Re: Hey Navas....

On Fri, 24 Aug 2007 01:53:04 -0700, SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com>
wrote in <46ce9c29$0$27161$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>:

>Maybe it's because I tend to travel more to out-of-the-way places during
>the summer months, but this summer I seemed to be in more places where
>AT&T/Cingular had no coverage and Verizon did have coverage than ever.
>This includes sections of the California coast near Big Sur, big chunks
>of southern Oregon, and part of Lafayette on the north side of 24. Most
>of this was digital coverage, though there was still some AMPS.

Maybe it's because you have an axe to grind against GSM in general and
AT&T in particular, to the point where you make up stuff to bash them.

In fact coverage by AT&T is as good or better than Verizon in Northern
California, as I've repeatedly shown in rebuttals to your prior
bashings.

(I can't speak to coverage in Oregon, but I'd hazard a guess that you're
off the mark there as well.)

--
Best regards, FAQ FOR CINGULAR WIRELESS:
John Navas <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cingular_Wireless_FAQ>

Cubit wrote:
> My parents visited Dana Point last week and their AT&T phones didn't
> function. Their new Verizon phones are shipping Fedex today. I added them
> to my account Friday, and we plan to split the bill 3 ways....
>
> My brother lives on a golf course in La Quinta, California, and Verizon
> seems to be the only carrier that works. Cingular was dead.
>
> The TDMA switch forced on AT&T customers was total bull****. They used the
> transition to cram customers into new higher rate plans (at least they did
> for us).

<snip>

Part of the problem with the switch from TDMA was the loss of AMPS.
Aside from a couple of handsets that supported GSM and AMPS (and TDMA
for that matter), the loss of AMPS resulted in a great deal of lost
coverage in fringe areas, even areas that were in semi-rural parts of
cities. But even when AMPS is gone, the fact is that CDMA has greater
range than GSM, so you'll still never get as good coverage with GSM
unless they put in a _lot_ more sites and in many areas sites aren't
permitted.

For example, in the east Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, GSM coverage
has never been too good outside the core city. I was up in Lafayette
three weeks ago, in the far upper left of this map,
"http://i16.tinypic.com/4oqixyu.jpg". The people had just finished a big
new house there, and I noticed two new Verizon phones, when I knew that
this couple had always been on Cingular. He said that Verizon was the
only carrier with any coverage up there (and he really wanted an
iPhone!--too bad). The AT&T map shows "moderate" coverage, but it seems
like "moderate" is a synonym for "no coverage." The Verizon map shows
"Digital Coverage."

When I was helping plan the scout family camp that we had this past
weekend in the Santa Cruz mountains, we did alert people that there
might not be cellular service available. Turns out that Verizon worked
acceptably well (not perfect), while AT&T worked barely at all. While we
didn't really want people gabbing on their phones during the weekend, we
did have to have some latecomers bring up some items. One guy had a new
tent from Big 5 and when he opened it on Friday night at 8:00 p.m. there
was just a rain-fly and half the poles. He was able to call Big 5, and
high-tail it back down to Sunnyvale where they stayed open for him, and
did the exchange for a complete tent. You never know when you're going
to benefit from having coverage!

That's the situation all over the Bay Area, you can get decent AT&T
coverage in most of the urban and suburban areas, but go outside to the
rural and semi-rural areas, and you're usually out of luck on AT&T. I
think that's why AT&T has always come out so poorly in all the tests and
surveys, a lot of people around here _like_ to leave the urban areas for
recreation, and while it may be unreasonable to expect wireless
coverage, the GSM users see a lot of people being able to make calls
where they can't.

What's really dishonest is what some of the wireless store employees say
to unknowing customers regarding coverage. It usually goes something
like "no carrier has 100% coverage." They try to make it a binary choice
between 100% coverage and less than 100% coverage, when in reality there
are vast differences in coverage quality, as shown by all the
independent surveys.


[Copied to alt.cellular.attws. Please post all alt.cellular.cingular
posts to alt.cellular.attws as well. The Cingular name is going away,
and alt.cellular.attws is the proper venue for posts regarding AT&T's
Wireless Service.]