On 09/17/2012 09:54 AM, Alex Stanley wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <noozguru@...> wrote: >> >> >> I like the larger screen but there are plenty of smaller ones but I >> suppose stuck in the boonies you can't exactly "window shop" like I >> can at places like Fry's or Best Buy. > Out here, AT&T is all about fewer bars in rural places. Verizon's coverage is > good, but US Cellular has absolute blanket coverage out here, and their > customer service is great; we've been with US Cellular for about 16 years, > and we're not about to change. They were a little slow to hop on the Android > bandwagon, but they're up to speed now. If I'd waited a few months, I'd could > have gotten an S3 instead of an S2, but the HTC Desire's running out of app > space was driving me crazy. > >
US Cellular appears to be a mid-west only service. I can't even access their web page which is a bit odd. I got my first cellphone in 1993 and then there were few carriers and I was on Cellular One, an early west coast company. They got bought by AT&T Wireless who got bought by Cingular and then AT&T bought Cingular. These companies are all run by the "get rich quick" types or what we used to call the "gold rush" mentality. They're often salesmen who gambled on an emerging technology even if they don't really understand it. Many of those types are CEOs. Good reason why the Hindus made them the third rung on the caste system. :-D 3G and 4G are built on the back of WiMax which is a wide area broadband that was designed to bring broadband to rural areas, farms, etc where laying fiber or even phone lines wouldn't work. It is part of why analog TVs went dark because those lower channels are being used by companies and emergency networks now. Those lower frequencies propagate better over wide areas than the higher UHF frequencies. That's why one could often get VHF channels 2-6 with just rabbit ears. At the house I mainly get "E" on the phone which means "Edge" and on some phones will say 3G. 4G shows up as "H" for HSPA and I do sometimes see that. If I had the tower right behind as there should be by now it would be "H" all the time. The acid test was going on my walk in the neighborhood and even with 3G there was no dropouts on the streams when I occasionally would get them on a walk using Verizon. The neighbors were worried about kids playing near the towers while they are probably irradiating them more with their wifi routers in their homes. :-D If you want to talk about large phones, my nephew's company got a cell phone in 1984 when they were the new thing. I recall attending his brothers wedding here and my nephew had this box with phone handset, antenna and a handle on it.
