Technological zealots, pundits, and old fashioned fanboys will argue which wireless carrier is the best for days on end. They all have reasons to switch and cannot fathom how anyone could betray their preferred carrier by using anything else. Nobody takes into account the most important factor when stating their case, which is - coverage maps. For the most part, all carriers are similarly, each with strong and weak areas. Beyond that, there seems to be some sociology behind the carriers people choose. 

Verizon - the old standby. People with long standing accounts will typically have Verizon. Unlike its competitors it hasn’t been bought, sold, merged, or renamed. It uses a technology called CDMA that is very old, although it has been updated since it was first rolled out. The ancient CDMA in use means that Verizon has had a long, long time to perfect it, which accounts for the best coverage and higher stability. They aren’t known for innovation, but they always work. If you see someone carrying a flip phone, chances are it is Verizon. They also have the best prepaid phones and plans around; if that tells you anything. They are the government bond of carriers. Low risk, low return. Dependable, but boring. 

AT&T - the careless thrill seeker. AT&T throws caution to the wind and tries new things. It’s the college frat guy that says, “It’ll be fine, just try it. And it it’s not, at least it’ll be fun to see what happens. We will deal with the consequences later.” They took to GSM like a kid with new rollerblades on Christmas and looked just about as steady in the beginning. They took Apple’s iPhone and made blind changes to their network to accommodate it when Verizon declined and AT&T signed an exclusivity contract in the process. It paid off overall as the phone revolutionized an industry and became supremely popular, but they pissed off a lot of customers along the way when the data consumption rates crippled their network. Tech geeks go nuts for AT&T (except the “damn the man” open sourcers). They are risky and can usually be seen uttering the famous last words “watch this shit” before they singe their eyebrows. High risk, high return. 

Sprint - the one trick pony. They sell Blackberry to corporations - at least they did when that was what people wanted. Now they are desperately trying to find a new trick. RIM, the creator of Blackberry filed to innovate and put all their eggs in one basket which as Sprint corporate customers relying on their enterprise services. They tried to bolster their market by picking up the blue collar Nextel crowd, but that just fragmented their network across more than one technology. Now, are they CDMA, iDen, Wi-Max or some Frankenstein conglomerate of all of them? Now that the iPhone is flourishing in the enterprise, there’s nothing left. It’s no surprise that Sprint picked up the iPhone and advertises itself as the only carrier offering truly unlimited data. Of course, their network is too slow to worry about consumers’ data consumption making a dent anyway. Sprint is the guy that bet every last dollar on the .com bubble and now lives in his grandmother’s basement looking for a comeback. It’s customers are email hog, road warriors that care about nothing but spreadsheets and metrics and being able to get emails immediately. Physical keyboards, small screens and no apps make this smartphone like the person who sounded smart before they got caught for plagiarism. Never was smart, we just didn’t know any better in the beginning. 

T-Mobile - the tagalong/sidekick (pun intended). T-Mobile has had more names than it has cellular towers over the years. It was the first to enter the “more than a phone” game with the Sidekick which quickly became the security blanket of connected celebrities everywhere. They are known of their cheap plans, lots of minutes, celebrity endorsements, being bought and sold, and the only of the majors without the iPhone. Even the reckless AT&T bailed out of buying them last week. They have nothing going for them. You I will often find their customers shouting about why they area the best and backing it up with reasoning like, “because they are and I pay less than you.” You get what you pay for and if one company is significantly less, it’s no pt because they are doing you a favor; you’re getting less. They were the first with GSM and stopped. They were the first with an Android phone when Google was still a mysterious search engine company that shocked world with rumors of a phone - anyone remember the MyTouch G1? T-Mobile is the kid on the playground that always looks slightly confused, slightly dirty and says things like, “Wait…what? I don’t get it” which often matches their customers. 

Regional carriers - the local specialist. Even the majors had local and national plans and they were separate, once upon a time. Those were the days of roaming charges. Now, any plan worth its salt will be national. Of course, the business model still charges more and calls national roaming a feature. In reality, it’s the standard. So the regional guys are below standard but they come to you like a good natured neighbor who is here to help without all that fancy schmancy stuff the big guys have. You stay local? We have just the plan for you. You almost always pay less and keep your monthly bill down, but look at the cost per minute - its less efficient most of the time. They don’t often offer the latest and greatest hardware, features or speeds, but if you use a small amount of talk time or data and you do it all locally, they’ll be there. Also, they took a page out of the mortgage industry’s play book and waive (or manipulate, skew, or ignore altogether) the credit check. Their customers are the ones raving about their new smartphone that the AT&T geeks recycled 2 revisions ago. They scream about the awesome low price because they’ve never divided it by the number of minutes they actually get. They now get data, but aren’t concerned about speeds. Usually, their phones are in a case bought in a mall kiosk and it looks like a bedazzled threw up on it. 

These are all general statements and mostly tongue in cheek. The customers are unfortunate collateral damage used to describe the one-dimensional nature if the carriers and how we can humanize the carriers to make consumers understand their vision. However, look more closely at the phone and owner. You’ll find that more often than not, I’m right (and I was very nice  and polite with my word choice).