I did a lot of research leading up to the pre-order of my iPhone 5 (I even wrote a full-on how-to about it).  One of the things that I spent time looking into was whether I should stay with AT&T or move to another carrier.  And you know what?  For all the bad rap that AT&T gets, I really think they’re not that bad.  In fact, they’ve got some great selling points that made it easy for me to decide to stick with them for the foreseeable future.  So while a lot of people may have jumped ship, I’m going to remain a loyal customer… which I’ve been, ever since the Cingular days!

First of all, I got scared when I read that Verizon customers would be losing their grandfathered unlimited plans once they went from 3G to 4G LTE.  It hadn’t occurred to me that this could be an issue, so I quickly set about looking up whether the same thing would happen to AT&T customers.  Some online searches didn’t provide the answer, so I called up customer service and spoke to a very nice lady who assured me that it wouldn’t be a problem.  Whew!  AT&T: 1, other carriers: 0.  (Oh, though she did note that I wouldn’t be able to use FaceTime over cellular since that’s only for people with shared data plans… and shared data plans meant forfeiting grandfathered unlimited data plans.  That doesn’t matter to me since I wasn’t planning on using it anyway.)

Secondly, I’ve been so used to being able to talk and surf at the same time that it didn’t even occur to me that others can’t.  I assumed it would just be something you can do across all devices and carriers, but for iPhones, the only US carrier that supports it is AT&T.  I happen to be a huge multi-tasker so I definitely put this feature high on my list of “needs” for my phone service!  After all, if I can’t look something up while talking to someone on the phone, I end up being very inefficient having to call them back or text them a reply.  If nothing else, I love being efficient.

Also, I find that AT&T has a good balance between 3G and 4G LTE coverage areas and the types of plans offered.  To the first point, Sprint I hear has limited coverage so getting a consistent signal on the move might be more challenging.  I took a look at the AT&T 4G LTE coverage map and found great coverage in all the places I’d spend 99% of my time in.  To the second point, Verizon forces new customers to sign up for a shared data plan, which makes no sense to me… explain to me again why I’d need to share data with myself?  Oh, that’s right – I shouldn’t.  Plus, there was the earlier point that you can keep the unlimited data plan if you have it already.

Granted, I don’t really use my phone for phone calls very often, so I don’t usually run into the issues that people complain about with AT&T calls dropping.  As for poor customer service, I find that when you start off the call on the right note, you can almost always get what you were looking for (assuming you’re being reasonable, of course).  In fact, I had a grand time chatting with my customer service rep the last time I was on a call!  And so it is, AT&T is most definitely the best carrier for me.

Oh yeah – one last thing: bonus points for having their site up 12 minutes before midnight for pre-orders.  If I was going to be at my normal billing address the day the phones were being delivered, I totally could have completed my order with them before the Apple Store was even ready.