Seeking thought on prepaid Go Phones

Todd Allcock wrote:

> GSM coverage, or Cingular coverage. There's a difference, you know.
> Steven has always struck me as a "technology doesn't matter as long as it
> works" type, although he seems to believe, IIRC, that CDMA is a superior
> technolgy, all else being equal. I'm not sure I'd disagree, frankly,
> although I personally am a GSM user, more because that's what the carrier
> I choose to use uses, not because I'm religiouly devoted to it, or any,
> wireless technology.

True. I have GSM phones and I have CDMA phones. When I go to Asia,
except Korea, I buy a prepaid SIM and I'm quite happy to use GSM. In the
U.S., and especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'd be very unhappy
to not have CDMA/AMPS because there are so many areas that still lack
GSM coverage.

> Again, I disagree with your assessment. Steven has been fighting a war
> in defense of analog fallback and it's necessity even in this day and age
> because _he_ relies on it, and you think it's an anachronism and
> completely unnecessary because _you_ don't.

I don't rely on it in the sense that I would expect coverage everywhere.
But I do frequently travel to parts of the Bay Area, and other parts of
California, where it's nicer to have coverage than to not have it. I
think that there are very few instances where having coverage is a life
and death issue, though those do exist.

If I didn't have AMPS on at least one phone, I'd likely alter some
routes I take through the Sierra's, and stick to I-80 and US 50 which
have coverage on CDMA and GSM for pretty much their entire length.

I wonder what's going to happen with On-Star if AMPS is ever shut down.
The newer systems also have CDMA, but it's AMPS that makes On-Star so
useful, since you can summon help even in out of the way places.

---

› See More: Seeking thought on prepaid Go Phones

On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 15:48:24 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
wrote in <[email protected]>:

>Todd Allcock wrote:
>
>> GSM coverage, or Cingular coverage. There's a difference, you know.
>> Steven has always struck me as a "technology doesn't matter as long as it
>> works" type, although he seems to believe, IIRC, that CDMA is a superior
>> technolgy, all else being equal. I'm not sure I'd disagree, frankly,
>> although I personally am a GSM user, more because that's what the carrier
>> I choose to use uses, not because I'm religiouly devoted to it, or any,
>> wireless technology.
>
>True. I have GSM phones and I have CDMA phones. When I go to Asia,
>except Korea, I buy a prepaid SIM and I'm quite happy to use GSM. In the
>U.S., and especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'd be very unhappy
>to not have CDMA/AMPS because there are so many areas that still lack
>GSM coverage.

In fact Cingular has very good coverage all over the San Francisco Bay
Area, arguably the best of any carrier, better than Verizon, although
all carriers of course have places (holes) where some other carrier is
better.

>> Again, I disagree with your assessment. Steven has been fighting a war
>> in defense of analog fallback and it's necessity even in this day and age
>> because _he_ relies on it, and you think it's an anachronism and
>> completely unnecessary because _you_ don't.
>
>I don't rely on it in the sense that I would expect coverage everywhere.
>But I do frequently travel to parts of the Bay Area, and other parts of
>California, where it's nicer to have coverage than to not have it. I
>think that there are very few instances where having coverage is a life
>and death issue, though those do exist.
>
>If I didn't have AMPS on at least one phone, I'd likely alter some
>routes I take through the Sierra's, and stick to I-80 and US 50 which
>have coverage on CDMA and GSM for pretty much their entire length.

Makes no sense to depend on any cell phone that much -- too many areas
with no coverage at all. If you want real safety, get a PLB, or at
least a satellite phone.

>I wonder what's going to happen with On-Star if AMPS is ever shut down.
>The newer systems also have CDMA, but it's AMPS that makes On-Star so
>useful, since you can summon help even in out of the way places.

OnStar is transitioning smoothly to CDMA. AMPS isn't a real issue.

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

At 29 Nov 2006 15:48:24 -0800 SMS wrote:

> I wonder what's going to happen with On-Star if AMPS is ever shut down.

The AMPS OnStar users have already received their "it's been nice,
but..." letters fromwhat I understand.

> The newer systems also have CDMA, but it's AMPS that makes On-Star so
useful, since you can summon help even in out of the way places.
>

Allow me to be a cynic, but OnStar exists to sell cars, not to rescue
stuck motorists, so I suspect losing AMPS makes no difference to them!

And, to take John Navas' side for a moment ;-), I suspect the percentage
of AMPS-only areas is small enough to be statistically insignificant,
particularly compared to areas that have absolutely no cell service, so
the only ones who'll notice are the extremely small number of OnStar
users who broke down in the same AMPS-only area twice- once before the
shutoff and once after! ;-)

Todd Allcock wrote:

> The "no 850 roaming" blurb on the site seems to be a legacy quote. The
> current map shows 850 coverage in some areas, and many on HoFo have
> reported roaming on 850.

That's very interesting, since if their prepaid coverage is approaching
the same level of their postpaid coverage, then T-Mobile prepaid is a
heck of a deal at 10¢ per minute.

I suppose that like other carriers, you can't roam onto a competitors
network solely because you're in a dead spot of the native network, you
actually have to be in an area where there is no native coverage. That
would rule out T-Mobile for me, at least for use at my house, as they're
still fighting to put up a site near me (been about six years now,
started with Cingular trying to put one up, and now T-Mobile has taken
over the fight).

OTOH, with a PagePlus $80 card you're also at 10¢ per minute, but you
have to add some more time every four months which is more of a hassle
than with T-Mobile's one-year deal for $100.

In any case, it's hard to see the attraction of the Cingular GoPhone.
There are other prepaid plans, that even use the Cingular network, that
are a better deal if you want GSM, and for better coverage and lower
cost there are prepaid plans that use Verizon's CDMA network. I'm happy
with PagePlus, and it's been around a long time, but it's definitely a
low-budget operation. Still, I think that there's a market for an MVNO
that keeps prices down by not spending a gazillion dollars on
advertising and promotions. Certainly in terms of coverage, PagePlus has
a big advantage where I live, since Verizon has far better coverage than
Cingular, Sprint, or T-Mobile in the San Francisco Bay Area.

On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 18:26:17 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
wrote in <[email protected]>:

>In any case, it's hard to see the attraction of the Cingular GoPhone.

Why am I not surprised. LOL

>... Certainly in terms of coverage, PagePlus has
>a big advantage where I live, since Verizon has far better coverage than
>Cingular, Sprint, or T-Mobile in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In fact Cingular has very good coverage all over the San Francisco Bay
Area, arguably the best of any carrier, better than Verizon, although
all carriers of course have places (holes) where some other carrier is
better.

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

Todd Allcock wrote:
> At 29 Nov 2006 15:48:24 -0800 SMS wrote:
>
>> I wonder what's going to happen with On-Star if AMPS is ever shut down.
>
> The AMPS OnStar users have already received their "it's been nice,
> but..." letters fromwhat I understand.

Are the newer systems tri-band, or just CDMA?

> Allow me to be a cynic, but OnStar exists to sell cars, not to rescue
> stuck motorists, so I suspect losing AMPS makes no difference to them!

LOL, very true.

> And, to take John Navas' side for a moment ;-), I suspect the percentage
> of AMPS-only areas is small enough to be statistically insignificant,
> particularly compared to areas that have absolutely no cell service,

Just in my own locale, the San Francisco Bay Area, there are many places
that are popular family destinations where AMPS is still the only
service, such as a lot of county, state, and national parks. Some of
these areas will get CDMA eventually, due to the changeout of the
emergency call boxes from AMPS to CDMA, but CalTrans and the counties
don't seem to be in a big rush to do this. GSM users will be out of luck
as without government help it's uneconomical to construct towers in
these areas.

In terms of raw area, you're probably correct about it being
statistically insignificant, but in terms of coverage along rural roads
and coverage outside towns, it's not insignificant. Drive up the north
California coast sometime and you'll have long stretches of AMPS-only
coverage. Ditto for a lot of mountain roads in the Sierra's, Santa Cruz
Mountains, and Trinity-Alps.

The 2006 coverage quality surveys were conducted in 2005, when a large
percentage of Verizon users still had AMPS-capable phones. For the 2007
survey it'll be interesting to see if the gap has narrowed now that most
Verizon users are getting digital-only phones.

> so
> the only ones who'll notice are the extremely small number of OnStar
> users who broke down in the same AMPS-only area twice- once before the
> shutoff and once after! ;-)

Well these are GM cars after all. Maybe the number won't be as small as
you think!

At 29 Nov 2006 18:26:17 -0800 SMS wrote:

> That's very interesting, since if their prepaid coverage is approaching
the same level of their postpaid coverage, then T-Mobile prepaid is a
heck of a deal at 10¢ per minute.

It is. If they'd add real data to prepaid I'd probably switch my
postpaid account to prepaid as well.

> I suppose that like other carriers, you can't roam onto a competitors
network solely because you're in a dead spot of the native network, you
actually have to be in an area where there is no native coverage.

True. I had that problem in Omaha. Cingular has good coverage there,
but T-Mo doesn't. I could roam on Cingular outside of Omaha, getting
excellent coverage, but in town the SIM refused to roam on Cingular.

Ironically that flies in the face of the old saw that T-Mo's good in town
but bad in th sticks! ;-)

> That would rule out T-Mobile for me, at least for use at my house, as
they're still fighting to put up a site near me (been about six years
now, started with Cingular trying to put one up, and now T-Mobile has
taken over the fight).

Good luck to them! Maybe you'll be a candidate for their UMA service
they're test marketing in Seattle. You get a combo cell/VoIP phone and a
VoIP router from T-Mo. When in range of your router the calls go throgh
your broadband connection, elsewhere they go on the GSM network.


> OTOH, with a PagePlus $80 card you're also at 10¢ per minute, but you
have to add some more time every four months which is more of a hassle
than with T-Mobile's one-year deal for $100.

Not as much of a hassle as remembering to use each of my Beyond phones
every 60 daysto avoid shutoffs. (Even worse I have to drag them
somewhere in the car because I have no Cingular coverage in my
neighborhood!)

> In any case, it's hard to see the attraction of the Cingular GoPhone..

Agreed on the true prepaid ("pay as you go") plan, but the "pick your
plan" hybrid is intresting as a high-use alternative for the credit-
challenged or contract-phobic.

> There are other prepaid plans, that even use the Cingular network, that
are a better deal if you want GSM,

Beyond and Speakout jump to mind. Speakout's 365-day refills are good
for low-useage customers.

> and for better coverage and lower cost there are prepaid plans that use
Verizon's CDMA network. I'm happy with PagePlus, and it's been around a
long time, but it's definitely a low-budget operation.

As is Beyond. One of thes days I've got to look into what it takes to
start an MVNO- it sounds like a hoot. I couldn't name it after myself,
of ourse, or potential customers would think it's niche was porn! ;-)
Then again, that's one niche market that no MVNO has gone after yet- it
could be the anti-Disney Mobile...

> Certainly in terms of coverage, PagePlus has a big advantage where I
live, since Verizon has far better coverage than Cingular, Sprint, or T-
Mobile in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Can't resist a little Navas-baiting to close with, huh? ;-)

Todd Allcock wrote:

> As is Beyond. One of thes days I've got to look into what it takes to
> start an MVNO- it sounds like a hoot.

It may be harder now than when Beyond and PagePlus started, because the
real carriers are more concerned about competing with themselves.

I'd wager that Beyond and PagePlus operate with staffs of well under ten
employees.

> I couldn't name it after myself,
> of ourse, or potential customers would think it's niche was porn! ;-)
> Then again, that's one niche market that no MVNO has gone after yet- it
> could be the anti-Disney Mobile...

Reminds me of when I needed to order some stuff at work from a company
named Essex Computer. The site was blocked by our crack IT department,
because of "sex" in the URL. When I asked them to unblock it, they
instead asked if I could find another company that sold the item I
needed to buy.

>> Certainly in terms of coverage, PagePlus has a big advantage where I
> live, since Verizon has far better coverage than Cingular, Sprint, or T-
> Mobile in the San Francisco Bay Area.
>
> Can't resist a little Navas-baiting to close with, huh? ;-)

Huh? What has he been saying now? Sorry, I kill-filed him long ago.

I don't think that anyone disputes all the survey results from JD Power,
Consumer Reports, and Bay Area Consumer Checkbook. Verizon has very
large lead in terms of coverage over the other carriers in this area.
The Consumer Reports survey was especially good, as it was a
statistically extremely large sample size, and they divided it up by
geographic area. Remember, they weren't asking "who's the best
carrier?", they were asking about the subscribers own experiences with
their own carrier. With less and less AMPS capable phones being sold,
and with Verizon's smaller calling areas with Americas Choice II, I'll
bet that in the next survey that Verizon doesn't do quite as well.

Part of the Verizon advantage is no doubt their AMPS network, but they
also have better digital coverage than Cingular or Sprint or T-Mobile,
at least in the San Francisco Bay Area. Cingular _is_ improving their
digital coverage, no doubt about that. A few months ago, my niece in
Pleasanton, Cingular's western regional headquarters, finally got
coverage out in her neighborhood (about 1 mile from Cingular's
buildings!). She ran out and bought one of those iTunes phones, she was
so excited about finally having coverage.

One negative about PagePlus that I didn't think of before, it often
delays me. I'll be waiting for my daughter after some event, and she'll
take an inordinately long time. When I ask her what took so long, it's
often: "I had to let ___________ use my phone to call their parents, her
phone doesn't work here." I thought I could get by with the minimum
amount of new time every four months, but thanks to Sprint, Cingular,
and T-Mobile, I'm subsidizing a portion of the seventh grade's calling.
My daughter is in journalism, and she just wrote an article researching
backpacks, health effects, etc. Next semester she's doing an article
about cell phones, comparing cost, coverage, and phone models.

Todd Allcock wrote:

> Ironically that flies in the face of the old saw that T-Mo's good in town
> but bad in th sticks! ;-)

Sprint has the same issue. With Verizon's worsening of their America's
Choice II plan, and the elimination of paid off-extended network
roaming, Sprint actually often has better coverage out in the sticks
because they can roam onto the AMPS part of the smaller rural carriers
(and often the AMPS coverage is magnitudes greater than the digital
coverage, such as in the Sierra Nevada mountains). Unfortunately, Sprint
lags in the urban and suburban areas because they were late to the game
in terms of getting the prime tower locations, and because 1900 MHz
needs a lot more towers to cover a given area than 800 MHz. It's similar
to Cingular's problems in the western region prior to their acquisition
of AT&T Wireless and their 800 MHz network

On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 21:10:37 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
wrote in <[email protected]>:

>Just in my own locale, the San Francisco Bay Area, there are many places
>that are popular family destinations where AMPS is still the only
>service, such as a lot of county, state, and national parks. ...

There is digital coverage in the great majority of the San Francisco Bay
Area, including many (most?) parks.

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

On Thu, 30 Nov 2006 06:39:06 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
wrote in <[email protected]>:

>I don't think that anyone disputes all the survey results from JD Power,
>Consumer Reports, and Bay Area Consumer Checkbook.

What they dispute are your misstatements about them.

>Verizon has very
>large lead in terms of coverage over the other carriers in this area.

In fact differences between carriers are relatively small, on the order
of sampling error.

>The Consumer Reports survey was especially good, as it was a
>statistically extremely large sample size, and they divided it up by
>geographic area.

Actually not a good statistical sample, due to its self-selected nature
from a non-representative universe, and breaking it down only makes it
less valid.

>Part of the Verizon advantage is no doubt their AMPS network, but they
>also have better digital coverage than Cingular or Sprint or T-Mobile,
>at least in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Cingular actually has arguably the best digital coverage in general, not
only in the San Francisco Bay Area, but also nationwide.

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

On Thu, 30 Nov 2006 07:41:42 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
wrote in <[email protected]>:

>... Unfortunately, Sprint
>lags in the urban and suburban areas because they were late to the game
>in terms of getting the prime tower locations, and because 1900 MHz
>needs a lot more towers to cover a given area than 800 MHz. It's similar
>to Cingular's problems in the western region prior to their acquisition
>of AT&T Wireless and their 800 MHz network

At least you've now dropped the "4x to 5x" claim. Apparently you now
realize how patently wrong that was.

* Maximum power in the 800 band is 3 watts.
* Maximum power in the 1900 band is 2 watts.

It's not intuitively obvious, but that's only about 18% less range for
1900, or a maximum of about 20% more towers along a flat rural highway
strip, or a maximum of 50% more towers in area coverage, and then only
when range is limited only by maximum power, which is rarely the case in
metro areas. Tower spacing is only near maximum in flat rural areas (and
current small handsets don't come close to maximum power levels), so
your claim about metro areas is patently bogus.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

BACKGROUND:

1. Steven has an admitted grudge against Cingular (because of poor
coverage at his wife's workplace), and flames it (and GSM) incessantly,
much of the time with things he simply makes up, as he did here.

2. Studies of carriers, including those he purports to cite, actually
show small differences between carriers (not a "wide margin" as Steven
claims) that are often within the margin of error. For example, recent
JD Powers ratings of major carrier call quality ranged from only +/-2%
to only +/-5% in its six regions.

3. Results for Cingular and Sprint-Nextel are patently distorted by
combining dissimilar technologies and networks (e.g., TDMA/D-AMPS + old
GSM + new GSM; CDMA + iDEN). This is roughly like claiming the average
person has one breast.

4. CU surveys can't be validly generalized because they are a
self-selected sample of a non-representative universe (CR subscribers).
(Usenet of course has a similar problem.)

5. Results showing T-Mobile with better network performance than
Cingular in the West are patently nonsensical, given that Cingular uses
the same network as T-Mobile (the old Cingular "orange" network), plus
the extensive ATTWS ("blue" network).

6. Verizon doesn't have coverage in some of the areas Steven claims;
e.g., large sections of Skyline Blvd, and nearby sections of Page Mill
Road and Big Basin Way.

7. All carriers have coverage holes. There is no one best carrier in
all areas, as Steven claims. I've previously identified some areas
where Cingular coverage is better than Verizon coverage; e.g.,
waterfront parts of Corte Madera.

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