Can ya hear me now

imported
#1

just so our family’s will not worry so much we have decided to take a cell phone,does anyone know which service works the best.We will be taking a prepaid phone,and would like to use it mainly to check voice mail every couple of days…thanks

old school

#2

How “old school” of you.

Loki

#3

Don’t know. Only saw two cell phones in '02 and both hikers went home before we got through VA. They got “homesick!” I’m sure there are more on the trail now. We had cell phones before we hiked. When we got home we threw them in the trash and have never wanted to see another one. Being disconnected for 6 months was one of the greatest things about our hike. But hike your own hike! Happy Trails!

Papa Smurf

#4

I have done alot of research on this and I have come up with these as being the best 1.Cingular 2.Verizon there are more but these two seem to do the best job of reception on the A.T. Trail and Sprint was the worst of all of them.

Partriot

#5

Just get a phone card and call when your in town

Virginian

#6

Don’t buy an off-name calling card. They don’t work, or they’ll charge you 30 minutes for a 1 minute call.

Go to Wal-Mart and buy a WalMart/AT&T card. You get all the minutes you’re paying for and the service is reliable.

spint

#7

Another thing, if you use a calling card from a pay phone, you’ll be charged 30+ minutes up front. It’s best to ask a business if you can use their regular phone to make a toll-free 800 number card. Just explain that you have a calling card and the pay phones charge 30 minutes right off the bat.

As to off-name cards, they’re blatant ripoffs and will continue to eat up your minutes at a 30:1 rate or higher.

spint

#8

We used the calling card and it worked for us. We were never turned down when we asked to use a phone. You can be near a phone every three or four days most of the time. We even got the bar in Port Clinton to let us use the phone! There are some areas where you have a problem. Smokey Mt., 100 Mile Wilderness, etc. The card is a lot lighter than a phone and charger! This is coming from a man who cut the label out of his shirt.

Papa Smurf

#9

I went lighter than Papa Smurf =) I bought a CostCo card, carried the numbers but left the card at home. Now my fingers can speed thru all those numbers by muscle memory.

One warning: cards cannot be recharged from a payphone. You need to use either a motel room or business phone. (AT least, that was a problem with my CostCo card)

GottaWalk, whose fingers want to do the walking but on ANY trail!

GottaWalk

#10

I’ve noticed that many of the prepaid cell phones’ coverage areas are in urban areas or along interstate corridors so yours may not work at all along the AT. AT&T phone cards have worked well for me along the Trail and the ones sold at Sam’s Club are going for 2.8 cents per minute.

Chief

#11

I had service from Verizon last summer, and there were maybe THREE times during the entire hike when I didn’t have a signal. My hiking partner had T-Mobile, and he only had a signal at the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Now that I think about it, I should have written them a letter to see what free stuff I could get…darn it.

Lady Longlegs

#12

I’ve had very good luck with TracFone pre-paid. It uses whatever system is available in a given area. I live in the Thumb of Michigan and we have notoriously BAD cell coverage. Nextel doesn’t even work here. TracFone seems to do fine using eithther the sparce Cellular One towers, or the local Thumb Cellular system. I’ve also used it in PA with no problems getting a signal.

Lyle

#13

I use an internet service, onesuite.com. You can buy minutes on-line, and are charged 2.5 cents per minute. No fees, no taxes. Only charged the Federal manadatory surcharge on calls from certain types of pay phones. Similiar to the old ‘Big Zoo’. Dial 800#, put in your pin#, then dial the number you are calling. You can recharge from the internet or on the phone. Great service.

ellen

#14

I use an internet service, onesuite.com. You can buy minutes on-line, and are charged 2.5 cents per minute. No fees, no taxes. Only charged the Federal manadatory surcharge on calls from certain types of pay phones. Similiar to the old ‘Big Zoo’. Dial 800#, put in your pin#, then dial the number you are calling. You can recharge from the internet or on the phone. Great service.

bagel

#15

I was told (by Verizon) that I would have better coverage with a phone that has analog and digital. There will be areas along the trail that willnot have digital coverage but will have analog, so make sure your phone recieves both, many of the newer phones are digital only,

heartfire

#16

Don’t get your phone card at Wal-mart. Wal-mart sucks.

Wal-Mart Hater

#17

I’ve heard Verizon has the best reception in the backcountry on the east coast. I’ve also heard good things of Cingular. I have Sprint… yeah yeah, they have crappy coverage – but here’s the good news. If you have the family plan (shared minutes between multiple phones) then roaming is free. Yes, that’s right free! I’ve used my Sprint phone tons and it just roamed from Verizon to Cingular and it was all free. I would look into this if you have someone back home who you can split a shared minutes plan with.

guru

#18

I’d like to politely second the motion of avoiding wal-mart. It seems that a lot of us hikers get a lot of stuff at wal-mart because we are poor and it is cheap. That makes ecomonic sense (no pun intended), and it is what wal-mart capitalizes on. That and not giving employees lunch breaks and pushing locally run businesses to closure through aggresive politics and advertizing. A favorite camp supply store in my little town is currently very threatened by a new wal-mart and its owner, named dave, plays in a local band, is in his fifties, and is a really cool and really real guy. he is the type of guy that give character to the local community.

So for what it’s worth, I encourage everyone to reconsider shopping locally. For me, it’s worth the extra bucks

casey

#19

my finacee and i made a phone call from the top of katahdin with a sprint phone to call her mom after i proposed to her. we share minutes and have the free roaming. also, not on the at. but i also used the same service and was able to make a call on forester pass on the jmt/pct, but was unable to make a call on mt. whitney. which was the only reason i was carrying the phone. i had my heart set on making phone calls from the top of mt. whitney while sitting on the open toilet up there at 14,500’.

jerm

#20

Go with the calling card. During my '03 SOBO hike I used an internet card similar to Ellen’s above (click4prepaid.com). Never had an issue, easy to recharge, and it worked from every phone I ran across.

You may want to rethink your cell phone needs during the hike. How often do you plan to call people? How important is bi-daily contact or voice mail? Don’t underestimate the weight factor for something you use only once or twice a week. Is it worth it? You decide.

PS I didn’t see anyone gabbing on their cell phone while sitting around the shelter in the evening.

Goggles