Slashdot Mirror
Analyst Estimates AT&T Needs To Spend $5B To Catch Up
itwbennett writes "The public's perception of AT&T's network is poor and declining, apparently because of real shortcomings when compared with Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel,' says Gerard Hallaren, director of research at TownHall Investment Research. 'AT&T's capital expenditures on its wireless network from 2006 through September 2009 totaled about $21.6 billion, compared with $25.4 billion for Verizon and $16 billion for Sprint (including Sprint's investments in WiMax operator Clearwire). Over that time, Verizon has spent far more per subscriber: $353, compared with $308 for AT&T,' Hallaren said. 'Even Sprint has outspent AT&T per subscriber, laying out $310 for network capital expenditure.' All this means AT&T has a choice, says Hallaren: 'spend or suffer.'"
'Even Sprint has outspent AT&T per subscriber, laying out $310 for network capital expenditure.' All this means AT&T has a choice, says Hallaren: 'spend or suffer.'
Or maybe it means that Sprint-Nextel's network was such a steaming pile of crap that they had to outlay an irresponsible amount of capital to bring it up to snuff. Last time I checked, Sprint is losing thousands of customers a week.
I have a bad feeling about this...
Wait; what? You mean all that "Those people in Operation Chokehold are just blowing blue smoke out their ass; we're just as good as the other guys" press releasing was just *posturing*?
Say it ain't *so*, Joe!
In fact, while Nextel's *coverage* sucks in the Tampa market, their customer service has come *way* up, and I say that having been a customer 10 years now.
Bell and Telus collectively spent about $1 billion rolling out 7.2 Mbps GSM across Canada, and did it in about one year. Canada is larger than the US, and has 1/10th the population. That means it costs a lot more to provide bandwidth on a per-person basis. Backhaul links are less available as well, further increasing difficulties.
So why is this going to cost AT&T 5 times as much, especially when they already have the towers and the problem is (apparently) backhaul - which is cheap.
What am I missing here?
Maury
AT&T's little game a while back where they decided that they were going to blame and overcharge iPhone users for their problems pretty much guaranteed I won't be looking into AT&T for service any time soon. I think the iPhone is a silly and largely pointless thing, like most Apple products, but that was just ridiculous.
"Oh gee, we sold a whole bunch of phones that are built to be and advertised as mobile media platforms, let's blame the users of those phones using them as mobile media platforms for all our network's problems".
Okay, AT&T. Lemme know how that works for you.
These numbers are misleading. AT&T doesn't need to spend as much money to be as productive in infrastructure expansion as its CDMA competitors because their engineers can talk and surf at the same time.
Calling out bogus battery capacity claims.
> I've figured out what's wrong with life--other people.
Sartre fanboi.
Seriously, that is far more?
Most AT&T users could tell you that AT&T really needs to get their shit together. No need for expensive research.
Personally, I am with AT&T now because:
1 - I had to have a GSM phone (CDMA FTL!)
2 - T-Mobile's covereage sucks where I live in Atlanta (or at least it did 18 months ago)
I am pissed and dont have much of a choice - its MaBell of Tmob. Not much is out there that would drive me to the shackles of CDMA hell with BigRed.
1331461 is only semiprime *sigh* Alas - I am just short of 1337.
I've never understood while Sprint get's bashed every time they are compared to other providers. I've been with Sprint for ~10 years and they have always provided me with good service and coverage with reasonable rates. I can not remember the last time I had no service or a call was dropped. Maybe it's because I live in a metro area, but I have nothing bad to say about them.
They rested on their laurels with the iPhone along with retarding their capital expenditures to beef up their stock price when earnings season rolled around. They are paying for that dearly now with major issues with infrastructure and bandwidth issues.
Major mistake, playing to the stockholders instead of their customers.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
nice uid bro
Have you used the Sprint network lately?
My guess is that you have not.
Sprint used to be bashed because of customer support and rightly so but they have made a lot of effort to improve in that area.
Sprint used to have a not great selection of phones. Right now they have a few really good phones like the Blackberry Tour, the Samsung Moment, the HTC Hero, the Palm Pre, and Palm Pixie.
Their prices are cheaper than Verizon and AT&T and the didn't cripple their phones like Verizon did as far as Bluetooth, WiFI, and even loading software.
They are CDMA which is a downer if you are going to travel outside the US but so is Verizon.
Oh and you get to roam on the Verizon network. I have never been without service on my phone for more than five minutes anywhere in the US.
I would say that unless you MUST have an iPhone or you really want a Droid that Sprint is a really good choice.
The crappy old Sprint has been gone for a while but then you will find people that hate every carrier.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Nice catch.
No brain, no pain.
...they spend most of their budget on wiretapping for the NSA!
I suspect AT&T feels that those numbers represent a cost per subscriber rather than an investment per subscriber.
Now how about a big round of executive bonus...
No brain, no pain.
... on Luke Wilson. My solution to public perception issue? Less on marketing and more on infrastructure upgrades and support (engineering, equipment, installation, customer support, etc.). I strongly believe that beyond an initial marketing push, if a product is truly good, it can sell itself.
And I find I want to clarify, in case there are any Nextel engineers reading this (and understand, I'm diagnosing as someone whose done it for TCP networks for 15 years)..
The problem isn't *RF Coverage*; I have good signal almost everywhere.
But that doesn't keep me from dropping calls to "Service Conflict" or "Out of Dispatch Coverage", or just plain not being able to hold a conversation because the backbone gets confused; I can talk to my partner, but he can't talk to me because I'm "busy in DC".
Yup. Talking to him.
And don't even get me started on "The Nextel subscriber you're trying to reach is being located."
And this isn't my phone; it's happened to me on my present 8350i, but also the 7100i, i730, i95, and i1000plus that it replaced, in various guises.
As good as Sprint's CS has gotten, I cannot *wait* for Verizontal to deploy 700LTE, and for RIM to make a (PTT capable, preferably PTToC) handset for it. Or, for HTC to make a Nexus One with a PTT button, and decent high-audio.
But Sprint has plenty of 3G coverage where ATT doesn't. The real America, you know the one between either left coast.
After resting on the success of the iPhones and what they had, AT&T now has to spend the money to catch up.
Expect the majority of shareholders, who are ridiculously short sighted, to hate AT&T for it and decry it as a waste of money, just like how all the Verizon stockholders were whining about the investment per household for FiOS.
AT$T just keeps getting worse and worse. They were overcharging me a lot 10 years ago and I changed my service to Bellsouth and I was so much happier. Then AT$T bought Bellsouth and so I unhappily had AT$T again. Deciding to give them another chance I stayed with them. But then came the unexplained fees and hugely overcharging me for $899 for long distance service that should have been less than $20. So at the beginning of this year I discontinued their service again for a Cable phone service that is great and $10 less a month.
I will never again let AT$T into my life !!
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
But my iPhone would probably just drop the call.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Why bother with doing 3G only?
Why not wait and deploy the next generation and 3G at the same time?
If your going to do all that work and visit all those sites, it would make more sense to LEAPFROG Verizon and the other carriers while your at it.
I couldn't agree more. I've been on Sprint for five years. I also can't remember the last time I had a dropped call or no service, and the "everything" plan can't be beat. I talk to the Apple fanboys at work toting their iPhones, and they try to compare who has the least number of dropped calls - they can't believe that I don't have any at all, ever.
Sprint purchased/"merged" with Nextel. Nextel has always been the bottom-feeder network when it came to infrastructure. Sure, they are in more places, but that's because they snatched up all the "going under" real estate from failing telco's before they went away. It's a cheap way to build (or have others build) your network, but the quality was inconsistent, in disrepair and only really looked good on paper. The only real reason why Nextel did as well as they did is because they had that all-important "Push To Talk" button, which was a very simple interface for specialized marketplaces. Fleet vehicles, remote staff, servicemen, etc. relied on that feature, so the network was basically a non-consideration as long as it worked "most of the time". Both Sprint and Nextel had very strong and secure reputations in the marketplace, but for VERY different underlying reasons.
Sprint needed to invest quite a lot to upgrade the equipment from Nextel's acquisitions, but now that they have, they have an amazing, demonstrable footprint of coverage. To say that Sprint gets bashed, they bought that reputation honestly through acquiring Nextel. Both companies ultimately benefited from the merger, but it was and is a long and expensive road for them both.
OK, who paid for this and what's in it for them? I've yet to see a piece of so-called "business research" of this nature which was produced with no ulterior motive.
The most obvious thoughts that spring to mind are:
Any others?
Forgot to mention that Sprints unlimited plan is much less than other providers, even still, and they have had it for a year.. (nice of ATT and Verizion to have Unlimted talk and data, but not text!)
The Only reason I left Sprint was because the house I was renting had no coverage. It was in the middle of a depression, out in the boonies, so it was understandable.. I went with USCellular, a much smaller company (#6) but they have free incoming calls and texts. But, they have no data network really, and old, not as fun phones.. which I'm fine with.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
You will also find people who will defend any carrier.
I saved so much money by switching to AT&T that it was actually cost-effective to pay Sprint's early termination fees. Plus, I no longer have to deal with them screwing up my bill every other month.
You say Sprint's customer service has changed, and that's great. But you couldn't pay me to ever use them again. Plus, the iPhone, IMO, is a much better phone than all of the Sprint phones you listed.
I have a bad feeling about this...
Ah, another satisfied iPhone user.
Looking for a Rails developer in Chapel Hill?
Screw wireless, AT&T's wired backbone is by far the worst in the world. Their Manilla tech support is probably the worst that I've ever spoken to. No one has a good wireless network. I wait all day on Verizon too...they should fix the infrastructure and their business model first before blowing all of that money on their network. They still have the iPhone...neat.
and wondered what the problem was
My big complaint with Sprint is cross carrier SMS and MMS. Everyone I know finds Sprint extremely unreliable about sending or receiving anything which comes from or goes to Sprint's network. I've literally waited an hour for text message to appear on the phone next to me. They also seem to drop a huge number of messages; again, cross carrier. At one point, I'd guess perhaps as high as 80% drop rate - though that high is not what I'd call typical.
I don't know if other carriers are purposely causing problems for Sprint or if Sprint is purposely causing problems for other carriers, or they are just well beyond their capacity. But, unless things improve and you SMS or MMS heavily with people on other carriers, I could never recommend Sprint.
Also, one last note, Verizon has not crippled any Android phone features. While Verizon has a terrible history here, thus far they've been true to their word on Android. Now hopefully Verizon's upcoming Android 2.1 update will fix various bugs and incompatibilities vs every other Android phone available. If not, then I'd recommend people staying away from Android+Verizon.
I chose Verizon. There is no point in having a fast network or browsing while calling if I can't freakin' connect to the network.
I'm quite happy with my HTC Ozone and having at least two bars reception no matter where I am, even in the elevators at work.
Living With a Nerd
My Verizon plan has unlimited text.
When this becomes a more serious problem they will beg/demand/get massive tax breaks and claim that it will go to infrastructure building. Then they will pass the majority to their stock holders. If anyone complains and suggests regulation concerning either the tax breaks (outside of suggesting more tax breaks) or how the additional revenue should be spent will be branded a socialist and an enemy of capitalism.
We saw this under both Clinton and Bush and we will see it again under Obama, because there is one simple fact that no one in government can understand. You cannot bribe businesses. You can sign contracts where they provide a service for a price, you can enforce current legislation and if you are willing to waste the time you can write new legislation, but you will never get anything done with bribery (ie. tax cuts).
No, let me clarify here.
Nextel's network was *necessarily* built from the ground up, because *it is not Cellular*. It's not licensed as cellular by the FCC. It's on frequencies completely disparate from cellular.
Nextel was created and expanded by buying out Specialized Mobile Radio licensees in the mid 80s, and using their freqs to build what is, effectively, a digital trunking radio system (iDen) with autopatch capabilities.
> Sure, they are in more places, but that's because they snatched up all the "going under" real estate from failing telco's before they went away.
That? Just didn't happen. Nor anything that remotely resembles it.
> Both companies ultimately benefited from the merger, but it was and is a long and expensive road for them both.
And they're not done walking it. While I disagree with you on the technical points of how they came to be, it is in fact the case that they out-expanded themselves, growing their footprint without expanding their backbone to match.
At least, that's my diagnosis, and until someone with facts steps up to contradict me, I'll continue to tell people that.
On reflection, I guess I'm saying they have to take *even more* of the blame for their current state -- and it's not just me; I have 8 customers who've ditched Nextel in the last 10 years; big ones; some 25 radios -- than your "cobbled together from people's leavings" assertion would justify.
<title>Analyst: AT&amp;T needs to spend US$5B to catch up | ITworld</title>
That title is so &ed it goes to 11.
Anyway, I bit the bullet and bought an iPhone. In the Financial District in downtown SF I couldn't make a call consistently much less anything else! I was livid.
To make matters worse, my work gave me a Blackberry. A SPRINT Blackberry, and it had better coverage in SF, Denver, and DC. sigh...Unreal.
I still can't believe I pay MORE to AT&T for this honor...
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
I think it's clearly spend or make your customers suffer and there's plenty of evidence which way they'll probably go.
I have unlimited texting with ATT and have for at least two years. What are you talking about?
If you look at the differences in the US 3G coverage maps shown in the Verizon commercials, I think $5B is freaking cheap!
I also recently switched to sprint and I've been really satisfied with their service. I got an unlimited data plan for a lower price than anyone else, and they had 3G in my town while AT&T still doesn't. I'd prefer to be on a GSM network, but theres absolutely no tangible difference to my day to day use. Their customer support has been pretty decent, but that might be because I'm working through a corporate account rather than a normal one.
-Hmm...I got a G+ invite, better remember to remove the request from my sig...-
Really? How in the world did you find a Sprint plan costing more that AT&T using the iPhone? Especially when the Sprint "everything" plan is $99/month? That's quite a feat...
You can say Sprint's customer service sucks, and yes, lots of folks had issues there. But as far as cost of plans go, I'm by NO means on the high end AT&T plan, and I'm nowhere near my Sprint bills...
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
As it is, verizon is no longer the absolute leader. Sprint, ATT, even some of the small guys like boost and cricket have competitive products. All verizon can say is they have the premium product, and use the higher fees to maintain the premium product.
I suspect the issue is not spending, but the free space in cell towers and new cell towers, which I understand are not as easy to set, since everyone wants a cell phone, but no one wants a tower in the neighborhood. In places like NYC I can imagine that just finding real estate, much less real estate that one is allowed to attach to, is a major issue. It seems like at 15-25 billion, everyone is spending as much as they possible can.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I do not think that $ by $ comparison is valid here.
Actually, GSM networking equipment for AT&T's network is cheaper to buy that similar CDMA equipment that Verizon and Sprint uses. GSM market is sooo much larger than CDMA so that the economy of scale plays nicely here. You might get further with 21B$ upgrading your GSM network than with 25B$ for CDMA.
Well at least they're running a real GSMA network, not some chauvinistic USian version of it.
Yes, and you pay how much for it?
I pay $69.99 for my Palm Pre's plan with unlimited data/texting and unlimited mobile-mobile(Carrier agnostic) and 450 minutes for landlines.
I don't know why Sprint is hemorrhaging customers, just go to the various sites and compare plans and prices. Verizon is a better network but often 40% more expensive for equal services (and Sprint gets to piggyback for free if needed), T-Mobile is close but not quite as good, and AT&T is currently considerably worse in all respects except offering the iPhone.
Unless you're an international traveler, refuse to use subsidized phones, or obsessed with the iPhone, Sprint is the clear winner.
That's what I'm getting out of this article. Why Luke, WHY!?!?!
AT&T has over 80 million wireless subscribers. They made $3.6 billion in the third quarter from wireless alone. They are doing fine.
Technologically speaking Spring is well behind the times in their actual communication equipment. Touted as "CDMA 2001" most of Sprint systems are old Ericcson/Qualcom BTS systems that have not been in production in over. Unfortunately that's the cost of doing business when you outsource your entire network to a supplier. They have expanded a few BTS sites in the major city areas to the Nokia CMDA system, but other upgrades to my knowledge have not taken place. Not to say they haven't, I just don't know about them. GSM, CDMA, UMTS upgrades are what I do for a living. I've been working in Tennessee for the last year installing new UMTS sites for AT&T meanwhile we have not seen a job for Sprint since late 2003. Which by the way, the UMTS systems used by AT&T? Made by Ericcson. Sprints largest problem came is after the Nextel merger they were blindsided by the cost to upgrade Nextels network as well as their own. Thus what happens is when a upgrade takes place for them, 8 times out of 10 its on a old Nextel site to bring it half way to where the sprint locations were at the merger or it's upgrading a pre-existing Sprint location to generate revenue to do the former. Coverage wise, they still are not competitive. While they do cover most metropolitan areas and cities, their rural coverage puts them in to much lower end of the spectrum in the "big dog" carrier competition.
The truth does not change by our ability to stomach it -Flannery O'Conner
Naive:
All this means AT&T has a choice, says Hallaren: 'spend or suffer'.
Correct:
All this means AT&T has a choice, says Hallaren: 'spend or collude with "competitors" to ensure they have as much time as they need to catch up (because after all, if a silly matter like technical prowess can beat ONE big company, it could very well beat the others, too, so they have a vested interest in making sure this doesn't happen until they're ready for it) and lobby congress for legal assistance to keep anyone new from taking advantage of this situation'.
So which one's cheaper?
I would love to see what plane you got. Not one for the iPhone for sure.
The iPhone is a very good phone with lots of very good apps. I have an iPod touch and a Samsung Moment. My wife has a Palm Pre so I have access to an Apple device, Palm Pre, and Android.
Apple has a better app store than any of them.
The Pre I feel actually has a better UI than the iPhone and the cards are really nice. The new SDK really seems to have opened up the possibilities on the Pre so I expect to see it doing really well. The Pre has a keyboard and a lot of people really like that.
Android is good, the app store is better than the Pre's but there is too many versions of Android right now. Everybody really needs to get up on 2.1 and Google really needs to add multitouch to the softkeyboard and browser.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
So whatever happened to the much-ballyhooed 700 Mhz spectrum? Didn't AT&T & verizon both invest in that bit? So far I haven't seen hide nor hair of any 700mhz devices nor any announcements about wireless service using this spectrum.
I know my company offers a corporate discount on Verizon which frequently makes them more competitive. We're also on an older plan that is cheaper than anything they currently offer. If we ever need a data plan we'll probably go somewhere else though.
What I know is that when Sprint and Nextel first merged, my service with Sprint went down the tubes. I was living in a small town at least an hour away in every direction from a major city. With Sprint I could get coverage everywhere, even the places that no one else could. Then they merged and my service went from the best to unusable. I started dropping a lot of calls. There were actual places along the road that I would drop a call every time I passed it. And it always seemed I was on the phone at that point. I called Sprint to complain. Apparently during the switchover it caused a problem with the closest tower to drop 93% of the calls throughout the area. It took them months to fix. They refused to let me out of my contract, even though I could hardly use my phone. I used to think that I would never switch from Sprint. That experience left such a bad taste that I will never go back to them. I couldn't even get one of the letters from Sprint saying that they didn't want me as a customer anymore, even though I had called and complained on numerous occasions. http://news.cnet.com/2300-1036_3-6195014-1.html
Pinky, Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering? I think so Brain, but "instant karma" always gets so lumpy.
Your last time was not short enough ago to count anymore. Please read this article as to quote its subscriber rate will be flat for the first time since mid 2007 :)
http://online.barrons.com/article/SB125998006760077993.html
I love my sprint plan and phone.
"Have you used the Sprint network lately?"
No, because their customer service was horrible and I went somewhere that it is less so. They lost my business.
They _did_ cripple the functionality of their phones, you couldn't add, install, or use anything that they didn't sell you and they even modified simple power connectors so that otherwise identical phones couldn't be charged by non-Sprint devices.
Maybe they changed in the last eight months, I'll look at them again in five years to check.
You know, I've been with Sprint for ten years now and I don't think I've ever had a dropped call. The only place I ever had problems getting coverage was in the middle of the Mojave Desert where the only radio station caters to people driving through because basically no one lives there, and even that was 7-8 years ago.
At my current job, none of the developers with AT&T phones have coverage at all, and mine's great. I'm downtown in a city of over half a million people -- that just shouldn't happen.
Obviously that's all just anecdotal but having seen/heard the problems other people have in contrast with my total lack of them, I'm not sure why I would ever switch.
Can we get some real competition between cellphone providers. AFAICT they are all the same company, offering the same shoddy service for the same insane price. The cheapest plan you can get is $40/mo and 450 minutes. Can we have a plan that doesn't assume i'm a twelve year old girl who must constantly yammer? Most of my calls are less than 5 minutes and i make a call about every two or three days. The pay as you go plans (inaccurately called "pre-paid") are often monthly plans in disguise because you can lose your number if you stop paying. Most of those systems are gimped and cost more per minute than a plan. It's not a real option.
Howabout divorcing hardware and infrastructure? i buy a phone. i connect the phone to my credit card. i dial a number. i select the provider that gives me the best combination of coverage and price. If X network is strong there but charges more than Y, but the call is trivial... i'll go with Y. If the call is important to me i can pick X. The companies would trample each other to provide good AND cheap service.
Howabout making it a utility? There's no real competition in the US, so why pretend there is? i buy a phone. Associate it with a credit card and call/text/surf until my thumbs are tired or my bill gets out of control. With no stockholders to please the prices could stay low. Or hell, just have a public utility option (wink). The state could compete against companies.
Howabout recognizing that companies benefit from people being able to access info and shop. The model works for Google, maybe we can apply it to telecom. Folks that are selling something fund the system that makes those sales possible.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
especially their new commercials whinging about being able to talk and surf the web at the same time or slightly higher download speeds(WTF downloads with a phone?!) which somehow makes their deficient coverage go away.
Anyways, I noticed that AT&T and most other wireless providers had crappy coverage compared to Verizon about 8 or so years ago when my parents were thinking about getting a cellphone to take with them when they travelled by car around the US & Canada. Pretty much every wireless provider excepting Verizon ONLY had coverage around major cities and larger towns. Most had no coverage in Canada or, again, only around large cities and town(FAR fewere of those in Canada especially the middle section of the country).
All of this meant to me, that even though Verizon was a little higher in monthly pricing than their competitors it was the only realistic option outside of GROSSLY expensive satellite phone for them. (I had Verizon for years before I even bothered to check this and had already noticed that when camping way out in the middle of nowhere(100s of miles from even a town with a population of 75k or more... which also brings up the funny incidents of all the little villages with almost as many bars as houses... :O ;)) Verizon phones still had signal while other people's phones if they got signal at all were roaming -> obscene charges.)
Anyways, AT&T will have to spend money(realistically they all do anyways) but they will whinge and moan about it as *shock* they might have to cut back on the big bonuses and spend them on the company itself to actually keep from running their company into the ground.
I, on the other hand, live in the DC area and had nothing but crap coverage where I need it most. The best coverage I had with Sprint was when I was traveling, which wasn't that often back then. I'm sure it's improved significantly since then, though.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
The US has significantly more large, densely populated cities than Canada, and AT&T also has to hook up a lot of small towns. There are over 270 cities in the US that have at least 100k people living in them, and AT&T doesn't stop there with trying to provide full 3G service; I routinely get it in places like Harrisonburg and Warrenton in Virginia where the population is about 50k.
I pay $99 a month for my Nextel Blackberry, and everything is included except *international* LD.
MMS, DC, airtime, CONUS LD. You name it.
But when LTE700 shows up, it will probably be $60 or 70 a month flat.
I was a sprint customer for over 10 years, I live in Amarillo TX. I switched to ATT for 2 reasons. 1 I wanted an iPhone, 2 Sprint didn't drop calls, they didn't get them to me. I have a small business and they would send people calling me right to voicemail. At first I thought maybe it was my treo or something, but then I noticed I would go to my friend on sprints voicemail without it ringing. I would call back sometimes 3 or 4 times before it rang him. It wasn't that he was out of coverage, they were just not completing the calls.
I was happy with ATT, but now I notice that they are also dropping incoming calls about 1 in 30. It's not nearly as bad as sprint got, but it still pisses me off to no end. I guess this is how providers get around dropped calls, they just never connect the call at all.
.. a large land line customer base from whom they can squeeze cash while providing piss poor service.
Have gnu, will travel.
I had the same problems when I was on Sprint, though it's been a while. Some texts just wouldn't get through, and even when they did they'd be delayed by minutes to hours.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
I laughed the whole time my iPhone owning carpool buddy tried to join a conference call. He'd dial the number, type in the meeting number, speak his name, and the call would drop. Repeat at least 3 times. I finally had to hand him my sprint phone, so I could concentrate on driving.
What makes you think that Sprint didn't expand their backbone? They are one of the largest Tier 1 bandwidth providers in the U.S. and own the majority of long haul fiber.
Most people that bash Sprint and Nextel had it in rural areas or in areas that were fairly new. Sprint's biggest problem has always been that they move slowly so you get new phones only periodically and only periodically they expand coverage. When they do expand coverage they provide proper coverage. Also, if you move to an area that doesn't have coverage they will let you out of your contract.
Besides that Sprint has a tendency to cost a little bit more but over that last two years that has really dramatically improved. For the business side they are still very pricey though, so much so my company switched to AT&T and now we're battling with dropped calls and inconsistent reception. Good fun! Problems we never had with Sprint but we're saving a couple of grand a month on service.
I was with sprint for 2 years. Half my calls dropped, My phone wouldnt even ring some of the time. the customer service was horrid, they tried to charge for over $250 in download services i never used (The said i used it when i was in denver when i have never been west of the mississippi, not to mention how i got from denver to making a call in new york in about 1 hour, I must have a concord availible to me!), it took over 8 hours on the phone to get the charge canceled even though it was obviously bogus. In my opinion sprint deserves every piece of its crappy reputation and more. I am with verizon now.
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
The worst I've seen is seven days. Happened only once.
More recently (within the last 45-days) I received a SMS from a Sprint user at 4-something am in the morning. I wasn't happy about that. I asked the sender why they sent it at such a time. Turns out they had sent it at ~6:00pm the previous day. They were actually annoyed I hadn't responded sooner.
I don't know what the deal is with Sprint and SMS/MMS, but something needs to be done.
Well I text my brother all the time. He is on tMobile and I am on Sprint. I never have had an issue with delay of texts.
I had a friend on Virgin that would text me often and no real problem.
Where I have seen delays is from non phone texts like from Yahoo and Twitter but that has been much better of late.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
all of a sudden, AT&Ts 3G service was unavailable for days (not hours) at a time. This was not in a remote area, but in a suburb 25 miles due west of Philadelphia, PA. At the time, signal bars were up at 5. Go figure. 3G service eventually did return, though.
I like the iPhone, but if their 3G service is so spotty, I might eventually be forced to switch providers.
AT&T are you listening?
... AT&T will simply collect it from their clueless customers with some added hidden fees, or by using promotions to sucker people into getting dependent on their service and reluctant to break away when the honeymoon is over.
I haven't used the Pre store since I brought mine back to the Sprint store on July 5th. The phone was fighting for signal, either a Spring cell, or roaming on a Verizon cell - I could never reliably make calls from my home (where I use it the most, it's my only phone).
But I find it better than the crap that is Android, and yes, between Synergy and the Card interface, I think Apple could be in for an upset if Palm can get decent market penetration. The whole iTunes issue underscores just how much Apple fears the Pre/WebOS, if you ask me.
AT&T already spent their all of their money on marketing against Verizon's map ads...
The new WebOS sdk now offers the ability to add "native" modules. You are starting to see real games like Need for Speed on the Pre and they are fast and pretty. The whole javascript+Dom+HTML development model was DOA but this seems to have fixed.
The Card interface is very nice.
I don't hate Android at all. The UI just isn't as polished as WebOS or the iPhone but it is better IMHO than Blackberry or WinMo. Also I have high hopes that they will improve the UI over time.
The iPhone I actually really like except for the requirement to use a Mac for development and the cost to be a Dev. That and the lack of multitasking and the cost of the carrier.
No phone is perfect but we have a lot of great options.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
What phone? I had the Samsung A900 and a Sanyo before I got my Moment. I have been on them for about 8 years now.
I could load lots of none Sprint software on the A900 and Sanyo including Opera and other Brew software.
They had the Sanyo and Samsung chargers but that was a manufacture thing and not Sprint.
What phone are you claiming was crippled and couldn't load apps?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I have T-mobile (yeah, not a great network, and terrible 3G, but it was the only carrier with good voice where I needed it for some reason).
unlimited everything is only $79.99, but I don't get phone subsidies.
I thought it was a good deal, as the phone subsidies rarely break $400 for 24 months, and the plan was $99.99 with them.
They also let me split a phone into 20 payments on my bill, and let me out of the contract I had to switch (6 months left). All in all, I like T-mobile, with AT&T for voice roaming, it's not so bad in coverage either, just the data.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Did you hear me say "Nextel"?
The session holding time/timeout is quite different in iDen backbone traffic than it is in "hot potato route it to the PSTN from the MTSO".
I have always been a Tampa/St Pete market customer; we're something like DMA14.
If they can't make it run right here -- and the 9 clients of mine who've dumped them over the last decade for call phones, customers whose use patterns were *right* in their wheelhouse, say they can't -- then they can't make it run *at all* anymore.
My perfect DC call rate is about 40%; my perfect voice call rate no higher than 80%. I expect better for a service *specifically aimed* at business users.
Ive been on Nextel for the last 4 and their reception is awful, their phones are awful, and their data is awful. Its now sprint / nextel, but the service remains awful.
Is there any particular reason reception has to drop to 0 on the capitol beltway, or driving up the BW parkway? Its not exactly the boondocks....
Im bashing spring / nextel from the NoVA / DC area, not exactly rural, and where i sit from my house I have no reception. I get out on the beltway, and i have no reception. I go into a DC office building, and I have no reception. The calls drop about 1% of the time (which, given average daily call volume, is really a lot), and data is awful (a few kbps at best).
Maybe its unfair of me to blast them so strongly because the nextel side is so terrible-- several clients with sprint seem to do OK-- but as Nextel is now a part of their company, I think Im justified in blaming Sprint for Nextel's continued failures, not to mention how infuriating it is to be put through a phone-system labyrinth as they shuttle me between the Nextel and Sprint customer service sections.
This analysis of whos network has the most coverage, or who is upgrading the most, by comparing the money spent per customer or overall even, is a very bad one. It does not take into account 1. how many towers / square feet of coverage they have already, 2. how many customers they have, 3. are they spending the money on more towers or network capacity upgrades, 4. the price of their plans and how much money theyve made over time, etc. Much more specific information and math for cost analysis could clear up some of this. I have the feeling that at&t is raking in the dough almost more than sprint and verizon is doing the poorest of the 3, judging by what they are charging now for unlimited voice. AT&T & Sprint are charging 99 flat for u-voice, and verizon only 70.
I have a Pre+ in my hands, and after a day of using it, I'm ready to take it back. It's polished and pretty, but it's not as snappy, and the UI doesn't seem as consistent as the Touch.
And the $9.99/m Verizon wants to change me for access to Navigator? I was better off keeping the one on Sprint.
I might just take the Pre+ back and get a MiFi. I don't make a lot of calls a month - maybe Skype on the Touch will be good enough for me?
I'm with you on the development bit, which is why I might just get an Android. Then again, most of my apps are webbased, so I might be able to get by with Apple Webapps.