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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."
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
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...
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
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.
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
I don't think it would be a fun gig. The article mentioned a former Marine was doing it and that he enjoyed spending hours locked in traffic jams. Although I guess it would beat being pinned down in a swamp for hours on end.
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.
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.
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.
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
Thats Verizon Communications, a distinctly different business unit.
Multiple times Verizon Wireless has filed for an IPO, but so far has not done so.
As to spending your money on projects that turn a profit, broadband is considerably lower profits than Wireless.
Verizon Wireless has consistently been the highest profit margin business unit in Verizon Communications.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
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.
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
Apple, Adobe, etc. use all three of these things. Microsoft's sheer staggering success is largely due to being at the right place at the right time (the IBM DOS deal).
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
They also use this data to help generate the coverage maps you see in shops
It may be just your cell. The transmitters in various cell phones are very diffrent. I have a samsung m100 (the mp3 playing one). It was discontinued for signal problems, but at college, in the dorms, I was one of the only people who could continue to talk on my cell phone while in the elevator. I can get out to where there is not a cell tower in sight, and loose signal on that phone, but on my Samsung 8500 that I also have, I may still have three bars left, and I can still make calls. Another thing that bugs me with the signals, is that most cell phones say "i'm on the network" when it can recieve the signal from a tower, but You can't make a call for maybe 20 miles down the road.
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
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...
You can set any phone to do this. I have my SprintPCS phone set to "SprintPCS mode", which makes it only work when I'm in a Sprint area. So I never get hit with unwanted roaming fees.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
Oh, wait... those companies would fight tooth and nail to keep those subsidies, in spite of the fact that they're no longer needed. The telcos have more than enough money to expand, yet we're still paying those fees.
Yeah, capitalism works well in this country.
Method of processing duck feet
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.
Feel free to mod me down\flame me\whatever, but thats how it looks from here.
We put $8 billion into our network in the past two years," she said. "We want to know where we stand in every market."
True enough.
Another reason why GSM phones work. Go to europe. Check it out.
You buy an open GSM phone.
You want a phone number, you go buy a new sim card.
You want more time? Easy.. buy a card, recharge the phone. reasonable rates.
Full services included. voicemail. data. etc. It's not crippled.
It's anonymous.
You want a new phone? Get a new phone, put your sim card in, away you go. All your stored numbers, your phone number, etcetera.
Look at AT&T as well. I've never had problems with them. Even on Camp Pendleton CA which is descrobed as a black hole for cell service, AT&T reliably works.
Of course, AT&T handling all the barracks telephone services may get them an advantage with the military allowing them to set up towers on the bases, and close them entirely to other providers...
Have you tried Satellite for Internet service? It adds some latency, but the bandwidth is much better than phone by itself. It's probably useless for gaming, but HTTP, FTP, and such should speed up considerably.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
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...
A more interesting part of the article was this:
"Observes" 1 billion calls? How the hell do they do that? And what is "observing"? Is that like recording? OK, they're probably just recording the signal strength, but still. This is a paranoid's dream come true!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!
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.
-- freelance journalist for Wired, New York Times, Seattle Times, and other earnest publications
Um, I think we've found out why you got good service :)
Dr Fish
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!
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...
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.
um... you know that's just a commercial, right?
you forgot about the camera crew, the director, the m&m sorter for the actor (at least the Sprint guy isn't picky about his wardrobe), the ad agency, the cost of tv commercials, paying CNN for their endorsmnet, etc.
70k/s for 768? That's rediculous! You should get close to 80 in ideal conditions.
Did they actually come out and fix your problems?
If you want someone to fawn over your every word on the phone who don't give a shit and can't actually solve your problems, you can get that for $3.99 a min.
Hey, Lake Tahoe isn't in the Bay Area. I know you may be used to 4 hour waits for BART to get you across the Bay, but that same amount of Time takes you a long ways up I80 -- past Sacramento even.
Hey, imagine that! They are all using the same towers. Half the time they are even using the same signals. The main hurdle wireless companies in the US face is sorting out who gets what percentage of each call. In some areas (even major cities) Verizon owns all the bandwidth, in some its AT&T, etc. They lease from each other.
Now that cellular service providers are required to have some sort of tracking system on their customers, they should look to at least make it useful.
Some cell phones are supposed to have little gps receivers in them and all phones have signal metering. Seems pretty easy to program the phones to record the position and the signal strength just prior to losing the signal and then transmit that data when the signal is restored. Then they could analyze the performance of different phones over a large area. (Of course all this should be optional for the customer to opt out of)
I wonder if 2 million phones continually doing data aquisition would be as valuable as 1 $270K station wagon at $15/mile.
-- Button up, your ignorance is showing
Well, part of the problem is the NIMBY's who don't want towers in _their_ town!
:)
Of course, they want the best cell reception money can buy, but don't you dare irradiate my kids with your lousy towers!
Sheesh. Study the numbers. Each foot you move away from the transmitter, the RF output goes down _exponentially_.
Of course, these same NIMBY's are the ones who have _lots_ of time on their hands and go to the planning board meetings, so you don't get your cell coverage.
Blame them --- they're what stop the cellco's more than anything
--NBVB
...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