<p>T-mobile has probably the 2nd best coverage at MIT (basically I have as many bars as I want anywhere on campus), and it's better elsewhere around Boston. my sister and I both are at mit and we have a t-mobile family plan. It's really just a falsehood if anybody says t-mobile doesn't get good reception. Furthermore, Verizon is for communists.</p>
<p>Thank you, river phoenix. Do you know if there is any reception w/t-mobile in the dorms, like EC or MacGregor? Do you get good reception at Stata? (I have a feeling that my son will be eating there a bit--the food seemed a little nicer/healthier there than at Stratton)</p>
<p>I think EC has poor reception no matter the carrier. Someone told me the walls are filled with wire mesh, making it a pretty grand Faraday cage.. the result being no reception.</p>
<p>Then again, ask around. I saw someone with reception in the underground tunnel connecting the two EC parallels.</p>
<p>Yeah, service in the dorms can be less than ideal. I always had service in MacGregor, but when I had my old crappy phone I'd have to stick my ear to a window to talk, or else I'd have a lot of static.</p>
<p>Honestly, we have this discussion all the time, and nobody ever comes to an agreement about which cell phone carriers are great/crappy at MIT. I think they're all about equally mediocre. :)</p>
<p>I had good phone reception in MacGregor as well as EC. I was on T-Mobile and using a Samsung SGH-T309 phone.</p>
<p>Like I said though, before I could make any calls, I had to wait 5-10 seconds for an automatic "conditional forwarding" thing (so my phone tells me). After that, it works perfectly. Incoming calls were not affected.</p>
<p>Thank you for the info--I think we're stuck with t-mobile for the time being, and we're about to recommit for longer, since my son drove over his cell phone, but it sounds like it will work reasonably well on campus.</p>
<p>My son is in East Campus and has Verizon. He has NEVER had a problem with service in his dorm or anywhere on campus or in Boston. He says some students with other companies have to go outside. We talked to a lot of people at MIT about phone service before we switched to Verizon, and we're happy with it.</p>
<p>How's sprint?</p>
<p>My son is in East Campus also and has Sprint. He found a few spotty places on campus, especially in the bowels of concrete buildings (e.g. some parts of the Infinite Corridor) and occasionally/rarely inside EC, but he had no real complaints about his service last year, so no changes are contemplated for the future.</p>
<p>Verizon, in general, has the best service I have ever seen. In Boston, I have had no problems with it. Also, I work for Verzion in the marketing departent so I know a lot about this stuff, haha just kidding. I always find myself promoting Verizon so hard because one time I drove from Denver to Boston and had service the whole way.</p>
<p>My daughter has Verizon up there and she is not having problems at all with coverage/reception.</p>
<p>old thread coming up. </p>
<p>okay so i have cingular and i'm on a family plan. meaning i can't exactly break off and run to verizon. does anyone know how the reception is in next?</p>
<p>you know if you have T-mobil, you can call other T-mobil friends FREE; same thing for the Verizon...my real question is that: which one is more popular at MIT? See, if I have more friends using Verizon, then I will have more minutes if I use Verizon too--vice versa for T-mobil?</p>
<p>If you use family plan, do you do 700 minutes? 1000 minutes? or more?</p>
<p>Cingular's reception in next was okay, not as good as verizon, but was better than tmobile during cpw.</p>
<p>After all the discussion, I conclude that Verizon is the best one to buy for MIT; correct?</p>
<p>From what I hear/read in the blogs, Verizon has the best reception, even in Simmons (though that's not exactly saying much). IIRC, T-Mobile is second, and Cingular is third.</p>
<p>Of course, any upperclassmen/nonfrosh/frosh who actually know what they're talking about, feel free to correct me, but I'm pretty sure that's how it breaks down.</p>