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Communications Wireless Networking Hardware Technology

Where's Your 'D-Spot?' 262

Posted by timothy from the can-at-least-now-use-cingular dept.
John Hering writes "The battle between cellular carriers in the U.S has become especially fierce within major metropolitan areas. The focus of this battle clearly revolves around issues of quality of service (QoS). In an effort to demonstrate superior QoS, AT&T Wireless has just released the results of the Top 10 "D-Spots" in Chicago from a survey conducted online with a random sample of 520 Chicago men and women. Although AT&T touts improved coverage throughout these metropolitan areas now, the vice president of AT&T Wireless, Greg Slemons, has publicly admitted to serious problems with dropped calls. " I have yet to see really detailed coverage maps for cellular provided by the providers themselves; in cities especially a one-block difference can mean 3 bars of reception or none.
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Where's Your 'D-Spot?' More

Where's Your 'D-Spot?'

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  • Crappy reception in my pants (Score:3, Interesting)

    by penginkun ( 585807 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @10:50PM (#9255478)
    Um...

    Anyway, I can't use my cell phone in my own house, which rules out using it as a land line replacement. I can barely get decent reception in my back yard.

    I'd rather not have the tether anyway.
    • I have the same exact problem, with Sprint PCS in a medium-sized city in Florida.

      I have to walk outside my house to get a decent connection, and anywhere else in the city the phone seems to work great. Bizarre.

      • I solved all my reception problems in one fell swoop. I fully discontinued my use of cellular services. No phone, No pager. It took me a couple weeks to get over my withdrawls, but I am now very very happy.

        No longer can my employer get me whenever they want. No longer can my friends pester me 24x7. No longer am I distracted by my phone while driving. It actually made a positive difference in my life to ditch that particular technology.

        written on my notebook connected to the internet by 802.11x ;)

      • Re:Parent not a troll (Score:5, Informative)

        by Minderbinder106 ( 663468 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @11:31PM (#9255743) Homepage
        Do you have a stucco exterior on your house? I had good reception with Verizon in my dad's house in Jacksonville until he had his walls stuccoed. The metal frame used to attach the stucco degrades the signal to the point where my phone is unusable inside but I get awesome reception by stepping out to the back yard.
    • Parent is a legitimate post! The moderator who modded this -1 Troll probably lives on top of the Rockefeller Center or something, where you have perfect reception for any carrier and you can pick up 40 unsecured WiFi hotspots...

    • Crappy reception at home. AT&T converting sit (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @11:34PM (#9255764) Journal
      Anyway, I can't use my cell phone in my own house, which rules out using it as a land line replacement. I can barely get decent reception in my back yard.

      I now have a similar problem in the "East Bay" of the SF area.

      My house has aluminum foil on the vapor barrier of the insulation, so I expected poor reception when I first got my phone. But it worked fine at that time. (Proababy due to the large windows.)

      But lately my reception all over the east bay has been getting rotten, and it has been virtually impossible to get a connection at home.

      The phones aren't flaking out. (I've enabled the field test mode in both mine and my wife's. The signal strength meter still indicates about the same strength it used to on the road, and the two phones agree.)

      But I've recently found out that AT&T wireless is converting many of its 800ish MHz TDMA cell cites to GSM. (My phones are TDMA.) With the reduced number of TDMA channels available I now have some major dead spots - at home, at work, near the 880/237 interchange, etc.

      Even when I DO see good signal strength, making a call will often make the signal disappear. I think what is happening is the phone is reporting that it's in communication with the cell on the control channel - but when all the signal channels are in use so you can't get a new one, the phone reports it as "service unavailable" as if it couldn't reach the cell.

      Unfortunately, I have already purchased a pots-adapter cradle for the phone model in question, to use the phone for service in my vacation home, and this wouldn't work with a newer phone. GSM has lower voice quality than TDMA. I use the phone for travel, and TDMA+AMPS coverage is still far broader than GSM+TDMA, and there are few (one?) GSM+TDMA+AMPS phone models available. And if I switched I'd either have to buy the phone or lock into the service for two more years.

      So I am in no hurry to switch to GSM. And if I do (and if Verizon has added coverage at my vacation home location, which wasn't available when I first got a cell phone) I'll want to switch carriers as well.
    • I tried Sprint, got zero reception in my condo (unless I stuck my head out the window). Tried AT&T, reception is good = no more landline, cheaper phone bills. Figure out where you spend the most time on the phone (i.e. home, work, traveling), and then find the carrier that gives you the best reception in that spot. There are huge differences between carriers.

  • Up and Coming... (Score:5, Informative)

    by lindec ( 771045 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @10:51PM (#9255488) Homepage
    I have been with several wireless providers, including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. From my experience so far, AT&T had the worst service of the three. T-Mobile has been growing fast, and I get amazing coverage wherever I have gone. In fact, I've actually seen the network expanding. On my annual drive from my home in California to college in Colorado, there used to be no service at all in Nevada or Wyoming. Now, I have full service on the drive through all those states. I have also found the customer service to be excellent. That's just my 2 cents on the cell phone battle... I think T-Mobile is trying very hard since they are move of an up-and-comer than a giant like AT&T.

    • Re:Up and Coming... (Score:5, Informative)

      by quizwedge ( 324481 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @11:23PM (#9255702)
      T-Mobile's service may be getting worse, at least in the California/Nevada region. Here's a little history.. unfortunately, I don't know dates.

      1. AT&T forms AT&T wireless
      2. AT&T spins AT&T wireless off as a stock symbol
      3. AT&T sells AT&T wireless to investors (so it is no longer part of AT&T but carries the name)
      4. Cingular buys AT&T Wireless, but not the name
      5. (in the future) AT&T will release an in-house brand of wireless known as... AT&T Wireless, but using Sprint's towers instead of the GSM towers.

      Currently all AT&T customers will be or have switched over to Cingular.

      Now for a little background on Cingular and T-Mobile. At least in California, I can use either Cingular's towers or T-Mobile's towers for free (I'm a cingular customer). This is because T-Mobile did not have any service out in CA and NV and Cingular had really bad service in NY. Now that Cingular has bought out AT&T Wireless, they could easily break the agreement with T-Mobile since AT&T has great coverage in NY. T-Mobile gets the shaft by having to either stop offering service in CA and NV or put up a lot of towers.

    • Coverage (Score:3, Interesting)

      by simpl3x ( 238301 )
      It will be interesting to see how T-mobile's coverage is affected by the discontinuation of the roaming agreements with Cingular (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-5219679.html). I live in Chicago and have rarley dropped a call in some of the areas listed with either Verizon or AT&T. But, Wicker park absolutely blew for Verizon, and Lincoln Park sucks for both. I have both services with multiple modems and phones for stuff... Dropped calls are consistent among both services in the area, and the fact that V

    • Re:Up and Coming... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @11:32PM (#9255756)
      Where I live, Sprint used to have this territory marked on its maps as a no service zone. They've since moved into town... but are having an awfully tough time convincing people to even set foot in their stores. The impression of being a zero-service carrier in this area is just plain a hard one to shake.

      Afterall, it's hard to market an image that says "We're improving."... just saying that implies that you weren't always perfect and that you still aren't.

      • Re:Up and Coming... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by OneOver137 ( 674481 )
        Sprint PCS is a terrible service if you don't live in a large metropolis or suburb. Here in the Southern Colorado area, it works well along the 25 freeway (major N-S interstate) and the 70 (major E-W, with access to the ski resorts), but venture more than 20 miles from either, and your signal strength drops to zero. I can't wait till both cellular service and boadband are orbiting high overhead and cheap enough for the average joe to afford.
    • I got my first cell phone about two months ago, and I went with tmobile. What a mistake that was. The coverage in upstate New York is horrible, unless you're inside of the city limits of Buffalo or Rochester. I am now jealous of my friends, who have Verizon, and pay as much as I do and get twice the number of minutes, but more important, service wherever they go. As soon as I leave any of the major interstates, I'm out of luck and have no service.

      Fuck tmobile if you live in NY, go with Verizon or ANYONE bu

      • Re:Up and Coming... (Score:3, Informative)

        by DJ-Dodger ( 169589 )

        I'll fully admit that T-Mobile coverage in Upstate NY is non-existant if you aren't on an Interstate or in Buffalo or Rochester, but what are you doing that Verizon customers have more minutes than you?

        Verizon America's Choice $39.99 400 Anytime + N&W

        T-Mobile Get More $39.99 600 Anytime + N&W

        Verizon America's Choice $59.99 800 Anytime + N&W

        T-Mobile Get More Plus $59.99 1000 Anytime + N&W

        Plus T-Mobile's Data Rates are great, their fees are low and thei

    • What happens when AT&T pisses off a SlashDotte (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SgtSnorkel ( 704106 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @12:02AM (#9255913)

      I finally dumped AT&T as my wireless carrier after a marathon of bullshit. You don't have to read the story below. I'll be happy if you (and everyone you know) just refuses to do business with them ever again.

      Long story short:
      o lousy signal and poor reception EVERYWHERE
      o connections that mysteriously go bad at exactly 4:00 minutes into the call (unless you're calling AT&T)
      o months of phone calls to their so called "customer service" getting put on hold, transferred at least three times, then dropped
      o "corrected" bills that never show up
      o same billing mistakes repeated month after month, with compounding fees and charges
      o wasted a day in the store with a face-to-face that took over two hours

      o the final straw: they disconnected my service in the middle of an extremely important phone interview. This after I had been assured my newly fixed bill was on it's way, and that there was plenty of time in my billing cycle -- BTW: the disconnection occurred on the same day I received the new (and still incorrect) bill.

      o I gave AT&T what turned out to be yet another three hours of my time (five phone calls due to being dropped four times). I gave them every chance to be reasonable -- finally just spelling out a list of demands and suggesting they have someone call me before close-of-business if they wanted to keep a customer. They'd rather transfer me 15 (yes, fifteen) times, asking me to reconfirm my address and re-tell my whole story each time.

      By now you're thinking this was a long way to go, especially when it's so easy to change carriers these days. But, I had been a CellularOne customer since 1989 before AT&T took over last September. Think about that! Fourteen years! I had always been able to work out problems before. I had a bunch of resumes out with my cell number on them. (And I really didn't want to punch my whole address book into a new phone!)

      Too bad, AT&T. You took a winning, mutually beneficial arrangement, and turned it into a losing proposition for both of us. Say good-bye to a fourteen-year customer. One who had multiple phone lines and had, at times, spent thousands of dollars a year on telecom.

      You'll never see another cent from me. It's all going to one of your competitors now. The money you think I owe you? Try to collect -- I'll make you spend even more.

      Forget about ever getting a recommendation or referral. In fact, every time your name comes up, expect me to tell my story. When I see your other customers on the street, I'll strike up a conversation -- guess what the topic will be. In a business setting, I'll advise people to build their own phone company before choosing AT&T.

      Oh, you've also managed to anger someone who knows how to use the internet. Know how to remove piss from a swimming pool? You're welcome to try.

  • int sampleSize = 1 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by antimatt ( 782015 )
    that's great for people from Chicago, but I don't live there, and no one I know lives there either. it follows that not a lot of my calls involve Chicago.

    if this going to be really useful (and not just a lame showy gimmick), AT&T had better generalize these results nationwide.

  • I can't show you my D-Spot... (Score:5, Funny)

    by macshune ( 628296 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @10:52PM (#9255496) Journal
    But I can show you my 0-face!


    :-()
  • Mmmm... finding the d-spot... g-spot... Gotta find that damn g-spot... er, I mean d-spot. Oh, fuck it, I'm a pervert.

  • My worst D-spot... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Eggplant62 ( 120514 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @10:53PM (#9255505)
    is right here in my living room. It seems that most places I go, my Nextel phone works wonderfully. Sit down on the couch and try to take a call and bye-bye little signal bars. I can move around the room and I'm still dropping off. I live in a wood-frame house so I very much doubt it's metal interfering with the signal in any way, and the living room is on the main floor.

    I don't suppose having three pc's and two laptops in a constant on state in the house along with my WAP would have anything to do with it, would it??
    • I don't suppose having three pc's and two laptops in a constant on state in the house along with my WAP would have anything to do with it, would it??

      Umm... Guess what, that's exactly your problem. Turn off the PCs and see if it gets better. The damn things produce ridiculous amounts of interference.
      • I thought all of those PC were not supposed to interfere with other RF devices by FCC rule? So much for industry self-regulation? I have been lied to!!!!!
        • The FCC rules actually allow a suitable level of interference on any channels coming from a PC, a lightbulb, whatever. However, even if you're within those tolerances, if you're causing harmful interference to a higher-priority service, then the user is responsible for powering down the offending device until you can get rid of the problem.

          So, actually, if he wants to complain he is going to get told by the FCC to shut down his PC... I've yet to hear of a case where somebody's been forced to stop using a P
        • They can interfere all they want, as long as it's within the FCC regulations as to how much power in the interference they can generate.

          And the FCC also states that consumer electronics (including your phone) are to accept interference; not using some sophisticated blocking mechanism to keep it out.

    • Re:My worst D-spot... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cbreaker ( 561297 )
      You musn't live in the Northeast, because my Nextel works about 60% of the time. There's about 4 dead spots on the 26 mile stretch of i95 between rhode island and the 128 split alone.

      But it seems that most carriers use the same towers and the same power rating, because I've had the same dead spots and coverage with three other companies as well.

      Cell phones are a pain in the ass. I am required to use it for work, and I do like having it when I'm out in case I need to call someone and ask a question.
    • I can move around the room and I'm still dropping off. I live in a wood-frame house so I very much doubt it's metal interfering with the signal in any way, and the living room is on the main floor.

      Many houses in northern climates are wood frame construction. Just because you don't have stucco doesn't mean you don't have metal shielding in the walls. Most fiberglass insulation now has a paper backed moisture barrier. For a while, most fiberglass batting and roll insulation had a paper/aluminum moisture

  • Happenstance (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Living in Chicago it is pretty obvious that most of the major players in the cell phone market have spent quite a bit of money making sure that their networks cover the city proper, well.. properly.

    I have a sneaking suspicion that out of the top ten locations they listed as "Drop-spots" suffer from a lack of scalability in their network infastructure. During non-peak times coverage is decent over most of the locations listed in the article. O'Hare and Midway have not been terrible to me the handful of ti

  • Ooh, nice weasel! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mr. methane ( 593577 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @10:57PM (#9255540) Journal
    A casual reader might think that AT&T turned up 400+ new cells, but a closer reading seems to indicate that it signed up 400+ new sites in your local coverage area where they will slap you with a nifty roaming charge.
    • Having just switched from AT&T to T-Mobile after problems with lousy coverage and being annoyed with their (past) roaming charges (in this day and age, roaming in Cincinnati, OH shouldn't incur roaming...) I'm hardly inclined to defend them, but if you'd read the article in its entirety you'd have noticed that they no longer charge any roaming fees at all for people on their National plan.

  • Coverage maps (Score:4, Informative)

    by timgoh0 ( 781057 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @10:57PM (#9255543)
    There are coverage maps for gsm readily available for various countries, including the US, at gsmworld.com [gsmworld.com]

    • Re:Coverage maps (Score:3, Informative)

      by Chris Pimlott ( 16212 )
      I was just looking at this the other day. The maps they have are nice, but they are seperated by provider. Which means if you want to find out who has coverage of your town, you can't just click on a single map, you have to check the coverage area of each individual provider...

      It'd also be nice if the maps were a bit bigger. Still, a useful resource. Trying to find coverage maps on providers' pages is a nightmare.
  • Sprint PCS has reasonable coverage and reasonable service, although here in DC I go into roaming whenever I use the Metro..

    What bothers me the most about them is the lack of phones with Bluetooth

    • Re:Sprint PCS (Score:3, Interesting)

      by servoled ( 174239 )
      I think Verizon is the only company with reception in the DC metro system, not sure if it is because of some exclusive licensing or if they are the only ones who have put up antennas there. I have Verizon and get pretty decent reception throughout my normal work commute (Blue and Orange lines), although there is one or two spots where I have dropped calls.

    • Sprint PCS has reasonable coverage and reasonable service ...

      Their pricing is terrible:

      • 100 SMS Text Messages: $5/mo. (Verizon's default is pay-per-use with no monthly charge: $0.10/send, $0.02/receive.)
      • Sprint PCS Free & Clear America: $5/mo. There is a catch: no more than half your monthly call time can be roaming or they'll terminate the service. (With Verizon, you generally don't roam.)
      • Unlimited Sprint PCS to PCS Calling: $5/mo. (Verizon has this for free on $39+/mo plans).
      • Sprint PCS Picture M

  • Why do they need a survey? (Score:4, Informative)

    by John Harrison ( 223649 ) <johnharrison@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @11:00PM (#9255558) Homepage Journal
    AT&T knows when their system drops a call. When I used their service a year ago they would credit you some amount for each dropped call. They could simply look at the % of calls that each tower drops. That would give them a good idea of where they need to put more towers. Of course, this would lead to them installing a tower in my house.
    • Read the article. They surveyed to find d-spots for all providers, and they are advertising that their network is much better than the rest, and that if you switch to them you won't have problems at those locations.
    • However, the cell system doesn't get any record when a person picks up their phone, and then sees "NO SERVICE" on their screen and gets upset. Dead spots aren't just about dropped calls, they're also about calls that the user wanted to make but their cell phone doesn't even get to learn about.
    • Let me make a correction ... AT&T Wireless CLAIMS to know when there are dropped calls. They CLAIM to offer "automatic" credit. However, this credit is based on particular behavior by the user and on a restrictive definition of the problem.

      In order for the user to get dropped call credit the call must be reported as ended on the user's phone and the user then must redial within a specified time, which I've been told is one minute.

      The process really begs the point of what is a dropped call. Apparently
  • Stuff like this would be nice to know... I can see a cell tower out my window. It's less than a mile away. But when I'm at home, I get no f***ing signal! If I want to use my cell phone at home, I need to be sitting in a certain place in the living room, facing out the window that views the cell tower -- otherwise no signal. A few blocks away, the signal is clear and strong. If I'd known this, I might have rented a different apartment... Is there a reason for this kind of void? If I switch carriers,

  • report = load of crap. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by robdeadtech ( 232013 ) * on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @11:00PM (#9255562)
    This is a load of crap. This just 10 extremely heavily populated places!!!!! These have to be the top 10 usage spots as well!

    from the report...
    The top ten Chicago Drop-spots include:

    1. O'Hare Airport
    2. Midway Airport
    3. Union Station
    4. Woodfield Mall
    5. Navy Pier
    6. Six Flags
    7. McCormick Place
    8. Old Orchard Mall
    9. Gurnee Mills
    10. Rosemont Convention Center

    This means one thing...

    RECEPTION ALWAYS SUCKS. We've collectively drank the "mobile Kool Aid" (And you thought mLife was just an advertising campaign) and now believe that paying 50 bucks a month for CB Radio quality reception is OK.

    So where in Chicago does reception suck?
    I can tell you everyone I most commonly drop out on:

    -S-turn on North Lake Shore Drive
    -East Wicker Park area
    -North Ravenswood/Lincoln Square area.

    • Imagine finding 500 non AT&T customers and asking them about drop out problems and lo they are all places where AT&T customers have no problems (unlikely?). Has AT&T installed stuff to block competitors' signals?

      I think the sample of around 500 people is too small to be significant anyway. I could survey that many people that I know with mobile phones and only three of them would have been near a hotel, conference centre or airport in the last 6 to 12 months.

      Here, we still have bugger all co
  • I have yet to see really detailed coverage maps for cellular provided by the providers themselves;

    I have yet to see coverage maps provided by the providers themselves which haven't listed the same areas as "coverage coming soon" for the last -ten years-.

    Not to mention, aren't wildly optimistic about coverage. Pretty much all of them show every major interstate as a full-service coverage area, and that's utter bullshit, even between New York and Boston on I-84/684 and the Mass Turnpike.

  • It has some power lines on the very same street they have like 3 different company antennas(who makes such decisions here!!). Ill tell my mom to try and get another job since in that street i even have trouble making the car alarm thingy to work.

    Its funny though its a banking area, so many white collars are walking round the corner just to stare at their mobiles with dismay.

  • My D-Spot (Score:5, Funny)

    by Halfbaked Plan ( 769830 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @11:05PM (#9255591)
    It's portable darkness.

    My pocket-sized personal cellphone jammer is, I mean.

    It's fun to press the button and watch people STFU and drive.

    • Re:My D-Spot (Score:3, Insightful)

      by merdaccia ( 695940 )

      It's fun to press the button and watch people STFU and drive.

      Don't you mean say "hello" a few times, look at their phone to see if they have signal, redial the number, wonder why they don't connect, look at the phone some more, go through a few menus to pull up a different number for the same person, try to call again, look at the phone one more time, and then maybe give up? Yeah, that makes an already bad situation much safer. It's one thing to jam the annoying bitch standing next to you in line ... bu

      • Re:My D-Spot (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        That's probably why the guy's name is "Halfbaked Plan" :)
  • on my old phone (POS Audiovox) I got awful reception, but with my Motorolla 120C I get good reception pretty much everywhere.
  • I live in Richmond, VA, and have Sprint PCS. I have been totally nonplussed with their service. I get no coverage anywhere near my home, and I drop calls consistently. I've had my phone diagnosed, had the latest firmware installed, et cetera. Sprint reps keep telling me they don't have to guarantee coverage in any one location -- they just have to provide coverage /somewhere/ within their total coverage area.
  • Apparently on my couch in my apt. Consequently, this is also my G-spot, as that's where I'm using my new laptop to write this over 802.11g. (btw, wifi-box [sourceforge.net] will rock your world if you've got a Linksys WRT54G router)
  • They called up the other day and gave me 500 more minutes a month at no additional charge if we would agree to recontract for an additional year. I had the Suncom(before they were bought by AT&T Wireless) unlimited incoming call plan (10$ a month for no limit on incoming calls and no per minute charges) and previously they had refused to allow my account any plan modifications unless I gave that up. They said this time I didn't have to so I gladly recontracted. So they are worried about something or som

  • D-Spot (Score:5, Funny)

    by k4_pacific ( 736911 ) <`moc.oohay' `ta' `cificap_4k'> on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @11:17PM (#9255669) Homepage Journal
    Student: I thought the D-Spot was a myth!

    Teacher: You're thinking of something else, son.

    Click here for an explanation of this post. [slashdot.org]

  • The two worst D-Spots are easy to fix! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @11:20PM (#9255687)
    The obsession with the small little handheld cell phone is one I just plain do not understand. Sure, it looks cool from an image standpoint, but it's senseless from a tech standpoint.

    I really wish the embeded-in-the-car cell phone hadn't gone out of style. Next time you're in the passenger seat of somebody's car, compare the reception of the car's AM/FM radio to the reception of a handheld Walkman. It's just plain going to be no contest on stations that are not extremely local. The car radio has access to a nice big antenna outside of the car, the handheld device doesn't. Simply put, you'd get better reception in your car if we still had the little swizzle stick on the roof.

    The second most annoying dead spot is the home, and exactly the same principle can apply. A roof-mounted mast gets much better TV reception of stations more than 10 miles away than rabbit ears on top of the TV set.

    Bluetooth or WiFi would be a great tool to use in order to make the "last mile" link between the handset and the actual RF transmitter and reciever. Why should the user be expected to walk around their own home because one side of the house has coverage but the bathroom doesn't? It'd do wonders for apparent coverage and battery life if our handsets would pass off the task of actually speaking to the cell network to hard-mounted devices that have access to either grid power or at least the car battery, so the device in our hands can save its battery life for the times that we're really out on the road and need the handheld transmitter.

    The dead spot that's most likely to make a user switch carriers isn't the airport, it's the places where the user spends the most of their non-working time... their home and their car. If they're getting cell calls on company time, then the company's responsible for picking and paying a carrier that works at the work site. Still, a localized dead spot can usually be solved simply by using a short last-mile connection to get to a high point outdoors where radio signals usually are clearer...

  • Um, duh? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by baldmaggots ( 539673 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @11:22PM (#9255700)
    AT&T drops calls? What? And they drop calls in Chicago's airports? Duh! numpeople>numcellchannels -> dropped calls. Why is this news again?

  • to be expected? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by klaricmn ( 244131 )
    I don't know that this list of the top ten drop spots really shows much. Those places were likely the most frequently listed because it is probable that a large number of people in their sample group spent time in these areas because they are common destinations.

    What isn't shown here is that it's probably just as likely for a customer at any other random location in the city to drop a call. While AT&T and others should focus on areas that get heavy traffic, they must not do so at the expense of the r

  • AT&T, Central Texas (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Vrallis ( 33290 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @11:29PM (#9255737) Homepage
    I've travelled all over Texas quite a bit, based out of San Antonio, and use AT&T for my work cell phone.

    In any of the larger towns (50k+) it tends to be good, without many dead spots.

    The IH35 and IH10/90 corridors have good coverage.

    Taking 281 between San Antonio and Dallas is another story. If you've taken this route, odds are good that if I mention 'that McDonald's on the hill in Lampasass,' you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about. This is the only location for about 250 miles that you can get a signal.

    Of course, west Texas heading towards El Paso or heading up towards Amarillo is mostly dead once you turn off IH90.

    Most of the sticks have spotty service, which unfortunately, I'm in too often. I'm told that Verizon has good coverage in these fringe areas.

    I've used my AT&T cell on trips taking me to Denver, Burbank/Valencia California, and to Calgary/Banff (Canada...duh). All those locations were good.

    Odd spots:

    The Sybase offices on the 19th (?) floor of Lincoln Center in Dallas. If you put your cell phone down on the table, you can watch it rotate between Digital, Extended Area, and Roam, and watch the antenna bar go up and down--while the phone sits still.

    The Amerisuites near Aurora (Denver) Colorado. As soon as you walk into the main lobby, your signal dies. Step into the elevator, and as soon as the doors close you get a signal again. It's clear all the way up and back down, until the elevator doors open again at the lobby. Walk outside the lobby about 30 ft from the building, and you get a full signal again.

    Hey, it beats the hell out of Sprint PCS. That was just a total POS, and rarely worked at all.
    • Just take IH-35... then you can have coverage while you sit in a traffic jam going through Austin. :) (Yeah, I'm in Austin. Yeah, we need a bypass.)

      I switched away from AT&T mainly due to their crummy coverage throughout central Texas. I'm surprised that you haven't been able to roam onto T-Mobile around 281, though; they've got a much nicer coverage footprint around here. The day I went out to Enchanted Rock and was able to see (but not use!) their signal was the day I decided to switch.

      • Austin is the only reason to take 281 instead of 35 =P

        I haven't gone that way in a couple years. Perhaps it's improved.

        Besides, my phone may have been partly to blame the last time. I started losing signal more and more often (Nokia 6160), so finally replaced it (6560).

        I really don't like it--slow as hell, and reception is better, but still a tad flaky. Unfortunately, it's the only phone they offered that had a somewhat 'normal' keypad on it. Now you have all these damned circular rockers and othe

  • Pointless Article (Score:4, Informative)

    by Remik ( 412425 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @11:32PM (#9255752)
    That list was pointless...it was essentially the top ten highest foot traffic areas in the city. Of course you will have the highest concentration of dropped calls where you have the highest concentration of people trying to use their phones.

    Please, address a real issue, like the fact that Hyde Park has awful coverage when factoring the number of customers in the community.

    -R

  • Ask for specific maps (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rnelsonee ( 98732 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @11:33PM (#9255758)
    I have yet to see really detailed coverage maps for cellular provided by the providers themselves

    I know that T-Mobile has very detailed maps that employees may access -- I'm sure the major carriers have this as well, so just ask a salesguy when you look into your next phone.

    Since my area is a little rural, but between some big cities (Baltimore and DC), my cell reception can vary wildly. So I asked the rep at the store, and he goes on the internet and shows me very detailed maps of their coverage (tenths of a mile in scale). I asked if I could view these pages at home, and he said it's only for T-Mobile use, and so it's not publicly available. But the data is there.

    • Yeah we've got internal maps (I work for a rural cell carrier), we pay lots of money for those and have to keep them confidential to stay competitive. If $big_cell_carrier knew we had a known dead spot at the mall, they could have their sales people ask "Do you go to the mall, our service works and those other assholes don't", we would be farked, our internal maps (and call accounting) allow us to capacity plan for dead areas, if we are really losing traffic at point A and there is a business case for it,
    • I was looking to see if someone had seen the t-mobile maps before. I once was going to buy a t-mobile phone but the salesman talked me OUT of it because of the location of my home. He then showed me a very detailed map of my area and it looked that my entire block was in a gray zone. (surrounded by good reception). I did happen to live on the side of a small hill. I assume they modeled the signal with the location of their towers and topography. I was very suprised because this was at a T-mobile store
      • T-Mobile also has a very generous 14-day no-questions-asked return policy, so had you signed up for service and gotten home to discover "NO SERVICE" at your house, you could have taken the phone right back to the store. Reps at the company owned store know that if they sell to a customer who's going to boomerrang like that on them, they're not going to get comission for that sale so they might as well not waste their time making the sale. Push that non-customer aside nicely, and move on to those who might a
      • If you ever decide to switch, go back to T-Mobile and try their phone risk-free like the other poster (I think it's only 3 days though, not 14). I only say this because on T-Mobile's map, my work's complex was the only grey spot on there. I tried it anyway (because no other carriers worked at my house, and I have a work phone anyway), only to find I do get reception (2/5 bars) -- good enough that I've never dropped a call. YMMV, but that's my case.

  • europe (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mtenhagen ( 450608 ) on Tuesday May 25, 2004 @11:35PM (#9255774) Homepage
    How come mobile phone users are having so many issues in the V.S. From the above commments it sounds like europa 5 years ago.

    Are the united states only recently switching to gsm? Europa has an 95% gsm coverage (just from my experience). Shouldnt the V.S. reach that as well? (metropolitan arreas atleast).

    I already consider it normal to phone in the subways ;-)

    • Re:europe (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ChiaKemp ( 713567 )
      The U.S. is sorta switching to GSM, but we also have a bunch of competing incompatible mobile standards which work to slow coverage expansion. Oh, and it may just be me, but it seems there's little hope of picking a single standard in the future... the market is pretty indecisive.

    • Re:europe (Score:3, Informative)

      by Kiryat Malachi ( 177258 )
      Let's not forget that Europe has a significantly higher population density than most of the US, which makes it a lot cheaper for the carriers to provide high levels of coverage.

      • Re:europe (Score:3, Informative)

        by elrond1999 ( 88166 )
        BS, Norway does NOT have a higher population density than the US, and Norway is NOT flat :) It was not very cheap for the two carriers here to provide near 100% coverage in populated areas. Calls are certainly not dropped in any of the big cities, not even indoors.. But then this may be caused by strong regulation that has untill recently forbidden any carriers from starting unless they could cover a very large percentage of the population..

      • Re:europe (Score:3, Informative)

        by MS ( 18681 )
        In the Dolomites (Northern Italy) you are encouraged to take the cell-phone with you, when you climb the mountains. The mountain peaks are all covered - so in case of an accident you may call 118 (the italian 911).
        The mountains are not what I would call "densily populated".

        No wonder children in Europe usually get their fist cell-phone at the age of 8.

        :-)


  • Ok, now can anyone tell me what 1 'bar' of signal strengh represents?

    • Re:Unit of Measure (Score:2, Informative)

      by rwoodford ( 611449 )
      I put my nokia 5160 in test mode and did some tests. 4 bars is about -51dB to -66dB, 3 bars is about -67dB to -83dB, 2 bars is about -84dB to -97dB, 1 bar is about -98dB to -113dB. Each bar seems to be about 15-16 dB. In my experience, call quality is nearing the awful range at about -100dB.
  • even if you have full reception (full bars) your call can still be dropped for whatever reason. people seem to take the two as being linked, but it's not necessarily the case, at least from my experiences (Cingular, AT&T, Sprint).

  • Mapping at AT&T Wireless (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Err ( 21062 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @12:18AM (#9255980)

    I have yet to see really detailed coverage maps for cellular provided by the providers themselves; in cities especially a one-block difference can mean 3 bars of reception or none.

    You likely never will. Before getting fed up with the IT industry, especially the corporate IT industry, I was a technical manager at AT&T Wireless. My team worked on a GIS project to show coverage data, among other things. We wanted to use the actual coverage information which would have shown gaps in the coverage and everything, but the legal department wouldn't allow it. Instead of actual RF propagation data, we wound up using hand drawn approximations, then forbidding the user from zooming in to a level of detail that they could hold us accountable for the accuracy of the maps on a local level. Because Engineering already had the data in a compatible format, it would have actually been easier to use the true data... Oh well... :-)

  • Only three bars? My phone can get 4!!!!

  • detailed map... (Score:2, Informative)

    by d4rkmoon ( 749223 )
    It's not as easy as it sounds. Problem with Chicago areas are that the buildings create multipath for the RF signal and also do wonders with interference and pilot surprise (if you don't understand these terms, you probably don't work in cellular). Basically speaking, there are times that the signal will bounce off a building in such a fashion that you'll get very good "coverage" and other times you won't. No carrier in their right mind is going to give you one of these maps, although I myself have see

  • What they don't say (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ctwxman ( 589366 ) <me@@@geofffox...com> on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @01:27AM (#9256255) Homepage
    From the article: "In addition to the survey, AT&T Wireless customers who enroll in the new national plan, GSM America, as well as those already on one of the company's qualifying national GSM plans, automatically get the benefit of paying no roaming charges anywhere in the United States. " The implication is, where there's a signal, you can call. But, the truth is quite different. No charge for roaming means limited roaming. Roaming only where they have agreements in place - not everywhere there's a signal.
  • "I have yet to see really detailed coverage maps for cellular provided by the providers themselves; in cities especially a one-block difference can mean 3 bars of reception or none."

    And chances are you never will. You must not realize how utterly ridiculous, not to mention cost prohibitive it is to put a "Can you hear me now" commercial into actual practice. Yeah, you're going to see a map displaying the dead zone between forth and main reeeeal soon.

  • AT&T Can Suck IT!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sockonafish ( 228678 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @01:48AM (#9256353)
    Why can AT&T suck it? Because they charge $ .02 a kilobyte for their GPRS network while killing all modem calls made on their phones. I thought I'd be able to use all those currently unused minutes while on the road, dialing up with my Bluetooth phone, but no dice! And the AT&T rep? "Uhh, you need a data plan..." "I have a data plan, but I want to use my free university dial-up instead of GPRS." "Uhh, here's an mMode brochure."

    Bah.

  • try living in a faraday cage... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by utexaspunk ( 527541 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:11AM (#9256641)
    I've had AT&T for 3 years now, and everything has been great, but I just moved to my parents' house and they have an aluminum roof, aluminum siding, and metal screens on all the windows. Can you say NO SIGNAL? On the upshot, the wi-fi is clean and clear throughout the house... :)

  • Coverage gaps and a pending lawsuit ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by freepath ( 745838 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @03:49AM (#9256771)
    Coverage is a major problem with AT&T Wireless in the Los Angeles area. So bad, in fact, that there is a pending lawsuit about the matter, Petrove, Wireless Consumers Alliance, et. al. v. AT&T Wireless [lchb.org]. The page has not been updated recently, but it's a live case that is working its way through the courts here. I believe they are trying for class action status if they have not been granted it already.

    Basically, the case centers around alleged false advertising claims made about coverage area. I can personally tell you after being stuck with a bad contract that the AT&T coverage area sucks, as I can't drive on the freeway for more than five minutes without losing (or "dropping") a call. The page talks about one lady who was carjacked and got shot in the face after she tried to call 911 but her cell phone didn't work. About two months ago I saw an accident on the 210 Freeway where the driver was bleeding and knocked unconscious. Over the course of a few miles I must have called 911 like five times on hold, then getting cut off, then finally dialing the operator. Instead of the local city the cell operator transfered me to San Bernardino County, which is about 30 miles away, and the dispatcher asked me to try again. I had to tell him that my cell phone wasn't working so he had to make the call for me, oh, and by the way, I might get cut off again.

    My whole experience with the calling areas here has been bad, but I'm not sure quite as bad as my experiences with the cellular contract that got me here in the first place. Luckily, it just expired, and I am switching carriers ASAP -- that is if AT&T has gotten its number portability together [slashdot.org]. Bad AT&T Wireless service is a common theme [toyz.org] in the L.A. area.

  • Amazing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @04:33AM (#9256912) Homepage
    It is amazing to read these dozens of posts, coming from the most industrialised country in the world, about where you can and can't call. I can drive from Northern Denmark to the south of Spain and not lose coverage once. I can phone in the tunnels in Brussels, in the Copenhagen subway, in the chunnel and on the french ski-slopes. It goes to show what happens if you don't choose a standardised solution...

    • Let's See. (Score:3, Informative)

      by /dev/trash ( 182850 )
      N. Denmark to S. Spain, would be approxiamately Maine to FL, on I-95, where coverage is 99%.

      Listen, Europe is smaller than the US. Europe is also more centralized.

  • My D-spot (Score:3, Funny)

    by ColaMan ( 37550 ) on Wednesday May 26, 2004 @04:37AM (#9256930) Journal
    extends for several hundred kilometers outside my town in any direction - once you're more than 20k's outside of town, you might as well turn your phone off. This is from Telstra, Australia's largest telco, who claim to cover 95+% of the population.

    My phone has no reception where I work either... but that's because I work 700m underground in a lead mine, so I'll forgive them on that part :-)

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