<p>Currently, I have Virgin Mobile as my cellphone carrier, and, to be honest, this is the ****tiest service I have ever used. I don't even get coverage in my dorm room in Landis. I have to walk to the east-side of campus by Carothers to actually talk on the phone. </p>
<p>Anyway, I was planning on switching to Sprint. If anyone here has Sprint, can you please comment on its coverage around campus? </p>
<p>Thank you for any help you guys can provide.</p>
<p>Sprint has worked fine for me there. Some buildings are hard to get data connection though.</p>
<p>Sprint owns Virgin Mobile. The only difference in coverage between the two is that Sprint’s subscribers are able to roam on Verizon towers if Sprint doesn’t have service (and their phones have required hardware), whereas Virgin Mobile phones cannot. </p>
<p>Sprint does not get good service in many buildings. That’s because of the frequency their phones use when compared to Verizon, which cannot penetrate buildings nearly as well.
I have however been in Landis and had coverage just fine (only areas on campus I really don’t get service are in Chili’s and the cafeteria area of the Union). Depending on what phone you have, it could be an issue with your specific phone. I know that a number of Virgin Mobile phones have antenna issues that can hamper their signal. </p>
<p>Bottom line: switching to Sprint isn’t going to fix your problem. If you want to switch carriers, you’re better off looking at Verizon or AT&T. Just note that during football games, I was often times the only person with service. For whatever reason, it seems like Sprint never really cut out, whereas all my friends with Verizon or AT&T pretty much lost all service.</p>
<p>Of you do not opt to switch to Sprint and decide between AT&T or Verizon I’d say go for Verizon. I hate AT&T and they are nothing but a headache. I have an iPhone had suddenly my data usage went through the roof with minimum usage. I went all last summer constantly using data but never went over. Ever since the iPhone iOS update this year my data goes so fast (and have been using data WAY less than last summer) and they are raising data prices. AT&T refused to acknowledge any problem but Verizon were helping people out and not making people pay overages bc they know apple was the problem not peoples usage. Data should not be going crazy overboard when you have all apps killed, location services off, the mail app off and all push notifications off. </p>
<p>tl;dr: don’t get an iPhone and don’t go with a phone company that don’t care about their customers such as AT&T. Go with Verizon.</p>
<p>Something to consider too, is that a number of companies provide cell service and have agreements with the larger companies (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile) to essentially use their towers for service. Essentially you just have to buy a phone that’s compatible, maybe program it to work on the service provider, and then you’re normally good to go. The downside is that if you don’t have a phone already, you have to buy one, and there’s usually no subsidies like with contracts. The upside is that usually you can get way cheaper service. </p>
<p>If you are looking at Verizon, but have sticker shock with their prices, there’s a number of these companies (they’re called MVNOs, or Mobile Virtual Network Operators, as they don’t have a wireless network of their own) that you can look into. </p>
<p>I used one of the Verizon ones, Page Plus, most of my freshman year on campus. Never had reception issues, the worst part was programming my phone to work with the service. Depending on your usage, what phone you want to use, and how much you want to pay, there’s most likely one for you out there. These companies are sort of like these “not intentionally hidden gems/secrets of the cell industry” in a way.</p>
<p>We started with Nextel, which was eventually bought by Sprint. Then we left Nextel technology and went with Sprint CDMA. Coverage was OK, but not great, especially when traveling by car in rural Georgia.</p>
<p>Then we went to Verizon which was excellent, if expensive when compared to Sprint. Verizon is also a CDMA-based carrier. Using Verizon in many places around the U.S. is very satisfactory.</p>
<p>Ultimately, in order to use the Apple iPhone, we migrated to AT&T from Verizon (and from BlackBerry to iPhone - HUGE improvement in personal phone functionality in our opinion) AT&T is a GSM-based carrier and is also excellent. The service we have experienced with AT&T is better than we had with Verizon. Costs are comparable. </p>
<p>We have stayed with AT&T as we now travel internationally and AT&T uses what amounts to world-standard technology (that being GSM). It’s easy to buy a local GSM SIM card to get inexpensive international service with a GSM (unlocked) phone. Data service is purchased via the same SIM card if desired.</p>
<p>Both Verizon and AT&T are fine for Tallahassee and the trip to and from for those driving up from central and south Florida.</p>
<p>I have Sprint and have never experienced any problems. 3G and 4G are kind of iffy in certain places around campus but for the most part, I can connect to the school wifi and it works fine.</p>