In early 1997, I signed up for an AT&T Wireless plan that offered unlimited minutes, roaming, and long distance — a rare combination at the time, and it cost an arm and a leg. But it was worth it because it allowed me to shut down my Bell Atlantic landline, a day of freedom that ranks up there with Passover in terms of raw liberative power.

So I might be accused of having a bit of a bias against Verizon, based solely on eleven years of bad experiences as one of their customers. The thing is, cell phone companies are like airlines: everyone has their own “avoid at all costs” businesses, and everyone’s is different. Since I’m asked this question frequently in relation to cell phones, I thought I’d share my thoughts.

Verizon Wireless is a separate division in Verizon, and scuttlebutt is that they have their acts together much more than the mothership. This has certainly been true when I’ve had to deal with them for clients; their tech people are knowledgeable and helpful, and don’t seem at all like the types who were unable to install a DSL line six years after the marketing guys started selling them.

The problem is that Verizon is still managed by the same idiots. I’m looking right now at an article from April describing one way in which Verizon continues their “screw the customer” mantra. The phones they sell are routinely crippled — i.e., you couldn’t use it to get files off your computer as the manufacturer designed, so Verizon could sell you ringtones for $1.99. The terms of service for EVDO basically disallow using it for anything that you might want broadband for. No streaming media, no network servers, and God forbid you should share your connection.

The techies at Verizon have told me, sotto voce, that they’re not monitoring for these uses — so if you don’t mind being out of license you can do what you please. But if you rely on it for anything important, it’s awfully disturbing to know you can be shut down at any time.

I was a very happy customer of AT&T Wireless Cingular AT&T (Wireless?) for many years; call them 60% clueful but frequently able to unleash a bis-meshugah clause on their customers. Two years ago, when I ended my relationship with them, it was their policy of charging $300 a month for an unlimited GPRS data plan, when T-Mobile down the block was charging $20. I also own an AT&T branded GSM phone, which I paid full boat for, which they refused to unlock. It’s now my Bluetooth remote control.

Until recently, I was completely gung-ho about T-Mobile, and I still am… mostly. Hands down, they have the best price/performance plan for unlimited Internet: $30/month for GPRS or EDGE and T-Mobile hotspots. On the East Coast, you can’t spit without interfering with a T-Mobile wifi signal, so it’s not hard to get to a connection which blows the doors off EVDO — which in turn is much faster than EDGE. But EDGE is good enough for most of my purposes, which means it is more than likely good enough for yours.

Unfortunately, T-Mobile has recently made their call center a hell on Earth; if I need to make a call about a Mac and a data service, I’m guaranteed to need to tell five different people that I need to talk to “Tier 3 Data Services” before I actually, maybe, get someone who can help me. I spent 90 minutes on hold trying to troubleshoot a client’s Samsung last week, and I still don’t have an answer. I’m not sure why T-Mobile thinks it’s saving money by forcing four people to waste their time with me in between making me listen to their hold music.

I can’t say anything much about Sprint; I wasn’t too impressed with their ability to help me with a Treo 600 (they had the bad computer industry habit of referring me to Palm, who referred me back to Sprint), but I haven’t dealt with them enough to have a strong opinion one way or the other. That being said, if I find myself in the market for EVDO, I’ll be checking them out so I can continue avoiding Verizon like the plague.