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Verizon's Wireless Road Warriors
Joey Patterson writes "CNN has an article about how Verizon Wireless uses technicians who drive around the country in station wagons filled with wireless gear to look for holes in the company's cell phone network and analyze the service of its competitors. This program isn't cheap (the cars cost $270,000 and $15/mile to operate), but it definitely helps Verizon find out where they stand relative to their competitors."
Can you ping me now? Good...
"Goodness, how did you people live long enough to invent tools?" -Hobbes (the tiger, not the philosopher)
Take a company like Microsoft, with $40-something billion in the stronghold. They should start programs like these to see what their customers want. Just random things like these that make them that little bit better. I say kudos to VeriZon for helping your customers!
Hargun
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Maybe they'll just take over the whole country and then we can get that annoying guy off those Verizon ads because they won't need him anymore. :P
We got used to hearing these stuff. This is just another commercialized piece of news!!
All Wireless companies do this, in fact you can find Agilent products especialy made for this! While the article was fun to read, its not really a new thing (the vans) as the clueless submitter (and /. poster) made it out to be.
While I do find that ad campaign highly annoying, it's
pretty cool to know that those guys are out there.
Pretty much everywhere I've been in the US (and parts
of Canada, I've rarely lost signal. (Paid a lot of
roaming fees, but that's my fault for not having a
national plan, I guess)
then again, they need to get a few of them off the
road and into my office building, reception's awful
in there.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
Verizon is a damn sweatshop. Fuck the company and their bullshit van.
At least here in the Twin Cities Verizon advertises that you will never have to pay a roaming fee. Of course you will never have to since Verizon doesn't allow your phone to roam. Either you are on their network, or your phone doesn't work. There coverage area in MN is pretty horrible unless you actually live in a large city and never travel out of it.
I recently bought my first cell phone. I shopped around the few places in town, trying to determine who could meet my needs the cheapest. I needed to be able to contact my girlfriend 150 miles away cheaply and often. We'd been going through about $150 in phone cards monthly and needed to majorly cut that back. After explaining this, they tried to sell me a 300 minute a month plan. We've been known to go through 300 minutes in a day. Then they tried a few plans in the thousands of minutes, but they were rapidly approcahing the cost of phone cards, and for fewer minutes. Their main argument was that they had excellent nationwide coverage and none of their competitors' networks actually functioned. I left in frustration and signed up with a regional provider who offered unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes on their network, so I got 2 of the cheap plans and am now saving over $80 a month. In conclusion, Verizon sucks. Little guy rocks. Sounds like microsoft and linux :)
Love,
Jay and Silent Bob
The various telecom operators in Holland are doing exactly the same. There is even a advertisement campaign on television going on right now about this.
Hm... since I suppose this thread will be filled with a ton of "verizon rules/verizon sucks" posts, I might as well chip in my 2 cents.
Basically, the coverage is excellent -- I've been covered from San Francisco to Rocky Point (Sonora) to Toronto to Boston. Basically the only time I lose coverage altogether is underground. I used to have analog-only in southwest Michigan, but a quick roaming-software upgrade fixed that; I think now they're piggybacking on sprint's network here, whereas they weren't before.
That said, Verizon leaves a TON to be desired in the customer service department. The reason I bought my phone is because I've truly been traveling across the country for the last year. Trying to change billing addresses is a HUGE hassle; Verizon was cobbled together from 3-4 disparate wireless companies across the country, and it still shows. You have to get a totally new account number when you move, and sometimes you get double-billed for up to a month.
That, and you're basically not allowed to move out of their "preferred market" areas. My new address was about 20 miles south of the Verizon market limits in SW Michigan, same area code and everything, and they were adamant about not allowing me to change my address to that "uncovered" location (note: digital service works just fine here). Long story short, I ended up using a friend's address and paying all my bills online; it's not perfect, but I'm getting along.
So, yeah. it doesn't surprise me that verizon has all these techs in trucks all over the country; their coverage shows it. Now if only they'd hire that clever IBM basketball team to integrate their billing across the nation.
You'd think they would be able to do this from their home office - except for the part about testing each of their competitors signal at the same point. Do they really need to do that though? What they should be doing is comparing signal strengh to usage, and concentrate on making the high usage areas have a good signal, regardless of their competitors.
When I commuted across the Bay Bridge, there was a gap in the Sprint services on the bridge that lasted no more than 50 yards, but it would always drop your call. I'm sure that's one of the heaviest populated gaps in service in the country, yet it went uncovered for years.
It's precisely programs like this which show the strengths of a capitalistic economy. I attend a Public University, and the service is terrible. The administration does not care about its students, because the large majority of their funding comes from government and corporate grants.
To contrast, the competition in the cellphone market is forcing companies like Verizon to make sure that their service is good so that customers don't leave. The end result: more for the consumers at less cost.
I'm not saying capitalism fixes all problems. Certainly, it doesn't, especially the problem that many markets tend to move towards a monopolistic market, but it has some MAJOR advantages, and this is one of them.
-=Lothsahn=-
Here in Charlotte, NC, I can attest to Verizon Wireless' much better connection and clarity. I was at CompUSA with a friend a couple of weeks ago, and got a call on my SprintPCS phone. The connection was very poor and was quickly dropped. I tried to call the person back, and received a "Network is Busy" message.
.02.
My friend let me borrow his Verizon Wireless phone and I was able to call the person back and get perfect reception.
Also, my friend's Verizon Wireless phone works in the elevators at work, where as my SprintPCS phone reception is gone the second the elevator doors shut.
I'll be switching to Verizon Wireless very soon.
Anyways, just my
Have a great day!
"To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic." Cicero
the cars cost $270,000 and $15/mile to operate
I thought it was just the one guy on a cell phone and a friend on the other end saying "Yup. Still hear ya'" Man, how I do get that gig?
for a blackhat to persue war driving on company time? With so much gear, plus training, it would be so easy to sniff for unprotected wireless LAN's, especially if the drivers are by themselves. Who watches the Road Warriors?
And for just a few grand I'll gladly give them my GPS coordinates of where I get dropped calls, without fail (or with fail, depends on how you look at it).
In that commercial where he is walking around saying "Can you hear me now?" he would stop in that forest and say "Hmm... can't hear me? OK we need a cell tower right over here." and then cut to an aerial shot of the forest with a big cell phone tower coming out of the tree line finally cut to families sitting around the clearing under the cell tower enjoying their newfound reception.
adam
They better not forget to sock away a few more of those big bucks to pay for the medical expenses of those poor cats who have to drive around in those cancer-boxes they're driving around. :-|
MY FREAKING BEDROOM!
Can you hear me now? NO!
"It costs about $15 a mile to operate the cars" -- At minimum wage, thats only about 2 miles per hour - what a safety problem on highways! I think I could lower that cost down to $0.30/mile, if you catch my drift...
I'm about to dump Nextel not because of spotty service but because they won't stick to the contract. Twice in as many months, they've reduced the value of the service being provided to the end user without any reduction in price. In April, we lost an hour of evening time. They bumped it back to 9pm. This time, we're losing our "to the second" billing. A 1 minute, 36 second call used to be billed as 1 minute, 36 seconds. Now it'll be billed as 2 minutes.
That "to the second" rounding was very unique to Nextel. Very few other carriers billed like this and it made Nextel very attractive. And it was getting harder and harder to find a carrier that started the off-peak clock before 9pm. When I saw that Nextel was still starting at 8pm, I jumped on it.
How long will it be before Nextel decides to drop their "floating home area" policy on my account? I call it that because I don't recal the exact term. Basically, any location with Nextel service becomes my home area. If I visit family in Oregon, I can make all the local calls I want. If I go back east, same thing. Whatever is local to that region becomes local for me. But how long will that last? Pretty soon, someone at Nextel is going to realize how much more money they could make by eliminating this feature.
And, yes, I'm still in my 1 year contract. Sure they give me an opt-out window but I signed up expecting to get the services I was promised for at least a year. I bought a $200 phone. I bought spare batteries. I bought a data cable. I bought a car charger. I was expecting to use these things for at least a year and probably longer. (I was with my previous carrier for 2 years and only switched because they couldn't provide a data connection. I was with the company before that for 3 years.) Nevermind the fact that this is my only phone and I'd have to spend countless hours contacting family, friends, banks, clubs, companies, etc. giving out my new number.
Having good coverage is worthless if you can't trust the company to provide the services you purchased at the agreed price for the length of your contract.
And, it wouldn't be that tough to figure out where: call enters a cell from another cell, there aren't many roads that allow that to happen. So they can figure the probabilities of calls being dropped on particular roads.
Alternatively, they could ask customers. Their service drives me crazy: there are spots on every one of the freeways I use where calls are ALWAYS dropped.
"The Constitution, the WHOLE Constitution, and nothing but the CONSTITUTION."
If they want to know where they stand for coverage they could allow people an easy way to provide feedback. Any one who as has had the pleasure of walking around 'down town' Los Alos knows that VW doesn't really have coverage there. Stand on the major road in front of Banderas (a killer BBQ restaurant that is ALWAYS PACKED with the rich and beautiful) and you will find that the quality of signal varies drastically minute to minute and is never good enough to have a 5 minute call without a drop.
:-)
There are similar holes in Mountain View of all places - near the old Sun Campus. I reported this one to them about 2.5 years ago. They've done a lot about it so far
helps Verizon find out where they stand relative to their competitors.
Why, the same place they stand relative to their employees, of course. Right on the windpipe.
--saint
AT&T does the same thing, I've known a guy that does that for about 2 years now.
something Bell Atlantic and Nynex never seemed able to do.
"Now you've had enough... bitch."
Sapere Aude - Homer
I was backpacking a few years ago in the Sierra Nevada. I came upon a group of people, and one of them had suffered a back injury. They needed an emergency evacuation. The leader of the group had been trying to use her cell phone for an hour. Fortunately, as a ham radio operator, I was able to call in a sheriff's helicopter. Verizon may have good coverage compared to it's competitors, but I think it's misleading not to tell people there's LOTS of places your cell phone won't work.
Not for Verizon, but another wireless company that begins with a V.
h tm l
Thankfully, I don't do it full time. I do do it several hours a week when troubleshooting.
It's pretty boring. But it does make for some impressive phonebills.
Our local paper had an article about the person in Minneapolis that does this for Verizon. She doesn't sound like she knows what she's talking about, but unless you're interpreting the data, basically anyone can do the driving.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/2260767.
These same vans will be equipped with ECM gear to actively jam other services cell transmissions... Sort of the minivan equivolent of the EA-6B Prowler ^__^
"Enemy cell tower, 9 o'clock! He's transmitting!"
"Goose switch to active jamming!"
"But what about that other tower!?"
"Don't worry about the tower, you just keep those fighter off..." Um, Nevermind.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I thought that was just a gimick they used in their TV commercials. Somebody's smoking crack.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
3 things:
1. Every wireless company does this.
2. In britain, wireless companies have been sued by employees when the employee contracted a tumour, which doctors believed was caused by the large amounts of electromagnetic radiation that he was exposed to day in day out by useing a cell phone almost constantly to check signal.
3. This whole article is fairly redundant, and seems more like some kind of "yay for verizon, they do something everyone else does, but look, theres an article on slashdot about them, they must be something special. yay"
thankyou.
You'd think they would be able to do this from their home office - except for the part about testing each of their competitors signal at the same point. Do they really need to do that though? What they should be doing is comparing signal strengh to usage, and concentrate on making the high usage areas have a good signal, regardless of their competitors.
I'm not really understanding what you mean by that "be able to do this from their home office." The point is to make sure people on their network, using a phone from where people use the phones from: on the ground. How would they be able to make sure the signal strength is good enough from their office.
Maybe you are referring to when the network is overloaded, the article mentioned that, but even if they could tell that from their office, I'm pretty sure the point of their testing is primarily to make sure that their signal is good enough for people to make phone calls with acceptable quality (no cutting out for a few secs) and that the calls don't get dropped for no good reason.
I'm pretty sure they are working to make sure that high usage areas have good coverage, hence all the rush hour traffic the guy says he gets stuck in. I've never seen one of those cars drive up my side street here.
Just this past Thursday at work, we had a Verizon Wireless rep come in to demonstrate (read: sales-pitch) their new 144Kb/s wireless Aircards that transmit data over their digital network, and also function as a regular cellphone. He slipped the PCMCIA card into his laptop, plugged in an ear-bud/mic combo and used an app to make a call to the cellphone of a guy in the back of the room.
The initial connection was a bit too quiet for them to hear each other, so after tweaking the volume setting on his end, the Verizon rep offhandedly said, "Can you hear me now?"
The whole room burst into laughter for a good 30 seconds.
This is not a Fugazi
They also use this data to help generate the coverage maps you see in shops
Honestly, if they are going to spend that much money ($275k + $15/mile) they should sink a ton more into DSL.
When I had DSL the service absolutely blew. 1000+ms pings everywhere and only 70k/s for 768/128.
I don't own a cell phone, none of that shit is important to me. They need to fix other problems first.
A large company spending large sums of cash to actually improve their product? Their service? Kudos to them for doing this rather than spending the money on more marketing BS.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
i wonder if there is a way that for reception in buildings to be relatively good. there are 2 cases when you would like to use your cell phone:
case 1: in car, need help
well, this case is rather trivial
case 2: you are at a meeting inside a building and need to call someone
the solution to that one is not quite as obvious. it is very inconvenient to have to walk outside in order to get good reception or attach a 6' antenna. perhaps if your whole BODY could act as one, (the phone connected to body) and some wires... just an idea
QED
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
you mean the anoying can you hear me now? guy really exists? maybee if were luckey, he will have an unfortunate run in with steve "dud your getting a dell" guy.
or perhaps the maytag repairman can fix them, he has nothing to do anyway...
All the cell company's have lousy coverage out here in the west. No one wants to spend the money, especially considering we've got fewer people, and much less Congressional representation.
u smap_ 492f2.gif
Can't get Cable modem, because there's no cable.
Can't get DSL -- too far from the phone company's POP.
Can't get better than 34.4 modem connection, because the lines are sooo old.
Can't get cell covereage, because there's no cell towers.
Can't get cell towers, because there's no customers.
Can't get customers, because there's no cell coverage.
Look at:
http://www1.sprintpcs.com/media/Assets/Maps/
and see just how much uncovered area there is out west.
The problem with gaps in your carriers service is that your phone (if you have roaming) will pick up a competitors tower. So if Verizon's signal is really weak (or there's a gap), and lets say AT&T's signal is really strong, some Verizon phones may jump to AT&T for service, and leave you roaming in your home area. When that happens, generally no one is happy.
(1). The customer isn't happy because they have to pay roaming charges in their supposed home area and
(2). Your carrier isn't happy because they have to pay their competitors for you using their service.
So it is definately beneficial for them to check on their competitors, because the wireless carrier wants to keep as much traffic as it can on it's home network, not on the competitors.
No man is an island, But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie them together, they make a pretty good raft.
They don't seem to do anything about it once they
find out the service sucks. When I've called in
complaining that people call me and the calls go
to voicemail since they can't find my phone, they
say its because they don't have a tower close me
me (even though the phone is on, and says it has a signal). They said they planned to have towers added, but in over a year, nothings changed.
My apartment is in a wood & brick building, I have only one PC, a window air conditioner, and my cell had such bad reception I cancelled it altogether. That was Cingular
But my company cell phone was always fine in the same apartment. That phone is on Verizon.
Verizon Wireless appears to actually care (in the most hard-nosed, financial sense of using customer service) about its customers. I've been using them since the Airtouch days, and have had mixed experiences with service and billing. However, a couple of times recently, I've had, well, extraordinary customer service people on the phone who practically begged to come to my home and apologize for minor problems.
I'm on a $120/month plan with tax (for home/office/roaming, 900 minutes, nationwide). Perhaps I'm escalated into a better support category. But still.
The other day, I was off to Canada for a few days, and I called Verizon to see if I could get a Canada roaming plan. Not only did they have one ($10/month) but they would pro-rate it just for when I needed it and automatically turn it off. Zounds.
Something went wrong, though, and it was applied for just three days instead of two weeks. I called up, they found the record, apologized profusely, added another note to their system, and said there was no way I'd be charged anything extra.
Amazing. Weird. It's not the customer's fault. What a strange idea.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
Feel free to mod me down\flame me\whatever, but thats how it looks from here.
...$15/mile to operate
..Which dwindles in comparison to my gas guzzling '72 Buick Riviera with the 455ci engine.
I put on my robe and wizard hat.
funny thing is i can drive around in my SUV with only $20.00 worth of equipment (i.e.: a cheap ass cell phone) and find holes in their coverage, and it would still cost $15.00 per mile to opperate. grumble grumble gass guzzlers grumble grumble...
For people like me who lives in the Bay Area, CA, the one big hole is North Lake Tahoe. When I go up in the winter for snowboarding, the signal is so bad that I could barely make a call. I think the worst is Kings Beach where Northstar is.
Nice to see they can effectively distract the public from the fact that they "created" profit for the company out of non-existent money in the employee's pension fund so the senior managers could get their bonuses for last year.
the real problem is coverage out in the middle of nowhere, and it doesn't take a bunch of rocket scientists driving around in a damn million-dollar van to figure out that:
no cell site nearby = no coverage
I live 20 miles outside of Boston, and my phone -barely- manages to register itself on the network if I put it in the window on the top floor of the house. Absolutely pathetic.
Besides, all this is bullshit PR anyway...it doesn't take a van loaded with equipment to figure this crap out. The nextel phone I had could be put into a "test" mode where it outputted a half dozen statistics every 2-5 seconds on signal strength, noise, ID number of the cell it was in, stuff like that.
The link should be this:
_ 492f2.gif
http://www1.sprintpcs.com/media/Assets/Maps/usmap
Neither of these may be high usage areas, but if they're green on the coverage map, I'll be mightily pissed if my phone doesn't work there after I break down. And I'll let them know afterward, if I live.
I live in Australia and by far the most popular of (the two) mobile phone standards is GSM.
GSM is nice. It operatees between countries and between carriers fairly well. (But at this stage it's not set up for full roaming here. Only for 000/112/911 calls it will pick the closest tower regardless of carrier)
It always amuses me when I go for a long drive out of a capital city and play 'spot the cell tower'. The carriers like to boast their superior 'highway' coverage and to do this each of the 3 carriers sports their own huge, expensive (to install as well as maintain - pay someone to drive several 100Km to a remote site just to check battery levels and tell me that's economical) communications tower every 50Km or so even though the traffic they handle would probably be very small/emergencies only.
The dominate carrier (Telstra) seems to be building base stations along highways and in tiny towns right across the country. I rekon these towers would be lucky if they handled more than one call at once on any given day, but I guess customers like it when they look at their phone and it doesn't say 'no signal'...
Now... I don't know if Verizon uses GSM or if what they use can do this - would it make more sense for areas of low usage for competitors to create one base station to cover the area and just split the costs? The tower isn't likely to turn a profit but its softened a bit because the cost is shared between the companies. Coverage then exists where none did before and customers in 'difficult' and/or 'low usage' areas benefit.
Just in the quiet areas though! In the major towns, cities etc the companies can do as they do now and reap the rewards of their jumping over each other and waving fat cheque books around to sign up the next owner of that tall building or the council of that nice big hill overlooking the city...
Look at any mass-market manufacturer (Sony, Verizon, SprintPCS, AT&T, ...)'s customer service. It universally, unquestionably sucks (Dell and IBM are notable exceptions). When you're in the cell phone business, and there are only 2-3 competitors, everybody's mass market, so customer service will continue to suck.
If my time is worth $200/hr, I should be able to pay an extra $10/mo (for example) for sane, decent customer service. (e.g. that which Diner's Club provides: instant customer service phone call pickup and competant service, all for $80/yr)
Bottom line on cell phones: I'm switching to Verizon for the coverage and unlimited off-peak time, but I don't expect better customer service, due to the gov't regulated monopoly...
Gimme a number where I can call these guys at, there is absolutely horrible reception in this one area right outside a mid-sized town. And you know what the funny thing is, whenever you look at anyone's detailed coverage map, every single company has bad coverage in that area. And the bad coverage area is exactly the same shape, with the exact same boundaries, nobody is shift slightly to the north/south or east/west... it's too the point that I would think that they are all using the same freaking towers. Damn conspiracy. Anyhow, reception sucks horribly out there, and I have to make a lot of calls to cell phones in that area, usually always have to wait until they move out of the area.
And yes, the area is rural, but it isn't extremly rural, there are still houses on all of the roads every hundred feet or so. And the funny thing is, if you move to the west or to the south into even more rural areas, where there is like 1 house on every road between the intersections, the reception is crystal clear.
[/rant]
I wonder every time I see these "news" stories whether a journalist really thought they'd found something intriguing or whether a VP (e.g., at Verizon) simply called up his old frat brother (e.g., at AOL/TimeWarner) asking him to "just run this one story for me."
A couple of months back I saw the Indigo Girls on CNN Headline News (?)...I puzzled over it for a bit before arriving at the conclusion that Sony must have figured out that all of the old pot-smoking college-age feministas have moved on to high-powered sales/consulting/executive jobs, so they now have to reach them between the "Orbitz Travel Outlook" and "Business Updates".
Actually, Verizon Wireless and the Verizon "Baby-bell" that does all the land-line telephone stuff are two seperate companies under the same name.
Verizon wireless is a joint venture between Verizon telephone and Vodaphone Communications (more known in Europe). See this page for more information. www.verizonwireless.com/jsp/aboutus/index.jsp
So complaining to Verizon wireless about the quality of DSL service will not get you very far.
No man is an island, But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie them together, they make a pretty good raft.
The ads are a very clever way to counter the truth, which is that wireless coverage today is spotty and unreliable; the maps that are supposed to show coverage are somewhere between wildly optimistic and outright deceptive; and there's no honest, impartial rating or measurement service to let you compare services before buying.
If you happen to live in an area where the coverage is reliable, peace. Live long and prosper.
It's not always a matter of signal strength, either. I don't know whether Verizon technicians have driven Massachusetts Route 3 near Bedford at rush hour, but the signal strength is consistently high--it's just that calls don't get through.
Yes, I use Verizon wireless. The main thing that keeps me from changing is I have no way of knowing whether the competition would be any better.
It does seem like the various vendors would have an interest in splitting the towers in the remote areas, and agreeing to compete only in the high traffic areas. I wonder if that would have antitrust implications, at least in the U.S., though.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
I'm not talking about wilderness or animal reserves (of which the 50% number is highly inflated because it includes the Reservations given to the Native Americans), I'm talking about access in towns of population 10,000 and higher. Been getting your facts from "unbiased" sources lik Fox News, eh?
Most of the Eastern U.S. isn't in a big city, they're just between the big cities. (Hell, look at Maine in the map -- it's got horrible coverage.) The phone company coverage schemes (especially Sprint's PCS network) focus upon getting coverage along the interstate system. As if everyone lives within 10 miles of an interstate, and as if everyone only travels along interstates. It's like they want truckers chatting on the cell phone while driving.
Drive from Chicago to Seattle sometime. You'll lose coverage in any moderately mountainous area (because the cell companies refuse to use the "cell" portion of the network and put up repeaters). Moreover, in the broad expanses of the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, eastern Washington -- where there are no mountains to interfere, the covereage still doesn't exist. Get to a city like Billings, and the coverage appears. Get 5 miles from town, and it goes away. Reason? There's one freaking cell tower. Oooh, what an investment in infrastructure. You know how many dead spots there are in town with only one tower?
Try taking highway 2, or even Amtrack along the same route, and you'll find even worse coverage.
The phone and cable companies like to pretend that it's too expensive to provide service in remote areas. For areas of the same population out East, they easily provide it. The numbers (# of paying subscribers) means that the system will fund iteself, and will pay off. But the infrastructure never gets built because of the cycle of no customers, no service, no service, no customers.
Saying that we should all move to a big city is a cop out. All the jobs aren't in big cities.
I worked for them back when Verizon wireless was still just AirTouch and was in the Southern California market. I used to install the monitoring equipment in mostly Jeep Wagoneers and Ford Broncos. The Tauri (Taruseses? :-) were just comming into use then. AirTouch also used to give out an enormous amount of free airtime we employees. However, we had to pay full pop for the equipment. No sweet bundle deals like customers. (Average going price of a nice handset + accessories at employee cost? $450). The reason being was it's a form of cheap network monitoring. There was a voicemail box we were to call and report problem areas, time and date of the incident, mobile number, blah blah... Anyway, this is most likely a carry-over from their absorbtion of AirTouch. They've been doing the mobile monitoring for ages. Quite often where to monitor was driven by customer feedback. They also had a plethora of other interesting toys at their disposal, used to assist law enforcement in cloning ring stings (back in the once prevalent analog days) and tracing and tracking of criminals via cell calls. The pay wasn't great but the work was fun and I learned quite a bit. At one point I was volunteering with the (phone) network folks in an effort to work in that department but ended up in their IT dept instead. As a result I got to see the whole of the works from handset to the pieces of fiber interfacing them to the PTSN and Baby Bel. Even got to work on some cell sites and play with some DEC switches (I think they've gone all Lucent since then). I've since moved on and am still in the IT biz now.
Wow! They bought SIXTY vans? At TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY THOU each? Why, that's 16.2 MILLION dollars! Big bucks for sure!
They're spending a whopping 0.025% of their revenue (67.2 billion) or $0.52 per customer (31 million wireless customers) to see whether their customers are actually getting what are paying for.
Be still my heart!
(Say, I wonder how much they spent on the television advertising showing those technicians?)
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Hook up a GPS and transmitter unit to what ever your gear is and hire "long haul" truck drivers to driver the gear around
There was an article about a year ago about Cellular One (now AT&T) doing that in the bay area.
Apparently they haven't driven the Ohio Turnpike between Cleveland and Toledo lately. Geez... complete shite. Let's not even mention their coverage in the southern Clevelan suburbs.
Yeah, right. I live in the metro area of Boston, MA. The heart of Verizon-land. And while at home, I get a crap signal from them on every verizon phone I've used.
Happily, AT&T gives me a much better signal - never a drop or a fade-out. So I dropped Verizon (after they dropped my calls dozens of times), and picked up AT&T.
Drive around the country all you want. But if you can't service one of your biggest metro areas well, then get out of the business.
Plus they changed their off peak from 8pm to 9pm. Who need their crap. AT&T rocks for me.
They were adamant about not allowing you to change your address?
Tell them that you never agreed to relinquish your rights to freedom of movement under the agreement, and that you are moving to the following new address. Either you update your records or cancel the contract.
Morons... I'd simply contact the Atty General of your state and file a complaint...
The article is interesting from two perspectives:
1) The vehicle is a Ford Taurus
2) The guy driving it is a retired Marine...
Guess that means:
1) The car isn't going to get 'jacked' or stolen... Haven't heard of them being big targets for thieves...
2) Any crackhead stupid enough to TRY to jack the car will get the Marine Whammy put on him so fast he'll never walk again...
Guess I have to give a point to Verizon for thinking...
Cingular also uses third-party tester Telephia, a 4-year-old wireless market analysis firm that says it observes 1 billion wireless calls a day on average.
1 billion observed calls a day? Now EVERYONE can know how it feels to live in a rural community full of hicks with cellphone scanners.
I really have to move.
Being an ILEC network technician from a different company than Verizon, I've still got to give them a nod. Out of every wireless network provider that I've provisioned circuits, rings etc for, they have, by far, the most service going in, the best coverage and some damn good technicians to work with, sometimes a little impatient but can you blame them?
There's a big dead spot right in the middle of Irvine, CA- on the hill side of Turtle Rock, right between UCI, and the huge technology center of the Irvine Spectrum. This is really surprising- it's a big, wealthy neighborhood that must have hundreds of Verizon subscribers. It's been a problem for years. Everyone complains about it. But last I checked, a few months ago, the hole was still there.
I recently drove across the country on I-20. From just outside Shreveport, LA, to Brimingham, AL, there were plenty of holes, and no digital coverage at all. I'm sure the user density out there is pretty low, but I'm sure the people who do have cell phones really rely on them. The poor are being screwed again...
I recently learned the hard way how much more power an analog signal takes. Normally, my Star-Tac gives me a couple of hours' talk time. But with an analog signal, I only get 15-20 minutes! Obviously, digital service is what allows our phones to be so small these days. Big, bulky, heavy batteries aren't required. If you're going to be stuck with analog service in your area, be prepared!
they want to make sure they can track you everywhere so they scan for coverage holes and install a new tower or increase the signal strength
If only they'd expend the same resources getting me decent broadband. I mean, Sheesh... A mile from UUNET and three miles from AOL and all I can get is iDSL.... You'd think we'd have Major bandwidth...
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
It was a pretty interesting idea for Verizon to did they test their connections by dialing to the company from underground? not just how far it is...but if underground passages really interefere with the connections..just a thought.
http://www.palmzone.net
Verizon dude: "We get signal!"
Customer: "What you say!!!"
Customer: "Main screen turn on!"
Sprint PCS guy "How are you gentlemen??"
eh, you know the story...
Sheesh...you'd think cell phone companies would start using technology more...software is already out there for the entire US for signal propagation overlaying major/minor roadways and highways.
Marketing gimmicks....
Man I would love to see the results of this testing. Hell I would certainly pay to see a REAL coverage map before I decide on a new provider or plan and get locked into another 1 or 2 year contract for crappy service.
Beauty is truly in the eye of the tiger
I am moving to Baltimore in a few months. Anyone care to comment on Verizon service there? Particularly on 95 north of the tunnel.
As providers start building location based services into their handsets, it will only be a matter of time until the phones will keep track of the places they recieve poor/no coverage and report back to the companies. I wouldn't mind my phone using some of it's batteries to help build out a network.
Just my 02
David
Their selling point is to be shiny jewelry / status item for stupid people.
Maybe you get crappy service and pay out your ass but as long as you can "Bleep" people and annoy everyone around you with obnoxious tones it's all good.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
but that doesn't seem to work for verizon...
I tried that I can't here you now for weeks and still they can't fix the problem..so I go to cingular and it works fine...
In case you didn't know, this is just routine network measurements that every single operator in the world is conducting.
The cars and the gear are expensive, probably the equivalent of few seconds of revenue for such operators.
They basically use theoretical network planning tools and they use road measurements to improve their model and of course compare with the competition.
Good to see that the US guys seem to learn cellular basics. Hey, one day you might even be using a real wireless system!
All wireless companies, not just verizon, have "station wagons" that go out and test signal... It's one of the most important components of truly testing their system's performance. They can use computerized propagation tools, but in order to know the true state of their system, they have to "drive test" it.
um... you know that's just a commercial, right?
In the US, there are some anti-trust/monopoly issues that prevent it. I don't know all the details, but my understanding is that some municipalities tried to get the cell service providers to cooperate and build one shared tower instead of having to zone land for everyone. But, it wasn't allowed by law.
There appears to be a way around it: the service providers don't actually own the tower -- it's owned by someone else, who rents it to any (or all) of the service providers. But, each still has to install their own equipment.
Ultimately, I think that that seamless roaming agreements (I have one that gives nationwide service, a reasonable allocation of peak time and more off-peak time that I could ever use, with no roaming or long-distance fees) would be a better solution than full coverage by EVERY provider in low-density areas.
That really annoying guy in their commercials... "Can you hear me now?" I'm glad he's roving around the country. I'm looking forward to bludgeoning the annoying SOB senseless with whatever blunt instrument happens to be handy...
instead we drove blazers, with expensive ass equipment much fun it was, i once spent 14 hours driving in new jersey (the armpit of the states) gah i hated that but the overtime was fun. it was a fun co-op
http://omgwtfmedia.blogspot.com/
Here's the greatest logical fallacy with big, wealthy neighborhoods:
Wealthy neighborhood resident: "We can't get any cell-phone signal in our backyard"
Cell Phone Carrier: "Ok, great, we'll install a wireless tower nearby and greatly improve your signal strength."
Wealthy neighborhood resident:" Oh no you don't, you aren't putting one of those ugly cell towers in my backyard.
Cell-phone carrier: "But I thought you wanted us to fix the hole in the service?!?!"
Wealthy neighborhood resident: "We do, but we don't want any of those big ugly cell-phone towers in our neighborhood."
Happens all the time. People bitch that they can't get any good service, then they bitch that cell phone companies are trying to install cell towers in their neighborhoods. It's a lose-lose situation. The residents don't get cell service and the cellular companies still hear people bitch about the service gap.
No man is an island, But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie them together, they make a pretty good raft.
Hmm...they are getting "600 lines of data that detail the signal availability, clarity and speed of connection as well as which cell tower is being used to complete a call." And they are doing stats on competitor calls also. Wonder if you could do pull that back with a homebrew rig?(for less $$s) Seems like the hard way to accomplish what they're trying to do. Wouldn't it be cheaper to stick a GPS IC in a random sampling of customers' phones (giving them a discount on their monthly plans for the privilege) and just have the phone report in stats (in the background) for dropped connections when it reestablished service.
Can you hear me now?
*BLAM!*
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
for the cost of 10 of those cars and no miles, they could set up a call center and let customers do it for them. I'd call and report three dead spots that continually piss me off on the way to work if I knew they were going to do anything.
pucker up, buttercup
Not that it makes too much of a difference but the $67.2 billion was revenue for all of Verizon Communications. Verizon Wireless only made ~$4 billion if I remember correctly. $67.2 billion for a wireless provider would be absolutely incredible.
Used to be an an analyst for UK mobile network provider BT Cellnet/mmO2.
:)
Network quality and coverage is a big issue for the networks because it's one of the few differentiators for an otherwise commoditized service.
When I was working there they would make frequent appeals for staff to report any 'holes' in the network that they found whilst travelling around. Guess this approach is more practical in little old England than it would be in North America
Where can I find the map of their results posted? Answer: I the best of my knowledge, no cellular company posts this information publically. That whole Verizon ad campaign puts a bad taste in my mouth.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Someone let me know when the Verizon guy makes it to Maine. Once you get north of Bangor, even a 3 Watt analog car phone has lousy coverage. Trying to use a digital up here is just an excercise in futility.
Driving around in a station wagon "full" of equipment sounds like ancient times. I took a course in "mobility and wireless networks" at my University (Swedish)), where a representative from Ericsson was invited and demo:ed a device that looked exactly like a normal cell phone.
He hooked it up to a laptop via serial and USB and got all kinds of data from the GSM/GPRS network.
It was also very easy to inject malformatted data in the GSM/GPRS network and simply make it crash, he told us. The networks in the area where they develop it were prone to be down... ;)
Here you have a link to the official website (http://www.ericsson.com/tems/gsm/pocket-gsm.shtml ) along with a picture of it. He told us it cost about US$20.000 to get hold of one of them, and many phone operators in Europe use them.
I have 1 Gbps Internet access@home
Columbus OHIO Clintonville area north of henderson on high street. It sucks bad....
...on the rail lines because it stinks on the LIRR right in Verison's backyard.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Detailed Sprint PCS coverage maps, by city