Picking the Best Cell Phone Carrier by Performance

When you go place yourself in the market for a new mobile, you invest yourself greatly in the entertaining debate that pits the iPhone against the Blackberry, against the Android; Since every cell phone provider gives you a great selection of smart phones (and their less gifted siblings), one wonders if there's any real reason to think about the cell phone carrier at all (unless it's a model that you're crazy about, like the iPhone). Here's the problem with that stance - your spanking new cell phone is not going to perform as well as it might sending e-mail, displaying photos and downloading music, if the signal provider isn't doing a great job laying down enough capacity in the market. Now it's not really anyone's fault that it doesn't occur to one look at the quality of a provider's services. When was the last time you ever saw a real signal strength review anywhere? And if you run a magazine, how exactly do you cover the abilities of a cell phone carrier when your readers are spread all around the country? How strong a carrier's services are would entirely depend on which service area (of the thousands there are) your readers were interested in.

But there is a way to address the problem of judging the level of service you get by with a cell phone carrier - how reliable the network is, and how fast it is. Many cellular companies actually give you detailed maps of the entire country to show you how dense their cell phone towers are. You could go to Verizon or AT&T and their websites give you maps that you can get in close on to see how well the areas you're interested in perform. And Gizmodo has detailed tests published for 12 major cities around the country for what their data rates are. It doesn't really do much for how reliable your calls are though.

For information on networks that aren't covered by Gizmodo or ones that don't put out coverage information maps on their websites, try Consumer Reports. They'll give you report cards of how all the networks fare in general without going into geographical detail. Here's where social networking and the Internet democracy work for you though. MyTrueCoverage, Dead Cell Zones and SignalMap have detailed maps of coverage available in 16 cities, and partial coverage maps of others too. And they cover T-Mobile, Sprint and other smaller cell phone carrier networks as well. They get their information from volunteers all across the country. And if you want to ask the best experts in your area, try the social network Aardvark.

If all else fails, you'll always have a cell phone carrier like Sprint that will give you a generous trial. You can return the phone and get your money back if you're not happy. Verizon and AT&T do the same thing; but T-Mobile only gives you two weeks to try them out.