Great Reception here in elk river... 4 or 5 bars everywhere

My Cingular phone works great for me everywhere in Elk River. I no longer need a landline.

I could go on forever.. whether in the city or outstate- to sum Cingular up - crap. I have much better coverage with my AT&T TDM phone that Cingular is trying to pry out of my hands. (I currently have both, what a pain) For those of you that are getting voice messages days late- the fix is to hit * when checking your voice message and make sure the automated system says "bye". * ==> "Bye"

This message it primarily to alert people to the blackmail / extortion scheme that Cingular has to convert former ATT Wireless Customers to Cingular. Cingular has admitted to me that it is no longer upgrading ATT Wireless Network. They also are not allowed to replaced failed ATT Wireless Network Equipment if it is beyong repair. They also say that the phones provided from ATT Wireless are not fully compatable with the Cingular Network and therefore you must get a new Cingular phone (free if you sign up for a 2 year plan) if you want to get good reception. When I remind them that the ATT Wireless people promised that I could go on a month to month program when my two year contract with them expired, they say sure you can just keep using your AT&T Wireless phones but you wont have as large a coverage area(which will continue to get smaller as they continue to fail to replace failed equipment) Perhaps this would be a basis for a class action lawsuit. Most of the day in Elk River, Monticello, Albertville, Rogers, Coon Rapids, Anoka and Ramsey my phone say, "Emergency Service only" This means I can only dial "911" and cannot dial out nor recieve calls. My day use to begin with driving to the post office and checking in with my office, now from the time I leave home in Monticello, go to the post office in Albertville and go to my office in Elk River, I have no service except "emergency only" Yet in the middle of the night, the same phone, same location 3-5 bars of service. When confronted, some Cingular employees admit that some ATT wireless towers in the area have been converted to Cingular and others have been abandoned. (Did I mention the long hold times and unavailabilty of supervisors and that there is no way to escalate complaints except to send a letter to somebody and then never recieve a response. Our office has 5 phones on a shared plan. Coincidently, all phones have started getting poorer service as there 2 year contracts expired (some were purchased at different times) I suspect that Cingular has deliberately programmed its system to give lower priority to cell phones when the system is very busy, hence "Emergency service only" 8am to 8pm and then 3-5 bars frm 8pm-7am. ATT Wireless had pretty good coverage within 100 miles of Minneapolis except for some dead spots caused by High Hills, Low River Valleys, and lack of towers in unpopulated areas not along major highways. There also was a big spot down by Red Wing-Goodhue and North about 15-20 miles wide West from Cambridge to just East of St. Cloud. Now who knows which ATT Wireless Towers Cingular is just abandoning and which ones it is converting exclusively to the Cingular System. The point being, if you have to sign up for two more years, you might just as well reinvestigate all the other providers first. I left Verizon after 12 years because we moved our office to Elk River and it was on the boundary between the Minneapolis Cell Carriers and the St. Cloud Cell Carrier "Cellular One" who would not allow Verizon to use their tower and the City of Elk River would not allow another cell tower to be constructed. Verizon is hot to get my business back and promise the problem has been fixed since they have since bought Cellular One. Maybe I need to switch.

No reception with Cingular (AT&T, not GSM). Will get reception 1 / 2 mile south.