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Verizon's Wireless Road Warriors

Posted by michael on from the surprisingly-mediocre dept.

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."

7 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Coverage is NOT the end-all for cell companies by JayAndSilentBob · · Score: 2, Informative

    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
  2. AT&T does it too by craybob · · Score: 4, Informative

    AT&T does the same thing, I've known a guy that does that for about 2 years now.

  3. Re:Dumbasses by Triskaidekaphobia · · Score: 2, Informative

    Verizon's feedback form is Here (Nb. URL contains a ZIP code - replace it with your own).

    Select "I have a question about Network/Coverage" as the subject
    and "How do I report a network service or coverage issue?" as the question.

  4. This is nothing new by jasoncart · · Score: 2, Informative
    Orange (phone company) in the UK have been doing this for years. They employed old ex-sailors in Bristol to drive around in small cars checking the signal strenght. They had four cars when I did work experience there in 97.

    They also use this data to help generate the coverage maps you see in shops

  5. Re:My VZW experience by weave · · Score: 3, Informative
    Hmm, there's about 50 miles of dead space along US 93 between Wickenburg and I-40 in Arizona. I travel that road about once or twice a year with my friend on road trips. As well as my Verizon phone, I also have a Nextel and my friend has Sprint PCS. At different points, there were signals on each of the three sets. I was surprised the Nextel did so well personally. Sprint was the worse of the three.

    And this didn't cost anything, just monitoring whether it could receive signals. I admit it doesn't give a full analysis of quality, drop rate, etc, but a lousy signal is better than no signal and that road (being the best road between Phoenix and Las Vegas) gets a lot of travel. I'm surprised cell service sucks so bad along it.

    Speaking of Sprint PCS, I've always considered their "100% digital ads" to be something to be ashamed of, not brag about. If I can't get a digital signal, I'd much rather have an old-fashined A or B side analog network to fall back on....

  6. Excuse me... by cypr355 · · Score: 2, Informative
    but I read the whole article and it still just seems to be a large advertisement for verizon.

    Feel free to mod me down\flame me\whatever, but thats how it looks from here.

  7. You're Right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    it still just seems to be a large advertisement for verizon.

    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".