signal elsewhere [aliu]
• T-Mobile: "nothing but horrible coverage...in Allen and throughout Seattle" [antoine, Feb 2004]; "no reception inside the [new CSE] building" [kgajos, Feb 2004]; "With a T610 handset, I usually need to go to the 6th floor landing or Jaech to get signal. Signal seems fine around town, and if you travel in Europe, you can call cust. service to unlock the handset for free." [yasuhara, Sep 2004]