How's Your Cell Service?

Coldeagle writes "Well for those of us who are fed up with your current leash...Cellular phone providers... Here is an interesting article on various US cell phone providers and how their service adds up."

Comments

Check!

[vladid]

Can you hear me now??


GOOD!

How's My Cell Service?

[Anonymous Coward]

Overpriced...

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[ZaMoose]

Few people seem to realize that many cell phone companies, in the interest of retaining subscribers will actually do quite a bit. Give your company's service desk a call. Explain that you think you're paying too much and ask the service rep if there's anything they can do to help you.

Since cell phone companies' service plans seem to change all the time, you can usually luck out and get them to change you to more minutes for less money than you're paying now.

Try it some time. If you can stand wading through the 7 layers of Phone Menu Purgatory, you may just be pleasantly surprised.

Re:How's My Cell Service?

[Chelloveck]

Funny, I thought the biggest profit for cell phone companies was retention of customers.

It is, but only because they're not giving incentives to the retained customers. The extra profit comes from the existing customers paying full rate (and probably on an older, more expensive plan) whereas the new customers get XX months or YY minutes discounted. Give the existing customers a discount and they're no longer a profit center.

Which is why phone providers are so vehemently opposed to number portability. The current pricing structures try to get as many new customers as possible, and try to wring as much money as possible from the existing customers. The only incentive there is for people to continue with one provider is that they'd have to get a new number if they switched. Enter number portability and you get to take your number with you to any provider. Now there's absolutely no reason not to jump to a new provider for the incentives every year or two.

Of course, any provider with a sensible pricing policy has nothing to fear. Call me when you find one...

Interesting article but

[mjmalone]

What about taking into consideration types of services offered? I had Verizon up until about 3 months ago when I decided I wanted to upgrade my phone. I found that Verizon had no GSM network and after talking on the phone with some representitives I found there was no plan to implement one either. The phone I wanted (ericsson t68i) was a tri-band GSM phone, so I decided to switch networks. I now have T-Mobile, and I admit that their coverage is not quite as good as Verizon's, but I have found it is getting better (I was in blacksburg, Va. in June and there was no service, I went back in July and had full coverage all over town.) Also you have to take into consideration the location of the individuals being polled. Some providers have excellent service in various regions, but very poor service elsewhere.

Re:Interesting article but

[numbski]

Very true. I've used SprintPCS since 1998, and I would have sworn by them all the way up until last year. Then it seems like they started oversubscribing their network.

Well, I've moved a few times, and it seems that in some areas this network over-subscription began in 2000, combined with the fact that their newer phones didn't always get the best signal. I had an old Qualcomm 1100 and never had any issues, then I got an LG flip phone, and the signal was miserable, and a 2G phone too. Now my sanyo 4900 will get full signal right next to that LG phone that gets none....wierdness.

Some R+D and catchup work on their network would do them a world of good. I realize over-subscription is the profit ticket to a network provider, but it has to be done INTELLIGENTLY.

A note about SprintPCS + Vision

[numbski]

If you purchased an account (or bought a new phone/got a new advantage agreement as an old customer) and had unlimited vision, and you removed unlimited vision since then, guess what?

You still have it. They've 'grandfathered' your account into having unlimimted vision anyway. Set that next to the fact that since the christmas season, the novelty of the vision network has worn off, and I'm now getting comparable to ISDN speeds off my phone using a USB cable hooked to my powerbook.

Ja ne!

Verizon Wireless

[GeckoFood]

I have Verizon Wireless. Last month, I drove from Northern Virginia to northern Indiana (and back), and I never lost the signal and never went into roaming, even in the mountains of West Virginia. Can't get too much better than that...

T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[geddes]

I use t-Mobile, the second to lowest scoring provider. I havn't had that many service problems, with the exception of coverage. Thier coverage could be a lot better, but I use them over Verizon because of the quality of their customer service. It is really excellent, and customer service, to me, makes all the difference. What I would like to know is how to honestly figure out a cell phone companies coverage (other than taking their 7 day trials or whatever and walking your route, that is annoying). Like, how can I find a map of all the cell phone towers in and around Groton, Massachusetts, and which companies run them. Having such a map at my disposal would be far more useful than the "coverage maps" the companies hand out with the entire nation shaded red. I have heard that some of the mobile shops have these, but that they really aren't allowed to share them. Surely these towers' locations have to be registered somewhere

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[ccoder]

if you are a complete sadist, you might be able to compile the information from http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/reports/index.cfm

Re:T-Mobile isn't great, but good enough

[wolf-]

I was doing contract work for a cell provider in atlanta about 6 years ago. We had to have a serious background check done in order to even view the database with tower information in it. The cell companies claim that the hush hush is for security and anti-terrorism reasons. Personally I thought it was so we couldnt share just how lousy their coverage really was.

You get what you pay for

[Andy Dodd]

Verizon is significantly more expensive than most other US-based providers.

It has always been (in my opinion) worth the extra money, so I'm not surprised they were ranked #1.

This is an interesting article?

[rlsnyder]

The standards for "intersting article" seem to have gotten lower. This is a very brief writeup of a customer satisfaction survey. There is very little information on how the survey was taken, and the scoring on the survey ranks in the range of 0-104, with all services being ranked right next to each other at the top of the spectrum (with only a few % difference between each).

In other words, a short article vaguely describing a survey with largely insignificant differentiation in results. Whoo hoo!

Different results

[afidel]

Here in NE Ohio between my father and I we have used all of the major cellular companies. Verizon has shit for voice quality (I might blame it on the phone but we've had 4 different sets from 3 manufacturers), AT&T I couldn't be happier with (and their coverage KILLS anyone else, I have used my phone from coast to coast and in some pretty damn remote areas like on Mt. Whitney Calif, The Grand Canyon, etc, finally Nextel is fine so long as you are in a major metro area or never get off the highway but because they have no analog backfill don't expect to get a signal in the boonies (or even the outskirts of the Cleveland/Akron metroplex in my case). Oh yeah the only reason I put up with Virizon? Price, $80/month for unlimited anytime minutes =) My dad and I both use up more minutes then even the jumbo plans that many carriers offer for well over $100 and none of them have reasonable per minute charges if you go over.

to cell or not to cell

[selderrr]

I'll probably get modded redundant, but I still don't have a cellphone. And so far, except for 2 occasions where I got stuck in traffic for several hours and got late to pick up our kids from school, I have never even thought "damd, I wish I wasn't so stubborn and bough that cellphone"

I honestly go whooptie-flip over those 15-year olds crammed together in the bus messanging or calling eachother, yelling in my ear, poking with their elbows and tripping over anything smaller than a shepperd-dog (I recently saw a teen running along the road while phoning. Neither he nor the road-sign pole had the immense fun I had when I saw him smack his forehead fullspeed into the metal, and then the back of his head into the asphalt as he bounced back. The silliest thing was that when I tried to help him get up, he could only utter 'mind your steps... my phone is on the ground somewhere overhere' The guy was nearly blind from the impact for christ sake !)... Not to speak of the near-constant phone ringing all around me whenever I step out the door. At a bus station for instance. Sometimes it's funny to just watch everyone grab for their phone (women in their purse, machos grab their crotch as those things seem to live in simbyosis with testicles)...

That's perhaps one reason to buy a cellphone : stand at the busstation with a friend, and secretly call him. He doesn't pick up. I hang up after 3 rings and repeat. Mr. Cleese would be proud of me.

I hate the phone

[AssFace]

I absolutely hate the phone and will do nearly anything to avoid talking on one.

That said, I love shiny things. I have had a series of phones over the years and a series of carriers.

I started in '99 with a Nokia - I think it was a 6590 or something like that - it seemed cool at the time. It was with Sprint in Boston/Cambridge.
There were small, but frequent dead zones and when I walked into one while on a call, it would drop out. Frustrating.
I called Sprint about it and they actually said "yeah, we aren't planning on upgrading out networks at all"... so I told them I would be leaving their service, which I did.

I then got a Nokia 8860 - the shiny mirrored girly phone that Christina Aguilara had on one of her MTV interviews. That phone scratched easily and had terrible reception - but I was worshipped like a god whenever I pulled that out of my pocket. It was also excellent for finding nose hair issues.
The reception on that phone was so bad that it is hard to fault AT&T for any of that. That said, AT&T fucked up the billing on my phone and my cable service about 4 times in a row and led to a several month series of events that made me decided to never use them again. They were incredibly annoying to deal with - one person would say the situation was resolved, then I would get a letter from a collection agency - for something that I never needed to pay in the first place according to AT&T.
Finally, the last straw was when the woman (many supervisors up) said to me "I understand that you aren't supposed to have this charge, but you do, and I can't fix it, so how about you just pay $10 of it and then I will write off the rest (of a $100 charge)".
I was so pissed that I had to pay anything at all since I wasn't supposed to - but at that point, I saw the $10 fee as my way of getting out of their fucking phone annoyance hell - and I was sick of getting collection notices for things that weren't my problem.

So I will never go with them again. I later got some mail telling me that I was part of a class action suit against them and would in the end get like $1 off of my cable service if I upgraded - right.

Then I switched to VoiceStream, and they then renamed to T-Mobile. I have the Nokia 8890 with them. GSM - works in other countries and many cities.
Great service, great customer service - no billing errors - great phone.
Was very happy with them - they would upgrade my service for free as things came along - great stuff.

Then I moved to Bermuda and had to cancel that.
I can still use the same phone here, and the service is decent enough, considering I didn't want to get it in the first place (work made me get it, but then refused to pay for it, so as a result, I don't answer it much).
The customer service here is non-existant - but so far haven't had to deal with that yet. Have had a rude person and a nice person when signing up. That is pretty normal here - usually more rude.

In the end, the only way I would change phones is if I get one of the new Treo phones from Handspring/Palm, or if Nokia's upgrade to the 8890 comes here (I think it is the 8910 and 8910i - nice looking phones).

Regional Considerations

[timothy_m_smith]

The problem with this article is that mobile service should be rated regionally as opposed to nationally. I understand that some carriers have national plans, but in general each carrier has strengths in different geographic areas.

Since last christmas (left that part out)...

[numbski]

I got modded up anyway, but I meant to say if you bought a new phone/agreement this last christmas season while they were giving unlimited vision for free, and then removed it.

Hate to see a bunch of people remove it and find out they are getting metered because they didn't fall in that group. I'm saying if you've removed it since christmas, not to go do it now. :P

Most times...just like ewoks

[emo boy]

I have Sprint PCS and I would say over 50% of the time the people on the other end just sound like Ewoks. It could be the service quality or it could just be that I'm talking to Ewoks but I mean what sounds more likely...Eworks or the quality of service?? Yeah Ewoks...those damn ewoks.

Cingular

[LogicX]

Just wanted to toss out there that I went to get a new phone at cingular last week, and they've JUST switched everything to GSM networks from CDMA. All their new plans are for GSM service, all their new phones are GSM. If you are a currently customer you have TWO phones to choose from that still do CDMA. The GSM service has MUCH less coverage, they claim better quality and signal strength.

Does anyone have any good URLs showing what network types all the providers use, and maybe compares them?

Re:Cingular

[WhiteDragon]

cingular was never CDMA, they have been TDMA. That being said, the two phones that have TDMA and GSM (a combination known as GAIT) are the Sony-Ericsson T62u and the Nokia 6360. I have had a cingular phone for a year and a half and really love their coverage. I am on a national plan which includes roaming to analog and tdma, and I almost always have some signal. I don't care whether it is cingular, other tdma, or analog, since I don't pay any extra for it. My only complaint is the fact that calls made while off the cingular network are not billed immediately, so you might have to wait a month or two, then all of a sudden you wonder where those extra 150 minutes on your bill came from. I suppose that is probably not cingular's fault though, since they have to wait until they get the data from the roaming partners.

No

[computechnica]

There are still alot of rural areas out west that do not have any service. I doubt some of the areas in the commercials really had service.

Prepaid

[Patik]

Prepaid phones are a great resource for those who wish they had a phone for occasional usage (emergencies, quick short calls, etc.) but won't talk enough to justify $30/month. I've found Virgin Mobile to offer the best rates. You have to add $20 every 90 days, which works out to $7/month if you never use it (or use up to about a half hour a month). You can add money on their website, through the phone itself, or by buying a card at a store. The balance also carries over until you cancel the service. I've never had to add any more than the minimum, and I feel like I've adequate usage out of it. It's .25/min, which seems costly but if I had a $30/month plan I'd still only use it 30-60 minutes, and I'd be pay three times per minute when you average it out. Free text messages (10 cents to send) are very convenient.

For the 7 months I've had it the service has been great, phone has worked fine, and everything has run smoothly.

Since then I've convinced three people close to me to get their own. They, too, disregarded cell phones because of the daunting costs, but have found the occasional usage quite convenient.

Verizon / Nextel / Sprint

[weave]

I've driven all over the southwest with a friend of mine. I have Verizon, my work phone is Nextel, and he has Sprint PCS. Coverage wise, it was Verizon by far, then Nextel, then that POS Sprint. Even in dense areas like - ah, er, Phoenix -- he often had trouble getting a decent signal.

Then there's the entire southeast quadrant of New Mexico. All around Carlsbad, Roswell, and basically anywhere east of I-25 was a complete dead zone for Nextel and Sprint. Verizon was great except for a few isolated areas between some mountains.

Sprint's "all digital" shtick is supposed to be a selling point, but it's actually a disadvantage. If there's no digital signal, I'd much rather fall back to analog (plus not have to pay roaming charges) than have no service at all.

One more thing, modern cell phones pretty much suck. I've had a startac 7868W for years now, works like a champ, great sound quality, and goes ages on a charge. It's basically a very good telephone. OK, so it doesn't have solitaire or allow me to snap photos inside of locker rooms. I'd rather just have a good phone and reliable dependable phone service.

maybe

[Datasage]

Verizon may be best for the entire country, but not best for every area. When i was choosing a cellular provider i did a bit of shopping around. sometimes by overhearing other customers talking to the guy at the counter about thier problems. Most of them were compaining about the quality of verizon's service. In the end i choose t-mobile.

Quality of service is not the only reason why i would choose a provider.

GSM vs CDMA: Because we in the US always have to be incompatible with the rest of the world we create the cdma standard. Generally i have found that the cdma based networks cant send sms outside of thier network or to very few others. while t-mobile to many of the networks around the world. T-mobile also can be used on many of the networks around the work, but you pay a premium price to do so (anywhere from $1-5 per minute). But if you were in those countries, it would be rather easy to just get a sim card for a local network. The last reason i like gsm over cdma, i can upgrade my handset by just moving the sim card to another phone, no programing needed.

And if you're sick of your provider...

[daveschroeder]

...Wireless Local Number Portability (LNP), meaning you can change to another wireless provider in your service area while keeping the same telephone number, goes into effect November 24, 2003:

FCC press release

I'd wait until November....

[numbski]

So you can keep your phone number when you switch. Just a thought.

Tower Location

[Duckz]

This site does most of the work for you.
http://www.berkana.com/tower.php3

Todd

The ongoing saga...

[badasscat]

Cellular service in this country is a mess, and urban areas can be just as bad off as rural. Case in point: New York City. I've been with Sprint now for about 6 or 7 years, not because their service is so great but because everybody else is even worse. I live in Queens (though not in the boonies of Queens) and commute to Manhattan - I get 1 bar of signal strength in either place, occasionally going up to 2. A good 50% of my calls are either dropped or just go through to voicemail. This is not just on one model of phone, either - as I said, I've been with Sprint for a while and have used a good 4-5 phones over the duration, all with external antennas, and all have been equally bad. It's the service, not the phones.

Fed up, I tried Verizon for 2 weeks about a year ago, based on their reputation (a reputation confirmed at the linked article). Every single call I made reverted to analog mode despite showing 4 bars of digital strength prior to placing the call. Accessing any data services was useless for this reason, and call quality was atrocious. Dropped Verizon within my 15 day trial period (which I believe is mandated by law around here).

During all this time, Sprint's rates have shot up dramatically, and for my family plan I am now paying a minimum of $95 per month including taxes (taxes are much higher here than anywhere else - YMMV). That's the cheapest plan available with 2 lines.

Just this weekend my wife and I signed up with Cingular, mostly due to their lower rates ($50 plus 17.1% total tax for 2 lines and a reasonable amount of minutes). Was instantly complaining that I was going to cancel the service again after I couldn't even complete a call to my wife's phone in our own apartment. Now that I've had a bit more time to play with the phones I'm starting to think the service is not particularly worse than Sprint (1 bar of strength at home, 1 bar at work, 2-3 bars everywhere in between, some calls dropped, some go through), so at the reduced rates I may as well stick with them. But I'm still not particularly happy.

If any other product on the market (and cellular service is a product like any other) only worked 50% of the time it would be considered defective. Imagine picking up your home phone and wondering whether or not your call will go through. This is the beginning of the 21st century, not the 20th. The top priority of all of these companies needs to be to fix their service. And I mean fix, not "improve". The service as it is is broken.

I have not tried cellular service in Europe but I can't imagine it is this bad. I have, on the other hand, tried it in Japan and was absolutely astonished. Now, granted, I only tried one company's service (DoCoMo) and only in one area (Tokyo metro) but it was full signal strength at all times, even in rural areas (yes, there are rural areas around Tokyo), with absolutely crystal clear call quality. I cannot understand how cellular service in the US could be so much worse.