I recently decided, after much consideration and weighing of the proverbial pros and cons, to discontinue my service with AT&T. This meant that I also had to give up the full use of my beloved iPhone. To many, especially those who use this device on a daily basis, such a step is akin to technological sacrilege. However, I had my reasons.
First, there is the issue of AT&T keeping things from iPhone users. The big one for me, ironically, was Google Voice. Now, I only have the one phone that I use on a regular basis. I drive a truck for a living, so a land line is a bit out of the question. I have one at my house, of course, but I rarely use it there. But the fact that AT&T would conspire against its customers to prevent becoming a "portal" for Google usage is criminal. By the way, AT&T, in case you didn't realize it, customers with the iPhone DO use you as a portal. They don't buy games or ringtones or anything from you. Just minutes and a data plan. The only time they know that they have AT&T is when you're fucking them. On to reason two.
Since I drive everywhere, I have a pretty decent idea of how well each service provider does on the national level. I used to drive into California and I knew, for a fact, that I would only have dropped calls in two areas. One was going under an overpass in Needles where there was just a dead zone; a bit of an anomoly, really. The second place was along US 395 in the Eastern part of the state. But I'll give them that one: it was basically driving through a canyon next to a river. However, over the past year or so, the service in California has gotten worse and worse. I can be in the middle of Los Angeles, probably the largest land-area metropolis in the country, and have calls dropped repeatedly. It's bullshit. I don't know if anybody's out there giving orders to shut down towers, but you have to wonder when stuff like this happens.
Thirdly, with being in school and having so many documents and spreadsheets and Power Point presentations to make and deliver and edit, I needed a device that could do those things when I was unable to pull out my laptop. Sure, there is an app that I could buy for around $20 that would do it, but it still has not been updated to work with Microsoft Office 2007. Now, my school requires me to use the 2007 version; they even let me buy it from them for only $15. Well, I'm not going to wait around for an app to finally get its shit together. When I'm on the toilet and need to write in a Word document, I need a device that will back me up.
So, as you might guess, I have resolved all three of these issues. I went with Verizon Wireless as my carrier and got the latest Blackberry device as my phone. As much as I loved the iPhone and its sweet, smooth curves and operability, this Blackberry makes for a nice, steady fuck. It has a Word/Excel/PowerPoint editor built right in for free. It has so many options for messaging that I can hardly keep up with them all. It's decently easy to type on and the Verizon Network makes AT&T look sad. If you look at the coverage maps from both companies, you might consider AT&T's "partly cloudy". Verizon, though, looks like a nightmare bubonic plague has swept the nation and is killing people by the millions. Sweet.
Now, in a perfect world, I would be able to get the iPhone on a Verizon account and those asses would get their Office editing software updated. But that time is not now. When AT&T finally loses the exclusivity agreement with Apple, perhaps I'll get another one. By then all the other shit will have been straightened out, too. To tell you the truth, based upon what I've seen from AT&T's current pricing plans and phone costs, they'll probably be just as glad to lose the agreement with Apple.
Oh, and by the way, Verizon gave me a sweet deal on my phones and service. I bought one Blackberry for $200 and they gave me the second one free. Both are the same phone. Also, there's no paying for text and MMS plans. Fuck that. It's all unlimited. They even waived my activation fees. According to the receipt I got, I saved well over $400. So fuck AT&T.
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