Reliability of Cingular GPRS in Eest-Central New York?

Archived from groups: alt.cellular.cingular (More info?)

All,

About three months ago I purchased an unlocked i-Mate PDA2K, added a
Cingular data plan to my account, and opened up an Exchange account with an
independent provider (4smartphone.com) so that I could sync my contacts,
e-mail and tasks while on the road. The Exchange account has worked out very
well for me, both using Outlook on the desktop and using WiFi on the i-Mate
to sync with the provider's service.

I'm not so certain about Cingular's GPRS service in my area (Rochester, NY),
though. At first I thought I had the PDA set up incorrectly or maybe the
unit was defective. When in any of the big cities in our area (like Buffalo,
Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, etc.) I cannot get a GPRS connection about 90%
of the time. Very interestingly, when I travel the New York State Thruway
between these areas and am accessing the cell towers along that route, I am
able to obtain a connection nearly 100% of the time (so I know my settings
are OK and that the device works properly).

Are Cingular's GPRS connections simply overloaded in these larger cities?
Are they lacking capacity or connections? This is really so annoying that I
am considering moving back to Verizon (with a different device, of course).

Does anyone out there have any ideas? Can anyone either confirm or refute my
experience?

Thanks!

Scott in Rochester, NY
lokiXXX@norsegods.net (remove the extra characters to reply privately)