Coverage comments are submitted voluntarily by visitors around the Tucson, AZ area.
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The coverage map on Cingular's website is not true in the Tucson Area. It is ashame that I can not use my phone in certain building or stores. Yet other carriers seem to work better.
All over Tucson is a bad area for The New AT&T aka "Cingular" wireless service. They know it, but seem not to care. The last time any upgrades to towers were made was a few years ago. When asking any customer service person they will tell you that they are putting up towers all over (but not in Arizona of course). If you ask them if they plan on upgrading there system here in Tucson they'll say of course hopefully by the end of the year. There now has been too many years and I'm still waiting. This service works great in my house but when I leave it the signal goes up and down. I don't drop calls because I can not make any. If you read Cingular News Press you'll read how much money is being spent elsewhere, but not here.
Both my wife's Nokia, and my LG phone experience pretty poor reception near our home (and the general area) in Saguaro Hills Estates, just north of Snyder, about a mile east of Catalina Highway. That said, Alltel's customer service has been great, and they've worked with me when I've exceeded my minutes, so I've continued to stay with them for 2+ years (compared to Verizon, who I had a horrible customer service / billing issue which almost made it to a collection agency!)
Qwest uses the Sprint network. Even with what appears to be a reasonable signal, I get dropped calls from inside the house. The audio quality is also poor, with short dropouts. I dont know how much of this is an issue with the system or the phone as it has no external antenna. I used to have perfect operation with the old AT&T TDMA system, but thats progress.
Wow! I can't believe all the bad mouthing about Cingular. I have used Cingular for over two years without a problem. However, there are definitately a few dead spots (like Wal-Mart and Home Depot) where reception drops from 5 to 1 bar (sometimes zero). My wife has the exact same phone and she doesn't experience any dead areas at all. Even when we are standing side-by-side at the same location, her reception will be perfect where I cant make a call. Sounds like a phone problem to me and nothing to do with Cingular. In my home I always have five bars and I live in a steel frame house. Personally, I've used four different carriers over the years. Cingular is the only carrier out of the four where I have never had a dropped call. I like Cingular and love the rollover minutes.
With Verizon usually 4 to 5 bars. Never had a dropped call here in SaddleBrooke. Used to have Cingular Motorola TDMA phone which worked OK from about Dec. 2003 until July 2005. Then the Cingular TDMA Network service deterioted badly and I switched to Verizon. No problems since! Cingular never offered to switch me to their GSM network, which, perhaps would have worked better. Their customer service was poor to non-existant.
Have had Cingular for years - it only gets worse - poor reception, dropped calls regularly on a daily basis - I will be switching services very soon. False advertising - fewest dropped calls - right... .
I know that you can get bad reception inside buildings, homes and blocked by mountans and hills but in this area there are hills about 7 miles away and I get crappy reception. The Cingular store which is nearby has great reception inside the store so I figured this area was excellent for service. Good thing I have 30 days to return this phone.
