Question:
- I'm in Florida, Cingular and AT&T look like my two best choices for where I travel. Both offer the Nokia 5165 Are the phones that I would buy from the two companies identical. Could I later switch service provider on a phone? If not - what's different?

Answer:

In Florida, AT&T is our strongest service provider. Cingular does not cover much of the state without roaming, some of which is og. AT&T's coverage is fantastic. I am in the Tampa Bay area, & do a lot of traveling. I have even had coverage in the National Forest northeast of Ocala. Alltel does a decent job, but south Florida is bad. Sprint is awful & Verizon is almost unusable. AT&T will be bringing out new rate plans May 1. I also travel all over the country, & although Verizon is better in some locales, AT&T has done the best overall. Sometimes surprises me in isolated mountain areas.
Where in southern FL and we drop att our company had lots of phones. There service has gone down hill real bad. Keep this in mined Cingular is the best choice now..it was the old bellsouth system and they have a better foot print. Our friend that owns a major company down here last week just canned 200 att phones and is now with cingular..We have a order in for more units starting in may.Try cingular you got 30 days and make many calls on it. you also have unlimited nights and weeks with LD on it

That is true for South Fl. only. Overall, you will roam more on Cingular throughout the state & country. Cingular has a problem with trying to mix TDMA, CDMA, & GSM. AT&T is TDMA completely. You also have to look at the long run. AT&T will be on the superior GSM protocol by the end of the year. Cingular still has not formally announced a timetable or plan. The 30 day trial is only good for business accounts. For consumers, it is 3 days with no more than 10 minutes on the phone. That is not an adequate trial. Business accounts get handled differently from consumers.