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Comparisons of Cellular Service Quality? 44

Posted by Cliff from the can-you-hear-me-now? dept.
dmr asks: "What are the best sources of information for cell phone service quality? Is there a source out there which can give a reputable ranking of service, coverage, dropped-calls, etc, for the major cell phone providers, broken out by region? There's a huge pile of anecdotes and tall tales out there. Where can someone find out which providers work best in his hometown? Bonus points for assessments of capital improvements to equipment, as well as trends from the past."Update: A commenter points out that MyRatePlan has a great coverage map comparison tool.
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Comparisons of Cellular Service Quality? More

Comparisons of Cellular Service Quality?

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  • It has been my experience, in the US, that Voicestream is very good. I live in CT, and it works fine in NYC, NY state, NJ, MA, ME, VT, and even in the middle of nowhere PA. Works fine in FL, GA, IL, and AZ.

    A buddy of mine just got one in NJ, it seems that there if you are inland it was one service, and on the shore it was another. Turns out that Voicestream (soon to be T-Mobile) works good in both areas.

    Of course this is IMO, and YMMV. IANAL.
    • Chris,
      The question was all about analysis and aggregation, not IMO and YMMV.

      Dan
      • The question was all about analysis and aggregation, not IMO and YMMV.
        The problem is the same is with trying to assess the quality of any complex consumer good, e.g. automobiles. Yes, reliable aggregate data does exist (e.g. JD Powers for automobiles). You as a consumer however will never see this data, and if you get hold of any of it the manufacturers will sue your butt into bankruptcy to get it back (you don't think that the "JD Powers ratings" you see in the ads are the real data or the full story, do you?).

        The best you can do is either collect anecdotes for the providers/areas you are considering, or try the recent Consumer Reports survey. But you are basically on your own.

        sPh

      • One of the best sites avalable for broadband, is DSL reports. AFAIK it is simply the aggrigation of many IMOs and YMMV opinions of various DSL providers. While they are certainly much more local and easier to collect data on, there is no reason that a large collection of individual's opinions couldn't be aggrigated to get the best picture of the services. Incidentally that principle is what drives the US's free speach and free markets.
  • The more things change, the more they stay the same.

  • Good survey for DC and SF areas (Score:3, Informative)

    by kawika ( 87069 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @09:17AM (#3998076)
    Consumer's Checkbook [checkbook.org] had a good survey of all the cell providers serving the region in their latest Washington DC area pub, and it looks like they did the same for San Francisco as well. I have Sprint and I can tell you they mentioned most of the dead spots Sprint has near my house.

    To read the survey you'll either need to buy the dead-tree version at a local bookstore or subscribe to the web site.

    Gan you near be how? Could.

  • You can find service rankings and reviews... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Blind Linux ( 593315 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @09:18AM (#3998078) Journal
    ranked by zip code or by manually selecting your location from a list of counties and cities by statehere [letstalk.com]. Once you have specified your location, it brings up a list of all the providers in your region with user and expert reviews covering most if not all of the features you need.
    • Letstalk [letstalk.com] blows! I tried to use them, and had several problems. 1st they claimed that Voicestream covered my area, which it does not. Maybe that's not their fault since Voicestream claimed on their website to have coverage too. One thing to remember when dealing with VS is that they have terrible customer service. Plus don't ever put a deposit with them if your credit is bad. They won't send out refunds until your account has been closed and inactive for 60 days. And then it still takes another 60 days for them to send anything out. VS is fine if you don't have any problems, but if you call their Customer care you will get a different story every time you call. None of their agents are trained, sometimes it sounds like their just making stuff up. A good CS from VS is rare.
      • Voicestream has a few clueless support people in their bunch. It took me many months to find out why everyone who called me would be charged long distance. The number they gave me for my phone was in a different city. Thanks a lot.

        But I keep their service, because the voice quality can be mistaken for the house phone. There are several large Sprint office buildings across from my house, but anyone who has their service over at my house often would say the classic, "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?" My voicestream phone, while unusable in part of my state, works flawlessly even in my bomb shelter where other providers fail.

  • There is coverage and then there is service (Score:3, Informative)

    by cpuffer_hammer ( 31542 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @09:33AM (#3998161) Homepage
    Though a bit out a tangent there more to service than signal. Check out how the banks and airlines are doing also. We will be doing a detailed study of wireless soon.

    http://performance.empirix.com/voiceindex/wirele ss _voice_perf_a.asp
  • Live anywhere in the US but Montana, North/South Dakota, Nebraska, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Vermont, Alaska, or Maine? Get T-Mobile, formerly VoiceStream - you can't do better for 2G than GSM, as any European will tell you.

    Live in those states? Some of them Cingular might have GSM in; it's a good idea to try. Otherwise, it's really a tossup. Don't go with Verizon, though; as any one who has them for local service in New England knows, Verizon might not even have a customer service department for as long as it takes to get connected.
    • Fuck that noise. In the aforementioned areas, Verizon is sufuckingperior. You either get Verizon or Cellular One. Cell One PRLs ride on Verizon, since the Cell One coverage is shitty. In areas where the two exist side by side, Verizon is a lot fucking better.

      Besides, Cell One uses a highly homosexual TDMA versus CDMA. TDMA is bush league.

      I've had zero fucking problems with their customer servivce. It's possible that in New England, where the silly bitches offer landline service, things are different. But I've never waited on the phone ever for a *611 call.

      There's no GSM out here. No Nextel. Not even digital in a lot of those areas. You'll end up roaming on PCS for digital, and AMPS with Verizon.

      • Re:Simple (Score:3, Informative)

        by sphealey ( 2855 )
        In the aforementioned areas, Verizon is sufuckingperior
        I lived for a while in rural Illinois, and received reasonable (if a bit expensive) service from Verizon.

        Then I moved to a reasonably well-to-do suburb of a major midwestern city, with a few more hills than rural Illinois. Basically, my Verizon phone just stopped working. There was no signal - zero - nada - within 1000m of my house.

        I spent 3 months on the phone with Verizon Customer Disservice and Verizon Technical Non-Support to try to get it working. Their final answer? "You have a bad handset". Funny - it works in rural Illinois, it works in downtown Chicago, it works everywhere it the midwest but fails when I bring it in to my house. Funny that. Funny too how 3 coworkers with different handset models experienced the same failure when they drove through my neighborhood.

        I asked them to send out a signal strength truck and copy me on the test results. "Signal strength truck? What's that?".

        Their FINAL ANSWER? "Too bad dude. Don't forget to send us a check every month for the next two years".

        So then I got involved in a registered letter battle with the VP of Customer Service, the President of Verizon Wireless, and the CEO of Verizon. Finally, I had to write a letter to the senior outside memeber of the Verizon Board of Directors and the Verizon Corporate Counsel explaining that yes, I do know what a formal complaint to the FCC is, and yes, I will write up one asking that Verizon's license to do business in my state be revoked. Suddenly they were able to make an exception to their "no refunds" policy.

        Switched to AT&T and everything has been hunky-dory since.

        That's my experience with Verizon. Your milage may vary.

        sPh

      • Perhaps Verizon Wireless does have better customer service than Verizon proper. If so, it's probably in large part due to the fact that Verizon doesn't fully own VW.

        Why are you talking about Cellular One, though? I agree, Cellular One sucks, as they use TDMA. But Cingular, which has nothing to do with Cellular One (except that a lot of CellOne customers got transferred over to Cingular last year), offers GSM in North Carolina, Virginia, and other states where T-Mobile doesn't. In those states, why would you want to get Verizon when you can get GSM?

        Maybe in Montana, Verizon's your best choice. But Montana sucks.
        • Don't be so down on TDMA... you just can't beat its spectral efficiency. With spectrum costing millions (maybe billions) these days... seems like you would want to be with the guys that are using it wisely.
          • It's irrelevant, as soon everybody will (should) be using wCDMA anyway. Even Verizon's going to switch to that. Finally, we get the best of all standards, used around the world, and Qualcomm no longer has any power.
            • Making a big switch like that is asking a lot of these debt-heavy companies. That is why I am glad Nextel is sticking to iDEN (TDMA) for now.

              Another problem is there are too many damn cell companies... :-) It is ridiculous to see 4 towers right next to eachother doing almost the same thing. Oh well, I digress.
              • If these companies are so debt-heavy, maybe it's because they all provide shitty service, and most of all, *charge for incoming calls*? I'd get Nextel in a second, iDEN be damned, just for the free incoming calls, except that I need a cheaper plan. But still, something's wrong when you need to pay on both ends. Cingular could give free incoming calls on all plans, standard, retroactive, and they'd be the biggest cellular company so quick it wouldn't be funny. And they seem to have found a way to afford to switch to GSM.

                They've also figured out a solution to the 4-towers problem; Cingular and T-Mobile share networks in California, Nevada, and NYC/Northern NJ. Only one tower, and you can get GSM from either company. That's what they do in Europe, and that's what every cellular company should be doing in N. America; otherwise, it's absurd. Cell towers are a natural monopoly, but the service provided wirelessly isn't.
      • Cell One, at least in MT, has switched to CDMA. The service isn't great, because of the mountians, but it is much better.

  • For anyone in Ontario, Canada (Score:3, Interesting)

    by IanO ( 21302 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @09:53AM (#3998281) Homepage
    This site [arcx.com] provides pretty good information about all the providers and their coverage throughout parts of Ontario.

    There are also pretty good reviews on the different handsets. It's probably a pretty good format for other people looking to start a site on cell coverage to follow.
  • Howard Chui [howardchui.com]runs an excellent site with cell phone reviews. His forums [howardforums.com] have alot of information about differnet providers. I highly recommend this site.

  • Depends where you live (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:25AM (#3998470) Homepage Journal
    Here in Boston, the Boston Globe [boston.com] did an excellent comparison recently of services and coverage. I wouldn't be surprised if the major papers in other cities did the same.

    As for resources, the letstalk.com and howardchui.com sites mentioned elsewhere are good resources. Consumer Reports magazine has occasionally hit the topic as well. Another thing you can generally do in many states is pick up the phone you expect to sign up for and sign the contract - in MA and many others there's a right to return it for a couple of days if you find that it sucks.

    As for me, I just switched to VoiceStream (soon to be T-Mobile) after about 5 years with Verizon, even though I'm a CDMA bigot. With a newborn, I decided my wife and I should both have cell phones, and I liked their family plan the best. I also have a couple of friends on the VoiceStream network, and calls to/from other VoiceStream customers are free on most of their plans. Coverage has so far been excellent in most places I've been with one exception - I was returning some unused shoes at the local Macy's for my wife and I couldn't get a signal at the counter. With that one exception, I've gotten very good coverage everywhere else, plus they cover the areas where we typically travel.
    • How did Sprint do in Boston? I am moving to Alston soon, and have a sprint phone...

      BTW, with sprint after 30 days you can call up their 'customer retention line' and act like you hate the service, and want something more for what you pay. Some people have gotten hundreds of daytime minutes free this way, I got 150 more daytime minutes monthly (which puts me up to 450, which is cool) for FREE. One of those banners here on ./ links to a cell phone site, that you can get the number on to call them about it

      • I can't personally speak to Sprint, as I've never used them myself. Two of my employees who live in southern New Hampshire use Sprint and I believe they are satisfied - as do my parents (they live in CT). I know the Globe tests had Verizon coming in first, almost everyone else bunched up behind them, and Voicestream bringing up the rear by a little bit.

        One worry with Sprint plans is their roaming costs - the roaming is outrageously expensive. My folks had Sprint show them how to turn off roaming entirely because they couldn't always tell when they were in a home area or not.

        The services I've used over the last decade or so include Nextel (I used them for work in '97-'98 at my old company), Verizon (both analog and digital), and now Voicestream. Nextel coverage back when I used them was pretty good, but given their pricing and feature set I'm not sure I'd use one as a private citizen rather than professionally. Our company's Claims department uses them heavily to keep all the adjusters in contact.

        Verizon's coverage is outstanding in the Boston area - probably the best of any of the providers. Their price plans kind of blew, though. I like Voicestream's plans the best, and their coverage so far has been fine. I haven't been to Allston/Brighton with my phone to date (I only got the first one in April), but I have been across the river with it and had good signal. I originally had the Nokia 3390, but I've given it to my wife and now I'm using the Motorola T193. The one thing I like about GSM is the SIM cards - When I switched phones with her I just swapped my SIM card between phones.
        • Thanks, I agree that the roaming on sprint phones is a bit odd. I have a single band (all digital) phone, so I guess I don't really need to worry too much about this. I am hoping that Sprint PCS in Boston will roll out their G3 stuff soon. Thanks again, I might check out Verizon...
  • can you hear me now?

  • People where you want to talk (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bluGill ( 862 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @10:51AM (#3998694)

    Seriously, the only solution is to talk to people around you. Anyone with a cell phone, find out what they use.

    Each cell phone plan is different, this is to confuse you, there is no way to compare apples because now two companies offer the same or similear plans. Nation wide no roaming, but does that mean there is no signal where they have no towers (sprint), or agreements to use any tower (AT&T, Verizon)? How many minutes, broken up by weekend, peak time, night. How is the data service? What about voicemail?

    Then there is coverage area. I have been in places where there are none of them have service. I don't care who your provider is you can't use the phone, unless satalite ever makes it. My current phone (voicestream) has coverage most of the places I go, but not everywhere. My previous phone (Verizon) had service almost everywhere, but I moved in the city and suddenly I had no service at my house, but down the block has it fine. (that was a few years ago, I suspect it is fixed by now)

    The bottom line is you need to figgure out where you have to have service, and where it would just be nice. I don't know anyone in South Dakota, so it doesn't matter that I have little service there. I know people in North Dakota, but decided I can live without a phone when I visit them. I have to have service at my home (I have replaced the land line with my cell phone), others may decide no service at home is acceptable so long as there is service other places. If you don't travel often, then pay $1.00/minute for roaming isn't a big deal, if you travel you need to deal with roaming costs and ability. With GSM (voicestream, but there are others) you can get a dual band phone for Europe use, or just buy a phone in Europe and put the sim card in, at $2.00/minute or more! Other providers make it harder to get service in Europe.

    You might consider a no roaming or long distance phone, with a trusted friends address, if you know a lot of people in an area you don't live in anymore. You can then get a phone number that is a local call for them, and you don't pay roaming. So long as you have other means for locals to reach you, (or don't care if they can) this can be a good idea. However if you send the bill to your address they might diconnect you, as happened to one friend of mine.

  • Something to consider if you live or spend time in New York:

    Cingular Wireless customers cannot send nor reliably receive text messages, emails, ringtones or any other SMS-based services in the greater metro area, including north Jersey (Hoboken, Newark).

    I mention this because Cingular does not, although they were vey happy to sign me up for a plan in which I pay for 100 text messages per month. They also gave me the classic "you must be doing something wrong" routine when I called asking why none of SMS messages I sent from my phone were going through.

    Of course, the reason (as I found out much later by stubbornly staying on the phone one evening when TiVo was broken) is that their antennas were destroyed on September 11th and SMS-less service in the area is actually being provided under contract by AT&T Wireless who cannot integrate the messaging because of some tech stuff I don't understand.

    Cingular gets some leeway in my book given the circumstances, but it does reflect poorly on the company as a whole that they were not at all up-front about this when they sold me my plan -- text messaging service and all -- in May.

    Just my 2 cents.

    -Neil

  • I live in the Philadelphia Area and have many friends in the North Jersey/NYC Area...we seem to find that those of us who have Cingular service get much better coverage then those of us who have AT&T coverage (which has been incredibly spotty since 9/11)...we see this especially down the jersey shore, where AT&T customers can frequently not make phone calls, while those of us on Cingular can...

    just my $0.02, from my experience...
  • My coworkers and I have used many different providers throughout North America (both metro and rural locations). The only provider we have found that works reliably pretty much everywhere, and actually has something that resembles a customer service dept., is AT&T Wireless. Plus they support quad-band phones with GSM and number portability to Europe.

    Only problem is - they know this, and charge accordingly. So if you have the bucks go AT&T.

    sPh

  • I solved the problem with this.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MrIcee ( 550834 ) on Friday August 02, 2002 @12:12PM (#3999310) Homepage
    As other posters have pointed out, quality is dependent on where you happen to be at the moment.

    I live in a place that varies from sea level to 13,500 ft in 20 to 40 mile jumps... so reception is very spotty. Of the three carriers here, none could provide coverage for the entire area.

    I searched the internet and finally found this 3 watt cell phone booster [jdteck.com]. It came a week ago. It still doesn't give me full area coverage, but it has helped alot. My cell phone was unuseable at my house, and with the unit I get 4 (out of 5) bars now. Similar results in many other places around here. Driving with two cellphones, one plugged through the unit and one not (same carrier) provided at least 2 to 3 bars better performance on the 3-watt boosted cellphone.

    BTW, the package came from Trinidad (?!?).

    Just don't stick the antenna near your head :)

  • take every user on a digital network, enter
    this in the database: "my service sucks."

  • ...I'm starting a cell company and I don't know anything about technology or business but I will be getting $G to invest in infrastructure, but I don't want to blow a few $k on existing research please do my work for me.

    Thanks

    Joe.com

  • All cell phone companies are incredibly spotty. A phone that works great on one block doesn't work well on another. Assuming you need this mainly for a few specific places or an area I think asking people about the quality of their service in that area works the best. Ask people at apartment / condo if they get a good signal inside and outside the building. Ask people at your place of work if they get a good signal. Ask people who drive the same routes you do....

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