AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile Team Up To Eliminate 'Dead Zones' Across US

AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have agreed in principle to form a joint venture (JV) aimed at reducing U.S. mobile dead zones through satellite connectivity, especially in rural areas and during emergencies when ground networks fail. Here are three of the customer benefits listed by the JV (as highlighted by Droid Life): Fewer coverage gaps: Will nearly eliminate dead zones in the U.S. currently without mobile service, reaching previously unserved areas.
Reliable connectivity in emergencies: Redundant connectivity will become available when existing ground-based networks are unavailable due to extreme natural disasters or other unusual disruptions.
Improved network performance: Will give customers more consistent performance and simpler access to satellite services across providers. This will speed up feature updates and improve connectivity for everyone, everywhere. "It will still take time for these improvements to be available to customers, but this all seems like a positive step," writes Droid Life's Tim Wrobel.

Interoperability should have been law long ago.

[Moryath]

We had the Telecomm act and legal requirements for wired service for a reason. The cell networks have shirked this for too long.

Re:Interoperability should have been law long ago.

[Valgrus Thunderaxe]

I remember having to pay "long distance" to call the next county and being forced to rent my phone. No, I'll take the wireless providers over the 'Bells any day.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

People who lived in a big county could have to pay fees to call people in the same county! They were called "local toll" calls. Telcos have always been parasites.

Re:

[Ogive17]

I didn't live in a big county but we still had to pay extra to call neighboring towns. I dated a girl my sophomore year in high school (before I could drive) and she lived in a neighboring town. It didn't last long because we couldn't communicate much.

Re:

[dsgrntlxmply]

My grades 3-5 next door neighbor long ago in Southern California was a toll call. My grandfather had given me a couple of wooden box crank ringer phones left from rural East Texas modernization. My friend and I ran speaker wire between the two houses and used two of these relics for utility and prank calls.

Re:

[Physician]

"I remember having to pay "long distance" to call the next county" I, too, remember the aughts. I remember getting stuck with a whopping $300 something phone bill back in 2002 because I didn't realize the number I was using for my dial-up provider was long distance even though it was the same area code and only required dialing 7 digits. 2003 was a great year when my home finally got DSL.

Re:

[ambrandt12]

Same here. Mine was downloading a pirated copy of Resident Evil over dial-up using Kazaa... took like (I think it was) 3 weeks running the download overnight.
Neither me or the parents knew about that crap at the time, but very quickly, we collectively decided downloading movies like that was not a good idea (once cable modem came to the area, quickly needed a DVD burner and bigger harddrives).

Re: Interoperability should have been law long ago

[blastard]

That was what GSM gave us for a little while

Dead Zone.

[kellin]

There are enough dead zones within a major metropolitan area that this should have been done ages ago. I mean, I'm sitting on a major street next to a major freeway down the middle of the city of LA and there are spots I can walk along and not get good service. Then again, I know spots in the city where SiriusXM service is bad when there's not a building within several hundred feet and I cant imagine what's blocking the signal.

Re: Dead Zone.

[FudRucker]

A big crowded city like NYC & LA I would imagine suffers from network congestion because too many people needing service and not enough cell towers and not enough antennas & transceivers to go around

Re:

[kellin]

Yeah, that's definitely a possibility, but these are literally the same areas where the coverage just drops out, which tells me there's coverage gaps between cell towers.

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

Not to mention, skyscrapers don't mix well with cell signals, which have trouble going through a lot of steel and concrete.

Shockingly, one of the very best places to use a cell phone in downtown Houston, is in its labyrinth of tunnels, that connect all the major skyscrapers. This is because the tunnels have their own cell network, in the form of little boxes fastened to the tunnel ceilings at regular intervals.

Re: Dead Zone.

[madbrain]

Trees block the SiriusXM signal, in my experience. They don't need to be seeveral hundred feet. Just a few dozen feet, and dense. For example on highway 17 near Santa Cruz.

Re:

[anoncoward69]

SiriusXM comes from a satellite. Are you sitting under a bridge or in a parking garage? Guess what, the sat signal isn't going to go though that structure above you.

A lot of it is modem quality

[rsilvergun]

Qualcomm on their latest phones makes really high quality modems that have much better connectivity.

If you buy one of the cheaper mediatek phones, some of which get up to about $500, they have good performance on the soc but the modems suck and they don't maintain connectivity.

The Google modems stunk too, I've heard some people say the very latest ones are better but I haven't tried them. If I'm going to drop $700 on a modem I can just pick up a OnePlus 15r with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and an x

the mountains are the worst

[FudRucker]

I do a lot of camping and when in the mountains I can take a forest road and as soon as a mountain gets in between me and the last cell tower I seen my bars disappear and no service, I seen more than my share of dead zones, give my a job and I'll help you find them

NZ did this and it works well

[ovoskeuiks]

In New Zealand they setup the Rural Broadband Initiative which the main cell service companies formed a joint venture and installed shared towers across the country. Worked really well and it's nice to no longer have to decide on a provider based on who has nearby towers.

Re:

[Tony Isaac]

Unfortunately for the US, its land area is 37 times larger than New Zealand. It's a whole order of magnitude more effort and cost.

We'll see

[RitchCraft]

I trust these three to be about as honest and upfront about future plans as I do a drug addict guarding drugs from other drug addicts.

Starlink Mobile

[Mirnotoriety]

Starlink is the primary reason this joint venture exists. While the "Big Three" carriers (AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon) are framing this as a public service for rural connectivity, industry experts see it as a defensive alliance against the growing dominance of Starlink Mobile.

Nowhere to run to, Baby

[bill_mcgonigle]

How "bout those removable phone batteries?

Re: Nowhere to run to, Baby

[FudRucker]

Get a faraday pouch, or wrap your phone in aluminum foil, or keep a metal lunchbox to stow your phone in, or leave it at home sitting next to a loud radio so even if the government spooks qre5 listening they won't hear anything of value

It's an excuse to charge more

[Another Random Kiwi]

It's an excuse to charge more for the "satellite enabled" plans, with a bunch of other add-ons that people didn't want. Not to mention that not all mobile phones can operate on the frequencies they're using for direct-to-device satellite service (at least not what T-Mobile is using for their service today).

Dead zones in strange places

[LaughingRadish]

Believe it or not, one of the stranger dead zones for T-Mobile has a T-Mobile customer service center.

MVNO access?

[olddoc]

Will the MVNOs such as Cricket, Mint, RedPocket and others get access to this network?

US Radio Quiet Zones

[Applehu Akbar]

These are set up as areas served only AT&T. People who live in such zones have to bring boxes of carrier pigeons around by horseback if they want to communicate person to person.

Re:

[sk999]

... "boxes of carrier pigeons ..."

Allegedly a solved problem. RFC 1149 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc... [rfc-editor.org] :

"A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers"

Or then again, maybe not.

You're missing the big picture

[Provocateur]

Those people who are allergic to wifi are being targeted this time. Don't book a flight on the next shuttle -- they're adding more Starlink satellites in the cargo bay. And that passenger next to you insists on making a phone call as you're taxiing down the runway...