I’m switching to AT&T.

I’ve been with Sprint for over 4 years, and the entire time I’ve been under a contract because I went from Sprint to Sprint/Nextel, then back to Sprint for a while. Sprint is a good wireless company and I joined them as a subscriber when they we’re all the rage and everyone I knew had them. Over the years I’ve discovered that the coverage, at least in greater Minnesota, is severely lacking. The service is affordable but it feels outdated, like nothing has changed since I first became a customer in 2004. No coverage developments, no major changes (besides the Nextel merger), and no real drive to stand out amongst the competition. Sprint is just sort-of a “muh” cell phone company… I want something new.

AT&T has been pretty popular lately, especially with the exclusive on the iPhone. While the iPhone is cool but it doesn’t offer all of the functionality I need like the BlackBerry does. Now that I have a BlackBerry I don’t think I’ll be going ‘back’ to any other phone anytime soon. The super-sexy BlackBerry Bold 9000 was just released on AT&T and while I’m lightly considering dropping the $300 for it I may just go with the cheaper BlackBerry Curve 8310.

So if I’m not getting one of the exclusive AT&T phones why am I making the switch? AT&T certainly isn’t cheaper, in fact I’ll end up paying $30 more every month for the same package I have with Sprint. I’ll also lose my tethering capabilities unless I want to pay an additional $50 a month, something I get for free with Sprint. So why bother? Well, AT&T offers impressive coverage up here. I would know because all of our work phones are on AT&T and they seemingly get service everywhere. I have little to no bars with my Sprint service in most of greater Minn. Also, I can get a slightly smaller family plan to save a few bucks (making the service $20 more instead of $30) and I’ll have rollover minutes, since I use the data network and text messaging more than the minutes I figure I could get by with a smaller plan. Also, remember I mentioned that all of our work phones are on AT&T? Well, AT&T offers free in-network calling to any other subscriber which means I’ll be saving even more minutes off my average usage. Unfortunately AT&T doesn’t offer 3G service in the great north just yet, you have to stick to the ‘burbs or the metro for the blazing fast speeds - and while EDGE isn’t a whole lot faster than EvDO 1x RTT, I’ll have better coverage so my sluggish data service will at least be more reliable.

So tomorrow is my last day with my Sprint contract, I’m planning on buying the new phones and porting my numbers to AT&T on Saturday. I wonder what kinds of ‘upgrade’ offers I’ll get from Sprint in the meantime?