Ratings: Cell Phone Service

Consumer Reports January '09 issue rates cell phone coverage in 23 markets.
Out of the 23 markets Verizon is #1 among readers in 20 of them which are:

Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Denver, Detroit, Jacksonville,
FL. , Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, NY, Philadelphia, Phoenix,
San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Washington.

Alltel was #1 in Cleveland, Charlotte N.C., and Tampa, FL.

AT&T was not #1 in any market that was tested.

Areas that were graded were:

No Service, Static, Circuits Full, and dropped calls.

On Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:18:01 -0500, "K2NNJ"
<ktwonnj@nospam.optonline.net> wrote:

>AT&T was not #1 in any market that was tested.

Did they try Bum****istan?

"The Ghost of General Lee" <ghost@general.lee> wrote in message
news:g2f1j49g9ummai8c0okrv385drlprhths0@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:18:01 -0500, "K2NNJ"
> <ktwonnj@nospam.optonline.net> wrote:
>
>>AT&T was not #1 in any market that was tested.
>
> Did they try Bum****istan?

Yes. I saw that in their commercial.

:)

K2NNJ wrote:
> Consumer Reports January '09 issue rates cell phone coverage in 23
> markets. Out of the 23 markets Verizon is #1 among readers in 20 of them
> which are:
>
> Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Denver, Detroit,
> Jacksonville, FL. , Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, NY,
> Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle,
> St. Louis, Washington.
>
> Alltel was #1 in Cleveland, Charlotte N.C., and Tampa, FL.
>
> AT&T was not #1 in any market that was tested.
>
> Areas that were graded were:
>
> No Service, Static, Circuits Full, and dropped calls.

And soon Alltel will be part of Verizon, and Verizon will be #1 in 23
out of 23 metro areas. This is a bad thing. Verizon will be even more
proud of itself, and will think of some other ways to annoy its
customers! Maybe they have a list of features that they remove from
handsets as their ratings go up. Their November 14th move with required
data packages on smart phones was their latest policy designed to annoy
potential smart phone customers. I'm still trying to figure out why they
felt compelled to remove "vibe then ring" on many of the Motorola phones
(restorable with a SEEM edit); were they going to try to sell a "vibe
then ring" ring tone?

If you ever wonder why Verizon can get away with what they do in terms
of their handset selection, defeaturing the handsets they do offer, and
their policies that annoy their customers, it's because so many
consumers now understand that there are _tremendous_ differences between
carriers, and that you can't select a carrier solely on price, number of
minutes, or things like rollover. Consumer Reports (and other
independent publications) unwittingly help Verizon get away with what
seems to have become a war against their customers. In the SF Bay area,
there's a non-profit publication called Consumer Checkbook that also
conducts surveys with very large sample sizes, and Verizon does very
well in that survey too, since in this area the other carriers are
especially poor in comparison. If you have Verizon and have not had
another carrier in a long time, you often don't realize just how bad
things can actually be in terms of coverage, especially in suburbs with
hills, valleys, and canyons, or when in very rural areas. Never think
"well after all this time, the other carriers must have caught up."

Last Monday I attended a planning commission meeting in my city where
the city's volunteer (and non-technical) technology committee
recommended allowing cell phone towers in city parks because some
carriers have coverage issues that can't be solved unless towers are
permitted in places they've never been permitted before. Yet today we
went hiking in these canyons and hills where coverage supposedly sucks,
and my wife was yakking away on her phone, making me think that maybe I
should switch to AT&T, Sprint, or T-Mobile in order to have no coverage.
AT&T is pretty clever with their latest ad campaign, where they go
outside the U.S. to GSM-only countries in Europe for their "More Bars in
More Places" schtick, as they've actually found places where their
coverage is better than Verizon's (though now Verizon offers a phone
with quad band GSM in addition to dual band CDMA).

QN wrote:
> "The Ghost of General Lee" <ghost@general.lee> wrote in message
> news:g2f1j49g9ummai8c0okrv385drlprhths0@4ax.com...
>> On Fri, 28 Nov 2008 21:18:01 -0500, "K2NNJ"
>> <ktwonnj@nospam.optonline.net> wrote:
>>
>>> AT&T was not #1 in any market that was tested.
>> Did they try Bum****istan?
>
> Yes. I saw that in their commercial.
>
> :)

I wonder if AT&T realizes the message they're sending about their native
U.S. coverage with those commercials? I remember being at San Francisco
Airport at a gate with a TV and the AT&T commercial about being stuck in
a hostel instead of being on the train to Paris came on, and someone
yelling at the TV, 'I don't care about Paris, I want to make calls in
San Francisco.' Almost as funny as at an SF Giants game when they played
"Take Me Out to the Ball Game" at the 7th inning stretch, and someone
behind be yelling "I can't afford peanut and cracker jacks at this park."

SMS wrote:
<snipped some good stuff>
> AT&T is pretty clever with their latest ad campaign, where they go
> outside the U.S. to GSM-only countries in Europe for their "More Bars in
> More Places" schtick, as they've actually found places where their
> coverage is better than Verizon's (though now Verizon offers a phone
> with quad band GSM in addition to dual band CDMA).

Having recently been in Europe, and having seen the stupid AT&T
commercials before I left, I was totally amazed that they have
absolutely no presence there, while the other GSM provider, T-Mobile,
was everywhere.

I got a Verizon global phone before I left and put in the GSM chip. It
worked perfectly in all of the countries I traveled. When I got back, I
simply switched it back to CDMA.

If people want to be able to use their phones wherever they go, they can
keep Verizon and upgrade their phones.
--
Janet Wilder
Bad spelling. Bad punctuation
Good Friends. Good Life

K2NNJ wrote:
> Consumer Reports January '09 issue rates cell phone coverage in 23
> markets. Out of the 23 markets Verizon is #1 among readers in 20 of them
> which are:
>
> Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Denver, Detroit,
> Jacksonville, FL. , Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, NY,
> Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle,
> St. Louis, Washington.
>
> Alltel was #1 in Cleveland, Charlotte N.C., and Tampa, FL.
>
> AT&T was not #1 in any market that was tested.
>
> Areas that were graded were:
>
> No Service, Static, Circuits Full, and dropped calls.

Consumer Reports January '09?

Janet Wilder wrote:
> SMS wrote:
> <snipped some good stuff>
>> AT&T is pretty clever with their latest ad campaign, where they go
>> outside the U.S. to GSM-only countries in Europe for their "More Bars
>> in More Places" schtick, as they've actually found places where their
>> coverage is better than Verizon's (though now Verizon offers a phone
>> with quad band GSM in addition to dual band CDMA).
>
> Having recently been in Europe, and having seen the stupid AT&T
> commercials before I left, I was totally amazed that they have
> absolutely no presence there, while the other GSM provider, T-Mobile,
> was everywhere.
>
> I got a Verizon global phone before I left and put in the GSM chip. It
> worked perfectly in all of the countries I traveled. When I got back, I
> simply switched it back to CDMA.
>
> If people want to be able to use their phones wherever they go, they can
> keep Verizon and upgrade their phones.

That's true. Verizon just introduced a new global phone as well.

Whether I had a GSM or CDMA provider, I'd take an unlocked GSM phone and
use a global prepaid SIM card, since it's much cheaper than roaming
internationally on any of the carriers.

Janet Wilder wrote:
> SMS wrote:
> <snipped some good stuff>
>> AT&T is pretty clever with their latest ad campaign, where they go
>> outside the U.S. to GSM-only countries in Europe for their "More Bars
>> in More Places" schtick, as they've actually found places where their
>> coverage is better than Verizon's (though now Verizon offers a phone
>> with quad band GSM in addition to dual band CDMA).
>
> Having recently been in Europe, and having seen the stupid AT&T
> commercials before I left, I was totally amazed that they have
> absolutely no presence there, while the other GSM provider, T-Mobile,
> was everywhere.
>
> I got a Verizon global phone before I left and put in the GSM chip. It
> worked perfectly in all of the countries I traveled. When I got back, I
> simply switched it back to CDMA.

Verizon could do a good commercial using their global phones, since they
provide coverage in more places than AT&T or T-Mobile.

Yes, it's about a month away. Comes after December and before February.

"Pegleg" <brian.pegleg.jones@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:ggro13$feu$2@aioe.org...
>
>
> K2NNJ wrote:
>> Consumer Reports January '09 issue rates cell phone coverage in 23
>> markets. Out of the 23 markets Verizon is #1 among readers in 20 of them
>> which are:
>>
>> Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Denver, Detroit,
>> Jacksonville, FL. , Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, NY,
>> Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle,
>> St. Louis, Washington.
>>
>> Alltel was #1 in Cleveland, Charlotte N.C., and Tampa, FL.
>>
>> AT&T was not #1 in any market that was tested.
>>
>> Areas that were graded were:
>>
>> No Service, Static, Circuits Full, and dropped calls.
>
> Consumer Reports January '09?