Cell Phone Service Degenerates Further 675
An anonymous reader writes "Almost everyone I know has been complaining about their cell phone service lately. These companies continue to add more subscribers, overloading their networks to the breaking point. They hold you hostage by not allowing you to switch providers and won't invest in new infrastructure. Customer service ratings are dismal for all the major providers. Doesn't look like it's going to improve any time soon."
Simple Reason.... (Score:4, Funny)
Vote with your wallet (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vote with your wallet (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Vote with your wallet (Score:2, Interesting)
Here we go with the obligatory 1/2/3 business model for cell phone companies:
1. Get subscribers to sign a commitment to our service
2. Give those subscribers crappy service, sit back as they call in wanting to drop, and remind them of their commitment
3. Profit!
Re:Vote with your wallet (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, and in all those "socialist" countries the cell networks are in pristine working condition. The next time you want to vote to privitize electricity(california?), or gas...think of the cell phone industry. The cell phone industry is a clear example of private enterprise and competetion failing to improve service. We're seeing the same thing in broadband services as well.
Re:Vote with your wallet (Score:3, Insightful)
Government spectrum scam (Score:3, Interesting)
Cell phones are but one service that is starved in spectrum allocation. If the government was to let the free market allocate the spectrum, an entire new universe of wireless network services could become available.
Re:Government spectrum scam (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. Free market will solve everything. Bandwidth ? Free market. Energy ? Free market. IP laws ? Free market. Pollution ? Free market. World hunger ? Free market. Greed ? Free market.
How lucky you are about having a religion that gives you an answer to everything.
> If the government was to let the free market allocate the spectrum,
one company would have ended with a de-facto monopoly on the spectrum.
Re:Government spectrum scam (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what you ALREADY HAVE. The feds have monpolized this space and auction it off to special interests. Broadcast spectrum for educational channels alone take up an absurd amount of UNUSED spectrum.
At least the free market would allocate space to services that people want! Right now the services people want occupy a few slivers of the spectrum. Take a look at how the spectrum is divided up before you make any more uninformed comments.
Re:Government spectrum scam (Score:5, Interesting)
The Iridium satellites' frequency band was closely examined and approved by the FCC. When they launched however, it was found that they were broadcasting in a sideband well outside of that permitted band, rendering radio telescopes useless (like shining a flashlight down an optical telescope) so the FCC decreed that the Iridium transmitters had to be turned off as they passed over certain geographical regions.
Tell me how the free market would have solved that one. Ruled in favor of science or dollars? Free market favors the majority when a conflict arises. The government also keeps the needs of the minority in mind.
Further reading: Wired article [wired.com]
Re:Government spectrum scam (Score:4, Funny)
Austin Powers: Well! Finally those capitalistic pigs will pay for their crimes, eh? Eh comrades? Eh?
Basil Exposition: Austin... we won.
Austin Powers: Oh, groovy, smashing! Yea capitalism!
Re:Government spectrum scam (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Government spectrum scam (Score:5, Insightful)
Parts of the US being sparsly populated might be part of the problem, but no real excuse for poor coverage in urban areas.
has much higher mobile phone usage per head and no more spectrum available for mobile phone use, but has generally excellent mobile phone service.
The whole point about a cellphone system is that you don't need huge amounts of spectrum. In an area of dense usage you simply have smaller cells with lower powered transcievers.
"regulate the airwaves" troll thread (Score:3, Interesting)
People who invested their money in the Clinto Airwave Auction Scam took a big risk and should reap the consequences. Yeah, it sucks to lose but it happens all day long. Make a promise, keep a promise. Those big fat companies do not deserve a rescue as they stomped on others to get what they have.
Further regulation to protect these ineffient opperators will only preserve the problem. They did not build when the money was good. Now their technology is obsolete, paid for or not, it should be trashed to alow new entrants who will serve us better. That is how a free market works.
The New York Times Article is a troll on it's own, and has to be some kind of AP trash. "Oh the poor little telcos," they cry, "their problem is so hard and they are working so hard to fix it." The quotes about "robust competition" is a particularly bad joke. Clueless BS, all of it. There is no further technical reason to restrict radio transmisions.
Airways are empty but ALLOCATED. Thats the point! (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact that there is huge tracts of underutilized spectrum is why the government needs to get out of the auction buziness.
Re:Airways are empty but ALLOCATED. Thats the poin (Score:5, Insightful)
So, while I do think the present reulatory system needs to be demolished, I think it does need to be replaced with a regulatory scheme that takes TDM and spread-spectrum technologies into account.
The present model is based around uni-directional broadcasting. Dedicated "channels." That needs to change.
To much regulation (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course! this explains why the USA's cellphone infrastructure is so much better than Europe's - the EU is just over-regulated!!
NB: That, like US cellphone systems, was a joke.
Re:To much regulation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:To much regulation (Score:5, Insightful)
Each GSM cell has a maximum diameter of about 30Km, so it's understandable that very lightly populated areas will have signal issues. You're not going to be able to call your friend from an uninhabited island off the coast of Alaska, but that should not affect your calls from any of the big metropolitan areas on the East or West coasts.
Re:To much regulation (Score:5, Informative)
This is not necessarily true. Even if you accept as fact that the US has substantively worse coverage in true metropolitan areas than the level of service throughout western europe (an assertion that I question), you still cannot ignore the importance of the overall dispersion. For instance, a significant city like, say, Seattle, may be relatively dense within city limits, but without having a cluster of other large cities nearby certain (meta-level) infrastructure considerations may not be economically viable. Unless you are intimately familiar with cell phone technology (more than just the summaries of CDMA, GSM, or what have you) to say otherwise, I don't think you can just ignore that. Furthermore, the fact that people in the US do often venture into less dense areas, whether they be suburbs, exurbs, vacation retreats, or even commuting to another population center, means that they will take the level of service outside their nearest metro area into great account. In other words, while GSM may make sense in Europe, that same technology may not make a great deal of sense, even in cities, BECAUSE it is not economically viable in outlying areas. This may well present the telecos with the choice of either: supporting multiple standards on a single service/phone (much more expensive), losing all customers that wish to have service outside of their city, or supporting a single standard that some may regard to be technically inferior (even though it's the only economically viable solution). Furthermore, besides just the density of the population, you must take into consideration the percentage of those customers that are willing to buy service. If the US has a lower overall adoption rate, then this must factor into the economic calculus of the telecos. I do not have the statistics on hand, but I would venture a guess, from my own experience in europe and in the US, that the US has a significantly lower percentage of the population using cell phone technology than the parts of western europe that you are comparing. Now you may assert that this is a result of poor service, but it cannot be held a priori, especially considering the fact that Europe's land lines have long been less reliable and most costly than the US (thereby encouraging the adoption of such new tech)
Verizon... (Score:3, Informative)
I have Verizon service and I have NEVER had signal or capacity issues except when indoors or inside my (shielded and unusually RF-noisy) car. I can use my Verizon phone at my *aunt's house*, which happens to be in the Middle of Nowhere, NY. It even operates in digital mode. Haven't tried AT&T, but no one with a Sprint, Cingular, or T-Mobile phone can get a signal on their network at my aunt's. (Cingular and Sprint phones MIGHT be able to get an analog fallback signal.)
In short, I'm a Verizon customer and have no complaints whatsoever about service quality.
Re:To much regulation (Score:3, Informative)
Re:To much regulation (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but population density is not the reason why cell service in the US sucks.
New York has the highest population density in the US, comparable to the density of Paris and London. New York's cell service sucks, especially if you're on Sprint or Verizon which uses (surprise) Code Division Multiple Access instead of GSM (used in Europe).
You can try to deny it, but regulation matters in questions of standard service. If it's a network, standardization can be facilitated by regulation. Far from hindering the growth of a network, regulation can help. In the case of the US cellular network, a "free" market means a fragmented market which in turn means broken cellular network.
Hrmm (Score:2)
Re:Government spectrum scam (Score:5, Informative)
Until HD takes off, that spectrum will continue to be in use. Once 80% of US households are capable of receiving HD then the old UHF (as well as VHF) analog frequencies will be reclaimed and reallocated.
Cell phones are but one service that is starved in spectrum allocation. If the government was to let the free market allocate the spectrum, an entire new universe of wireless network services could become available.
Yes. And we'd have no conflicts at all from different companies rampaging across the "free market allocated" spectrum, right? Because that never happens. Nope. No interference between wireless networks and wireless phones. No interference from jacked up CB transmitters either. And we know that unallocated spectrum won't ever have two wildly conflicting technologies [slashdot.org] utilizing it, right?
Not to mention that the free market does tend to ignore certain costs and needs. Part of the VHF/UHF reallocation will be used to greatly expand the number of emergency channels for police, fire, ambulance, and other services. Think the free market will care about that? Doubt it.
It's funny, because generally I'm against government interference in things, but I think the kinds of interference that would occur otherwise are far worse.
Re:Government spectrum scam (Score:3, Insightful)
And they'd all conflict with one another. Company A would blame it on company B's product interferring and vice versa. One thing companies are not very good at is agreeing with one another. Therefore, a free market with a small, but necessary regulation is what we have. As for the UHF stations, you simply blink them out of existence? Far be it from them to broadcast their signals (read: be in business) if it causes static in your call to Aunt Martha, so you'd basically have to wipe them out to bring on your new 'universe'.
Does the Federal government do a lot of messed up stuff? Absolutely. Is dividing up the spectrum in such a way as to ensure the quality of each signal one of those messed up things? Well, I don't think it is, but why don't you ask whales [go.com] what happens when you let just anyone start tossing around any signal they like.
Re:Government spectrum scam (Score:4, Insightful)
This is more a case of the phone companies "overselling" their networks, by taking in more and more customers but not upgrading their network and placing additional cells to accommodate the increased load. ISPs are also notorious for this.
Of course many telco's find themselves strapped for the necessary cash to place additional cells in overloaded areas. One of the reasons is the enormous amounts of money they paid at the spectrum auctions... which is interesting: the telcos over here own rights to spectrum bands which go largely unused for lack of money to place transmitters to use that spectrum.
Re:Government spectrum scam (Score:3, Informative)
Back when Cingular and tmobile were the only GSM providers, it was pretty common to get "Emergency Only" coverage. But Cingular and tmobile *shared* *towers*. So if you were getting coverage from the competitor, and not your own provider, it was because they weren't routing your packets properly.
Of course, it happened equally often with both companies, so it's not like you would even switch if you could.
Now with AT&T GSM coverage in the area, we tmobile users see "Emergency Coverage Only" all the time, but that's 'cause AT&T has many more towers, and they really are better. Now if only they'd buy Voicestream... nah.
I can personaly voutch for this. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sprint PCS is terrible (Score:2, Informative)
I get a signal about 50% of the time...and it has this nasty habit of going from full signal to zero (dropped connection) and immediately back up to full signal....what happened in the middle?
Sons of bitches...do NOT get Sprint...they seem to have a "random service droppage" policy...or a major bug in the system.
Network Development (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, something is up with them. When I got my latest cell phone, I had a somewhat in depth discussion with the sales rep about the various carriers. He said that although Sprint has some excellent protocols and ideas for new network services, they are relatively new to cell phone service. As a result, they don't have as much experience with networks as Verizon or VoiceStream do. So that could be the source of your problems.
The sales rep also said that Sprint has problems with reception inside buildings (more so than other providers). I ended up going with Verizon as a result.
neurostarRe:Network Development (Score:3, Informative)
For example, Sprint/AT&T/etc wants to build a new cell site. They need to order a T1 (or T3, which AT&T is now ordering to support their higher speed service) to serve their cell site. The first company to open a cell site at a location pays a high (it's a mandated fee, something like $25K) price, while other companies looking to attach to that tower pay $1 each. Each company that attaches needs to order their own T1/T3 from Verizon for the data line to bring the cell traffic back to their equipment.
Other spots where you say VZW's service is more spotty is b/c other incumbent Bells rule the landlines- there, VZW is just another company buying up data lines to carry their cell voice traffic......
Not my experience (Score:2, Informative)
Sure its not your phone?
Re:Not my experience (Score:2)
Re:Sprint PCS is terrible (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, I've heard from some network engineers who claim that the cellular carriers have better tower placement, in bigger cities, because they came well before PCS.
Re:Sprint PCS is terrible (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a relatively well known fact that Sprint PCS seems to work great in the major metro areas on the East Coast (I have a couple of friends with it, so this isn't personal experience...but I can hear them when they call...) As long as you're within 15 miles of a city, PCS is great. Don't even think about going out of that range, though.
That's why I *didn't* get Sprint PCS. While it works well in Boston, it doesn't work so well out where I work. It works well at my parent's house outside NYC, but my sister is too far out.
It's the all important research-before-you-buy. Verizon's the *only* carrier that can make it through 5 stories of brick into my apartment...and knowing they work where I need them to is why I picked 'em.
It's just really too bad you can't take a phone for a test drive...I would really like to take a phone into my apartment, on the drive to work, and on the drive to my parents before purchasing it. I hate locking myself into a contract that can't provide what I need.
Can you hear me now? (Score:2, Interesting)
The non stop aggressive advertising for cell services and the general status of a cell phone in daily life no doubt caused an explosion they weren't ready for. The constant rate wars make it harder and harder for them to invest heavily in infrastructure. A rates increase (timed charges? yay!) is probably the only thing that will pull the industry up again.
Would you pay a bit more for a better service, or will you always go for the most minutes?
Re:Can you hear me now? (Score:2)
That's actually a thought....
Yeah, I've noticed. (Score:3, Informative)
It kinda sucks. And I'm locked in by a contract.
Switching Cell Phone Providers (Score:5, Interesting)
Thoughts?
Mike
Different Technologies (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Switching Cell Phone Providers (Score:2)
Rather than mandating one type of service *cough*GSM Europe*cough*, they're letting all the standards duke it out.
AT&T is TDMA, Sprint and Verizon are CDMA (I Think), T-Mobile and Cingular are GSM.
Eventually, the best service will win out.
Re:Switching Cell Phone Providers (Score:5, Insightful)
TCP/IP may not be the best protocol in the world, but imagine if there were three or four incompatible standards used by the major ISPs, and you had to buy an operating system locked into that ISP's infrastructure to use the net...that's what the cellphone situation is like in the US. Everyone singing GSM is like everyone talking TCP/IP. You know your handset will work regardless of the provider you choose.
Re:Switching Cell Phone Providers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Switching Cell Phone Providers (Score:3, Informative)
Its a bit of a mess of why there are divergent paths. But the big one, is that Qualcomm owns most of the patents on CDMA, and are really the only player for CDMA base band chips. I only know of one other company that has had their chips certified by Nortel and Lucient to work off their base stations, and they're just getting into production now.
GSM was out in the market first. Europe had alot of problems with 1G (analog) cell phones. There were so many different standards that you had the same problem moving form one system to another, that you have in the US. When 2G came along GSM was choosen for the most part to hold back these woes. I don't remember fully but I think GSM came out in the mid 80s. Qualcomm introduced CDMA in the early to mid 90s, about 10 years behind GSM. So GSM had a long time to get entrenched.
But GSM is alot like TDMA, at least at the physical layer. CDMA is completely different. Basically TDMA has the same limit as AMPS does. You can really only have one transmitter on one frequency at a given time. CDMA changes this, allowing multiple transmitters to be on all the time on the same frequency. Theroitically this means that CDMA is interferance limited to the number of cellphones talking to a base station, while TDMA/GSM is still frequency limited. I don't remember the exact numbers, but it works out to around 8 GSM phones can effectively share the same frequency, while 43-47 CDMA phones can share the same amount of frequency. Its a complicated formula, because CDMA uses more spectrum per signal, but you can have base stations sitting almost ontop of each other physically transmitting on the same frequency. These numbers are for 2G CDMA. 3G CDMA is suppose to increase capacity by 1.7 times.
Of course Europeans have a burr up their saddles when it comes to technology from the States (and the US has the same burr it seems). And Qualcomm isn't helping manners. Qualcomm is greeder then Microsoft, and are probably impedding the adoption of CDMA more then anything else because of their monopolistic attitude (Think threats to customers who consider using other chip sets, exhorbadant license fees, etc). True 3G CDMA does meet all the requirements of high speed and higher capactity. Sprint and Verison are not deploying true 3G CDMA. True 3G CDMA has a bandwidth an effective bandwidth of 5 MHz, just like W-CDMA has. Instead S&V are deploying 1xRTT which is backwards compatable with 2G cellphones. Don't ask me why CDMA-2000 and W-CDMA are not compatible with each other, its all infighting between the GSM manufacturers and Qualcomm. The basis of it is that if CDMA-2000 was the 3G standard, and backwards compatible with 2G CDMA, then why would new carriers want to buy GSM equipment if they're going to have to get rid of them later, why not just buy 2G CDMA and upgrade to 3G later.
But this is the cellular market place. If they can get more money out of their customers for less service they will. And this sort of attitude isn't at the provider/network level but basically goes all the way up to the base station manufacturers who run the international standards committees.
GSM (Score:3, Informative)
This will be great for competition once people realize they can do this... Right now many are probably unaware of this.
Re:Switching Cell Phone Providers (Score:3, Interesting)
OR
Does anyone else find it slightly odd that satellite television companies are allowed to make receivers that only work with their network? For instance, I can't ditch DISH Network and use my DISH receiver with DirecTV service. Why is this allowed?
Sheesh!
Re:Switching Cell Phone Providers (Score:5, Informative)
The first: Different cel phone networks have different underlying technologies that make them work. In Canada we have TDMA (Rogers/AT&T), CDMA (Mobility/Telus/Sprint), GSM (Microcell/Fido) and iDEN TDMA (MIKE/Nextel). Each of these phones uses a different modulation scheme - it's kind of like when 56 K modems emerged and we had X2 and Flex.
Each technology has its pro's and cons, I'm not going to get into them here. Suffice it to say that the technologies are different enough that a CDMA phone for example cannot be made to work on a TDMA network.
The second reason is revenue protection. Even here in Canada, where, for example, CDMA technology is used by both Mobility and by Telus, phones are sold with "activation lock codes" - essentially built-in passwords unique to each handset, so that you can't get into your phone's programming and change the network that it connects to. This is because the phones are sold deeply discounted, and the only way the provider can recover that money is to lock you in to a contract, and ensure that the phones they cel will only generate airtime revenue on their own networks. You'd be a fool to think your cel phone, with its big bright display, li-ion battery, speaker phone, vibrate, digital and analog technology in both the 800 MHz and 1.9 GHz spectrum, all in a package so ultra-miniaturized that it's almost a choking hazard, only costs $38... but it has to be marked down that way because competition is so fierce between different providers' handsets.
My suggestion: when you first activate your phone, your provider may quickly step you through some fancy key combinations to program in your new phone number. If not, then before you have your phone disconnected, try to get your phone number changed the day before so that your provider will have to step you through reprogramming the phone. When they do, write down every code you are given. The lock code is on file with your provider and is specific to your handset's serial number (ESN). You can possibly use this later to reprogram your own phone.
In the original poster's case... (Score:3, Informative)
He was talking about taking a Sprint phone to Verizon, which uses the same technology (and has quite heavy phone overlap - The Kyocera 6035 for example).
Sprint subsidy-locks phones, Verizon does not. Why?
It has everything to do with how Sprint and Verizon sell phones. Sprint allows you to buy a phone from a large number of places (CompUSA, OfficeMax, etc.) without getting a contract. But that phone is pretty worthless without the service. Now if someone buys a Sprint phone and activates it on Verizon, Sprint is losing a lot of money.
Verizon, on the other hand, doesn't s-lock phones. That's because you can only buy a Verizon phone at a Verizon store or from Verizon's website (or by landline phone). As a result, you can ONLY get the discounted price on a new phone at contract signing. You can get a phone without a contract from Verizon, but they'll charge you a lot more. (For example, the Kyocera 6035 was $380 without a contract subsidy, $250 with subsidy.)
How to un-lock your Sim-locked phone. (Score:3, Interesting)
After your contract expires (and they have finished subsidizing the phone) there is really nothing to keep you from jumping ship, so they are much more open to unlocking your phone if they think it will keep you as a customer. Call them up and tell them you are planning on traveling to Europe and would like to use some of the pre-paid calling SIMs available there, but you need them to unlock your phone for it to work. If they balk, tell them how you like the service, but if they can't help you, you'll find another provider who can. Apparently, once they unlock it in this fashion, it cannot be relocked. Has anyone else tried this?
Verizon (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Verizon (Score:3, Funny)
user Yes
Operator No ?
user YES...
Operator So you can't hear me ?
User YES
Operator So can u or can u not ?
User Can I or Can I not what ?
Operator WHAT ?
User WHAT ?
Operator Yes ?
User Yes ?
Operator Hello ?
User Yes
Operator Good
User Good What ?
Operator WHAT ?
User Oh never mind
Operator GOOD..
Wait till next November... (Score:5, Informative)
At least here in the states, cell phone carriers will be required to institute true number portability on cellphones. They've been pushing it back for about 4 years now but the FCC told them it was do or die time.
This is from: clarkhoward.com:
"Cell phone portability stays alive - July 18, 2002
If you are one of our listeners who took the time to write to the FCC about the cell phone industry, Clark wants to congratulate you. A law passed in 1996 allowed you to take your cell phone number from company to company if you changed providers. It was called "true number portability" and the cell phone industry was terrified of it. So, they have tried everything they could to postpone the law going into effect. The FCC asked for you comments in this matter and your voice was heard. The FCC has issued a decision, saying the rule will stay in effect and you'll be able to keep your number. But reinstatement will not go into effect until Thanksgiving 2003. So, we will be able to take our number with us, but not for a while. And, when this goes into effect, many cell phone companies will go away because of mergers. As long as we have four major players, we will have a decent amount of competition."
Here's [clarkhoward.com] the original link.
Oops (Score:4, Funny)
*comes home and tears open the packaging on a brand new cellphone that came with a 8 year service contract, then reads /.*
damn...
Re:Wait till next November... (Score:2)
Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
This may be modded as a troll, but in modern economics, it is a truth.
Illigal product tying? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Illigal product tying? (Score:3, Interesting)
The US has 4 different mobile phone technologies doesn't it? I'm sure it's at least 3. iDen, GSM (Crippled on a stupid frequency) and Sprint's PCS?
Why should Nokia make all their phones work on all the US networks when the market for them is the US and that's about it. They have better things to do making lots of lovely GSM 900/1800 dual band handsets for the hundred of GSM mobile networks around the works.
What? (Score:5, Funny)
Little wonder, they remind me of Boswell (Score:3, Insightful)
These cell phone providers keep trying to do more and more without improving their infrastructure. They add games, text messaging, video, web browsing (who can tolerate browsing on a 320x320 screen with no keyboard?) without adding enough towers to add capacity. They spend millions on inane advertising, trying to brainwash the multitudes into thinking they need to spend $50 a week to be interrupted constantly, without upgrading transmitters, or even moving to a better transmission scheme. All gimcrackery and glitz, with poor underpinnings.
Yes, they want to be everything to everyone, instead of just providing cell service, Johnson's quote is relevant here.
"Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
Similary, a video web surfing cell phone is like a dog walking on his hind legs.
Re:Little wonder, they remind me of Boswell (Score:3, Informative)
Several companies are upgrade to next generation systems. These will provide higher bandwidth and presumably this can be used to allow more phones per tower in addition to more bandwidth per phone.
GSM in Sweden (Score:2, Informative)
Bandwidth (Score:3, Informative)
One of the biggest problems we have now is bandwidth. When the law restricts the percent of bandwidth each provider is allowed based upon the number of providers in a coverage area, quality ends up sucking.
Specifically, if Company A has ten times the number of customers as Company B, they still each get the same frequency spread. Company A quality ends up sucking, and switching to Company B isn't obvious since there aren't any good stats published on "coverage" area and quality, other than those pretty maps that are often provided and anecdotal references from friends.
Sprint PCS is Great (Score:5, Informative)
Slightly off-topic (Score:2)
no reg required google news link (Score:4, Informative)
Simple Solution (Score:4, Funny)
How else am I going to illegally drink? (Score:2)
Harumph!
I really do... need... it.
Umm... so I can find out where to go drinking!
Yeah, that's it!
Re:Simple Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
NIMBY (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Simple Solution (Score:3, Funny)
You dick.
-Nano.
SprintPCS and T-mobile (Score:2, Interesting)
I had a SprintSpectrum GSM phone when they first came out, loved it, then Sprint dumped it and went to CDMA SprintPCS. And I've had one of those since. Ever since it's deployment, service has gotten steadily worse in the Washington, DC area, and there are parts of major roads where you are guaranteed to drop a call.
Then I moved, and my phone got even more odd. I've been through several, and each has this behavior. If I stand up in my apartment, I have tolerable reception, if I sit down, zero. Seriously. I called Sprint, they said "well, we don't guarantee it will work in home or office, only outside". Wow, isn't that helpful.
So, since most of my friends travel a lot, they have GSM phones from Voicestream (now T-Mobile), and I decided to get one of those spiffy new SonyEriccson T68i phones for $50 from Amazon. When I finally got it from back-order, it was ready to go, and weighed nothing, and had excellent coverage at home, office, car, and has only dropped one call, when I was driving by the CIA.
Now, I didn't want one of the overlay numbers for Northern VA (571 area code), so I called them, and they thoughtfully changed my number to a 202 on the phone. Effective immediately. No cost, thank you for being a customer.
I have had only one problem with coverage, and that's my new office, in the middle of nowhere. But Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile work only sporadically in the building, so I don't take it personally. It's just annoying.
I do think what they do in Europe is more normal... you can get a cheap phone that's locked, or you can pay a bit more for an unlocked phone (T-Mobile gave me the unlock codes for my phone). Then, since *everyone* uses the same system, you can change carriers as you see fit.
Its not the service, you're all buying tiny phones (Score:5, Interesting)
That said everyone I know complains about Sprint's coverage and has sworn them off, something I couldn't figure out. Then this summer a bunch of use started to do a phone comparison. And you know what, almost everywhere I had a few bars while they were dropping to roaming.
Then we realize that my older (and slightly larger) Samsung must have a more powerful antenna. All my friends super cool $300 migit phones made a signal strength vs. size tradoff.
So don't complain if you cant get signal in doors. You should have bought a larger phone....
Re:Its not the service, you're all buying tiny pho (Score:3, Informative)
Here are some things as I understand them:
There is a huge difference between signal strength and capacity. Signal strength, measured in terms of the Pseudo-noise offset level of the spread spectrum signal is one part, and the Ec/Io (that's "Eee-See over Eye-Naught"), the difference between the signal strength and the noise floor, which is the available capacity. When your phone reports signal strength in bars, it's actually making an estimate using some kind of formula to simplify this pretty complicated technology. You can have a strong signal but not be able to make a call. You could be sitting under the tower but but there are already a few thousand other people using it.
Also, for those of you who have older phones who experience better service with "more powerful antennas," please know that it has little to do with the antenna. It has everything to do with SID vs. PRL. When cellphones really exploded here in the states (three years ago or so) they were still being built using something called SID. The definiton of the acronym escapes me, but essentially the phone would look around, pick the tower with strongest signal and the most available bandwidth and use it. So with my Startac 7760 on Verizon, if I was closer to a non-Verizon tower my phone would use it, and then Verizon would pay the other carrier a tiny fee for my use.
A couple of years ago (in Verizon's world, with the advent of the Startac 7868, I think) they got rid of SID and came up with PRL, a Preferred Roaming List. Phones were programmed with lists of preferred towers where Verizon didn't have to pay a fee. So if I was using my Verizon Startac7868W and I was sitting on top of a non-Verizon tower, but there was a tiny, weak signal from a Verizon tower 15 miles away, my phone would use the weaker signal to save Verizon a few tenths of a cent.
Similar to voting with your wallet. (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people can stand voting with their wallet because they do not absolutely require the cell phone service. However, many others do. So, just change your service often - forcing the sales representatives to give you good introductory rates but without a long term service contract. If you can get one of them to give you cheap rates for half a year and then standard rates for another half a year on a one year contract, then take it and cancel the service afterwards. Repeat. Not only does this get you repeating good rates, but it contributes to the service cancelation numbers for the companies to possibly motivate them to provide better service.
Funny thing to note that most of these bastage companies are just ripping you off even more: Where I live, we need to make a lot of cell phone calls from a certain area just South of town, but we can never seem to get good service there. So after switching providers a couple times and figuring out that none of them will give us good reception down there, we start looking at coverage maps for the cell phone companies in our area. Guess what, they all look exactly the freaking same. Not only do they all use the same towers, but a lot of them even use the same equipment, they just portion their usage off with each other. So, the only thing you are usually paying for is how much less of an a$$ one company will be to you over another company.
Too much to handle (Score:2, Informative)
I know that they currently do not have the money to pump into upgrading the entire system, but right now, the cellular phone industry is at a place where a lot of people are relying on the technology, so it may be a time to have a small markup in the rates. I know where I live, it is cheaper to own and use a cellular phone then a landline phone these days. There's only so much that the consumer will be able to handel before they go back to their old ways of communicating.
The RIAA should pay attention to this (Score:3, Interesting)
The average per-minute cost has dropped to 11 cents this year from 56 cents in 1995. For the phone companies that has meant a decline in average revenue per customer to $61 a month, from $74 in 1995.
I wonder if the same would happen if cd's dropped to a fifth the price? You've got double the customers, so you're still making more money just not as much per customer.
A lot of people wouldn't have a cell phone if it still cost 56 cents a minute.
Re:The RIAA should pay attention to this (Score:4, Informative)
All of your assumptions are valid... except that price elasticity is different for different products. If this wasn't the case, then *everything* would sell for $0.11 per minute (assuming that to be the optimal cost), and there would be no such thing as an excise tax (or all purchases would be excise taxed equally).
Read up on your microeconomics before you post. Microeconomics is a cool geeky subject with lots of math and theories that rival physical theories.
Don't forget the Public Utilities Commission (Score:5, Insightful)
Each state has it's own PUC, for instance, this is Minnesota's [state.mn.us]. As you can see, they control telecom, electric, and gas. PUC really is your friend. For instance, PUC is responsible for penalizing Qwest for anti-competitive business practices.
Its fine over here in the UK... (Score:5, Interesting)
And in Europe... and in India. But when I get to the US there is a marked drop off. To the stage where I have often used two phones, one tri-band and one CDMA/analogue.
I can "roam" onto competitors networks outside of my home country, but not at home. Hence my tri-band phone often gets a signal as it has 3 or so networks to chose from, while the Sprint phone gets nothing because I'm in a Sprint zone.
Basic solutions would be for better roaming agreements between providers and one standard for phones.
Dump your cellphones (Score:5, Insightful)
Yikes, man-- just don't answer it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Your world won't end without one, to be sure-- I have lived without one myself on and off. But it's certainly convenient to have it around. I just don't have the "talk to everyone" compulsion that it seems everyone has hardwired into their brains.
This sounds awfully ranty. I don't mean this as a personal attack on you-- I'm just baffled by people who pick up every single call on their phones, but seem perfectly capable of saving email until later. And they seem to be the rule, rather than the exception. Caller ID and voicemail are fantastic. Let 'em wait until *you* have time.
You CAN be connected 24/7 without giving up control of your life.
Denying my rights as a consumer? (Score:3, Funny)
What T-Mobile sounds like at 6pm...everyday! (Score:3, Funny)
Because of this, I end up not using all the minutes I buy every month on my phone. Which means two things, I am not getting what I am paying for and T-Mobile is losing out on raping me on overage charges. So its a two way loss.
You might be able to break your contract (Score:5, Insightful)
Moral of the story: Talk to your provider, you might get satisfaction.
My problems with T-Mobile USA (Score:3, Interesting)
Then, I go to Denver for the weekend. The whole time I am in the Denver area my second line (also in Denver with me with my Girlfriend) could not dial me.
There is also the constant billing problems I have. Every month I have to take $2-$3 off my bill for text messages they charge me for. I have 350 and I use say 100 and they charge me for half of them! Then there is a problem where I call in and pay, and I never get charged yet they tell me I am late to pay!
Also, 9 times out of 10, the Wireless Internet, or T-Zones they call it now, does not work. Bad gateway response, server unresponsive, etc. Im glad I do not use that for anything important.
Voicestream and now T-Mobile are notorious for having phone manufactures issue special cippled firmware here in the USA. My Nokia was crippled and so is my S105.
I will say this. I do have a great plan when it does work. Unlimited between my two lines. Unlimited weekends. 800 shared whenever minutes. No long distnace, no roaming, detailed billing. Also, for the internet stuff -- when it does work its by MB not by minute
I realize that no matter who I go to, I am going to have issues. I had a friend with Sprint that would over bill him. His statement said X minutes and they billed him for Y and pointed to a clause that said the statement may not be accurate minute counts. Another friend was getting eronous charges with Cingular aka SwBell aka SBC who then turned off his phone line and internet for not paying a $2000 cellphone bill. My aunt has AT&T and she says half the times when she is in Wichita she can not get a signal. Another friend is on Verizon and said other then the shitty plan, he likes it.
I have used them all.... (Score:5, Informative)
Sprint PCS: This is my current provider and I plan to keep it that way. Yes there are occasional places where the service skips, but a quick call using their VOICE COMMAND customer service gives me a credit minute, and away I go. Not to mention most of those places get fixed if you report the location to a SPRINT STORE. Not the phone customer service, but the actual SPRINT PCS store. Overall coverage is good in major metro areas. Have some of the BEST PHONES, and I have found often times the PHONE is the problem over the coverage area. However the new network they have does get hit heavily in rush hour.
Cingular: Overall a decent company. I like the no extra charge for analog roam. I dislike their customer service. THeir Digital Network is a bit weak in the coverage area though based on how much I travel and see. Literally cross a street in Manhatten and lose coverage.
Verizon: I would never use them now because of the "Can you hear me now" commercials. However when I used them, I found some cities had EXCEPTIONAL COVERAGE, yet others had HORRIBLE. Atlanta for one was HORRIBLE coverage for them. Their Customer service is an absolute JOKE IMHO. All in all would be near the bottom of my list of preferred companies.
T Mobile: If you job requires connectivity, DO NOT USE THIS. Its great for some of the trinkits and features, however if you are traveling its a PAIN! When you lose a call its INSTA DROP, not the usual "you are breaking up" if you would hear static on another phone with TMOBILE you LOSE THE CALL. The customer is ALWAYS WRONG with them too.
Nextel: Hard one to comment on. If you are in a city and use alot of intra company minutes this is the way to go. However if you are traveling about, their ROAM network can KILL YOU, and you need a credit card with you to use it.
Bottom line is NONE of them are perfect. I think overall SPRINT is the best. However time will tell if that will remain. I personally take my phone in every 2 months for a software and network update. That has made alot of difference to my service and coverage area over the past year. Its a hassle but I DEPEND on my phone.
Some thoughts and comments from an insider... (Score:5, Informative)
There are a whole host of issues affecting network quality right now. I'll start with some history. Back in the late 90's wireless was hot. RF engineers were in incredible demand. Those that were good (and plenty who were not) became consultants making lots of money. Wireless carrier s couldn't get enough consultants to handle all the design and optimization work, and they still needed to hire their own in-house engineers. Obviously the relatively low salary positions with carriers didn't attract the best engineers who were making very handsome six figure salarys, but they did attract a lot of less qualified individuals.
Enter the recent downturn. Wireless carriers (many of whom have never turned a profit due to the massive costs of the ongoing expansion of their networks, Verizon, Cingular and other cellular providers excepted) suddenly became unpopular. In an effort to become profitable / look good to Wall Street, they suddenly slammed on the brakes and stopped or dramatically slowed their builds. They also got rid of all the high-priced, very talented consultants, leaving only their staff engineers to handle the optimization and new design.
In addition to getting rid of consultants, a lot of staff engineers have been cut as well. Those that are left don't have time to track down the obscure problems that arise in the complicated interactions between cell sites and phones that cause dropped calls (some are due to lack of coverage, but the vast majority of drops are due to the internal parameters that govern the behavior of the cells and phone not being tuned to provide the best service in a specific area. The phone needs to be told when to hand off, what to hand off too, and so on. Often the particular combination that will work for a user traveling on a certain road is unique to that road, and even the direction of travel. Each combination needs to be figured out, and then manually entered by an engineer.) Even when a problem is tracked down, money to fix problems is non-existant. The budgets reflect very specific priorities, and quality isn't nessesarily high up on the list (since it takes a long time for consumers to react negatively to poor network performance. They can't go anywhere else for years sometimes).
Oh, one poster mentioned that his phone seems to have several 'bars' of coverage and then suddenly drops to none. There are a few reasons for this. The first, and most common is what is known as Rayleigh fading. Wireless connections experience very rapid, highly localized signal fades. You may have experienced this phenomena when listening to a radio station at a stoplight. It may be almost unlistenable until you creep forward a few feet, at which point it returns. Mobile phones are afflicted by the same problem. Providers use multiple antennas per sector on each cell site (known as diversity), to reduce this effect, but tough zoning laws often force us to use only one antenna per sector , which increases the freqency of this effect. (cross-slant polarization antennas can help in some situations, but not all, and certainly don't perform as well as dual antenna configurations)
The rapid fading can also be a product of the way the phone displays the signal strenght. Some phones on CDMA networks (Samsungs in particular) do not display signal strength with their 'bars'. Instead, they show the signal to noise ratio. In a weak signal area with low interference, the phone will show a great signal to noise ratio when the signal is just above the receiver sensitivity threshold, but just a small change in signal strength can drop the signal below the threshold, at which point the signal becomes unusable.
Re:Some thoughts and comments from an insider... (Score:3, Insightful)
The original post is extremely valuable in this thread, and very true: wireless carriers have cut back on network quality in the interest of their bottom line. When people want to buy a cel phone they don't want to know which network is going to work the best overall, they just want the smallest handset with the most bells and whistles.
It will improve soon. (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course here in the Netherlands (a little larger than Delaware, 16 million people) you can choose between 5 providers and there's a regulation where they must provide you with the option of keeping the same cell number. If there's less competition where you live, you might be screwed.
There's a very good reason for all of this (Score:5, Informative)
It also doesn't help that most cell companies have reached customer saturation in every market. Every last business person, drug dealer, soccer mom, and teenager has a phone. There's no more revenue out there in new sales, it's all goofy new services like being able to download pictures on your phone and other technocrap that no one really needs. And with the cutthroat pricing and marketing tactics going on it's going to get much worse before it gets better.
ob Verizon (Score:3, Funny)
Didn't think so.
wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)
What a mish-mash of techspeak (Score:4, Informative)
Actually the number of calls in one cell is limitited to the availability of slots in the time-division of one frequency and the number of available frequencies near your location (not necessaririly your cell). And for other types of communication than voice, like SMS (runs over the signalling channel via the MAP protocol), is limited to the bandwidth of the signalling channel (C7, or A7 in the US).
;-) (Don't do this at home, kids, GSM only)
:-)
And regarding emergencies: In GSM-networks it is allways possible to put the network into emergency-mode. In emrgency mode only subscriber with a special flag in their subscriber entry in the database (Home Location Register) are allowed to place phonecalls. And 911 or other emergency calls allways kick one call out of the line when there isn't no more bandwidth. Fun for new years eve. Tell your friends to call 911 and hang up immediately. 30 friends bring 30 free lines for 30 friendly phonecalls
The point that the basestations and "towers" aren't powerful enough is just... Well, NYT
Ahh, how common is GSM in the US anyway? Is it as common than in the rest of the world or is it still just available in major cities and sourrounding areas? Just for comparison: GSM coverage in Germany is ~97% for all providers in the mean. What is it in the US or Canada? (Except deserts, mountains and other very remote areas)
Alex.
Can We Say Airlines (Score:3, Insightful)
In 1-2 years the cellular companies will ask for federal assistance to salvage the industry. They will receive more than 100 million dollars in assitance while the top 5 executives will pull down well over 100 million dollars collectivly in their pockets.
God Bless companies like Qwest where they lay off thousands with no severance (And no warning) but the CEO when laid off walks away with 33 million.
Head out to tsewq.com for details on that.
GSM (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're ever in Europe go into a telco or mobile shop and give the phones a spin or let a sales person demo the stuff to you. You might be pleasantly surprised. Having one standard for all participants also has the added benefit of forcing the telco's in Europe to treat their customers better because they cannot lock them in, and one can switch to another telco if one is not happy.
What would you expect them to do? (Score:2)
It's not like the cell company can just go out and say, blow up a large hill (or business complex) to clear the way for your reception, and putting up repeaters to boost signal for 1 or even a few people is just not worth it.
Another thing is that some businesses/locations actively block signals. In one area of town, cellular reception often dies when you drive past the local call-center. This never happened before the call-center went in (it was a Kmart before), so I would assume that they are doing something that interferes with the standard cellular signal.
I do sympathise, I used to live in a house where my cell didn't work either, but in that case can you get one-touch-call-forwarding to your home phone?
Re:My girlfriend calls me (Score:2)
Re:Not if you're grounded in reality (Score:3, Insightful)
I am so glad that I finished college way before the cell phone craze started. The meetings where the cellphones continuously ring drive me crazy enough, I can't imagine lectures would be like with half the students carrying cell phones.