Consumer Reports Ratings are Out----Verizon top carrier in 14 outof 20 cities, T-Mobile top carrier in 3 cities

In article <[email protected]>,
SMS <[email protected]> wrote:

> james g. keegan jr. wrote:
>
> > john, the cu report i have says otherwise.
> >
> > can you cite the source you are referring to.
>
> I have the Consumer Reports January 2007 issue in front of me.
>
> Out of 20 cities:
>
> Cingular was much worse than Verizon in Los Angeles, Miami,
> Minneapolis-St. Paul, Phoenix, San Diego, Tampa, and Washington D.C. (7
> cities).
>
> 8 or more
>
> Cingular was significantly worse than Verizon in Boston, Cleveland,
> Detroit, Houston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco (6 cities).
>
> 6-7
>
> Cingular was moderately worse than Verizon in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas,
> New York, Seattle (5 cities)
>
> 4-5
>
> Cingular was slightly worse than Verizon in Denver and Saint Louis (2
> cities).
>
> Obviously John is reading a different publication, or he is
> fictionalizing again.

yes, exactly my point.

---

› See More: Consumer Reports Ratings are Out----Verizon top carrier in 14 outof 20 cities, T-Mobile top carrier in 3 cities

On Fri, 08 Dec 2006 20:41:24 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
wrote in <[email protected]>:

>Steven J. Sobol wrote:
>> In article <[email protected]>, John Navas wrote:
>>
>>> And then we have Verizon's best network claims based solely on its own
>>> secret internal testing, which of course lacks any credibility
>>> whatsoever. So why not criticize Verizon?
>>
>> Both companies suck, at least as far as advertising is concerned. John's
>> statement is true. Cingular's claim is based on an "independent report",
>> except that the report is from a company they paid to do the research!
>> Hardly independent. So they're no better.
>
>The difference is that Cingular's claim has no independent
>corroboration,

Data was gathered by a different company.

>and in fact has been proved to be false.

Not true.

Verizon has no corroboration at all.

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

On Fri, 08 Dec 2006 17:39:50 GMT, [email protected] wrote in
<[email protected]>:

>On Thu, 07 Dec 2006 23:12:45 GMT, John Navas
><[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>>In reality the CR sample
>>>was extremely large, and even when you break it down by city, as they
>>>did, the sample was still large.
>>
>>But still suffering from the above defect.
>
>Try hard to cover up hpw bad Cingular came out (and Spint even worse).
>
>The Yankee Group and JD Power surveys gice the same results, and same
>results year aftyer year.

Differences are actually small, roughly comparable to the margin of
error.

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

John Navas <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> On Fri, 08 Dec 2006 20:41:24 -0800, SMS <[email protected]>
> wrote in <[email protected]>:
>
>>Steven J. Sobol wrote:
>>> In article <[email protected]>, John Navas
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> And then we have Verizon's best network claims based solely on its
>>>> own secret internal testing, which of course lacks any credibility
>>>> whatsoever. So why not criticize Verizon?
>>>
>>> Both companies suck, at least as far as advertising is concerned.
>>> John's statement is true. Cingular's claim is based on an
>>> "independent report", except that the report is from a company they
>>> paid to do the research! Hardly independent. So they're no better.
>>
>>The difference is that Cingular's claim has no independent
>>corroboration,
>
> Data was gathered by a different company.

Are you talking about the comapny paid by Cingular or another indepent
source free of the cingular pursestrings? If the latter, please provide a
name, as no source exists to back this claim up.

>
>>and in fact has been proved to be false.
>
> Not true.

Very true- read the CR report.

>
> Verizon has no corroboration at all.
>

And doesn't need it- they didn't attempt to mask the source of their data.

Steven J. Sobol wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>, John Navas wrote:
>
>> And then we have Verizon's best network claims based solely on its own
>> secret internal testing, which of course lacks any credibility
>> whatsoever. So why not criticize Verizon?
>
> Both companies suck, at least as far as advertising is concerned. John's
> statement is true. Cingular's claim is based on an "independent report",
> except that the report is from a company they paid to do the research!
> Hardly independent. So they're no better.

The difference is that Cingular's claim has no independent
corroboration, and in fact has been proved to be false.

If Verizon had the coverage issues of Cingular, and claimed the most
coverage, then they'd deserve to be criticized if multiple independent
surveys found their claims to be false. If Verizon's statements about
coverage were not true, then they wouldn't have done so well in all the
independent surveys.

Sprint simply bypassed the whole issue, with their claim of "Most
Powerful Network." This was a better tactic than making unsupportable
claims about dropped calls or coverage. They used to make claims about
being "all digital" implying that this was a _good_ thing.

It really matters where and how you use your phone. Most of my phone service
is done within 20 miles of my home. There is a Sprint tower within 1/4 mile
from my house. I have full EVDO service and it works very well, for me and
has for the past 7 years.

Plus the fact that my family in California, Washington State, West Virginia,
and Massachusetts all use Sprint. Sort of a no-brainer.

When they do these surveys they are bound to be wild variances. No one
phone/service will do everything for everybody.

"SMS" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> The January 2007 Consumer Reports has their annual survey of cellular
> phone service out. They surveyed about 43,000 cellular subscribers and
> rate the carriers in 20 metropolitan areas on metrics of coverage, network
> congestion, dropped calls, and static.
>
> As in previous years, Verizon is the top carrier in most metro areas, but
> T-Mobile and Alltel also did well in many areas.
>
> The most amusing part of the story is the sidebar about Cingular's claim
> of "fewest dropped calls." Consumer Reports states: "our own surveys have
> found Cingular to be only about average when it comes to dropped calls and
> one of the poorer performers in terms of overall satisfaction."
>
> This annual survey is statistically the most accurate survey of wireless
> carriers, though J.D. Power's survey of about 24,000 users has a similarly
> small margin of errer. JD Power reached essentially the same conclusions
> as Consumer Reports, with Verizon and T-Mobile leading in all regions.
>
> The metro areas where Verizon had a significant lead over Cingular (8 or
> more points) were Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Phoenix, San Diego, San
> Francisco, Tampa, and Washington D.C..

RHinNC wrote:

> When they do these surveys they are bound to be wild variances. No one
> phone/service will do everything for everybody.

The reason that they use such a large sample size is to eliminate wide
variances that can occur. It all evens out when the sample size is so
large. For every person that is close to a tower and gets great service
from a carrier, there is someone else in the opposite situation. They
won't report results if the sample size isn't sufficient to ensure that
wild variances won't occur.

There will always be situations where the highest rated carrier doesn't
have coverage at a specific subscriber's home, office, or frequently
visited locations.

Cyrus Afzali wrote:

> You gotta hand it to Navvy, he's questioning one of the most
> recognized and prestigious consumer information organizations on the
> planet when he's got no special information on its methodology.

The margin of error for the Consumer Reports survey, assuming an equal
distribution of surveys per metro area, is about 2%.

The respondents, Consumer Reports subscribers, are, as the magazine
states, not necessarily representative of the population as a whole.
They tend to be more highly educated, have higher incomes, and tend to
be more liberal on social issues, but moderate on economic issues.

However there is nothing to indicate that this would skew the results of
one carrier but not another carrier. If the subscriber is more critical
of service company performance, it would hold for all carriers, and if
the subscriber is more forgiving of service company performance it would
hold for all carriers.

>> In other words, differences were relatively small and not terribly
>> meaningful.
>
> That's a composite score of all carriers, Navvy. It in no way reflects
> how big the differences are from one carrier to another. What it DOES
> mean is that people by in large often have a gripe about their
> wireless service.

In some cases the differences were small, in some cases they were
moderate, in some cases they were large, and in some cases they were
very large.

Comparing Verizon and Cingular:

Very large differences
----------------------
Cingular was much worse than Verizon in Los Angeles, Miami,
Minneapolis-St. Paul, Phoenix, San Diego, Tampa, and Washington D.C. (7
cities).

Large differences
-----------------
Cingular was significantly worse than Verizon in Boston, Cleveland,
Detroit, Houston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco (6 cities).

Moderate differences
--------------------
Cingular was moderately worse than Verizon in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas,
New York, Seattle (5 cities)

Small differences
-----------------
Cingular was slightly worse than Verizon in Denver and Saint Louis (2
cities).

In article <G%[email protected]>,
"RHinNC" <rhinnc@[get rid of this] hotmail.com> wrote:

> It really matters where and how you use your phone. Most of my phone service
> is done within 20 miles of my home. There is a Sprint tower within 1/4 mile
> from my house. I have full EVDO service and it works very well, for me and
> has for the past 7 years.
>
> Plus the fact that my family in California, Washington State, West Virginia,
> and Massachusetts all use Sprint. Sort of a no-brainer.
>
> When they do these surveys they are bound to be wild variances. No one
> phone/service will do everything for everybody.

But every year, the Yankee Group, JD Power, and Consumers Reports reach
the same conclusion.

Cingular is poor in Customer Service, Sprint is worst.

>
> well, so much for surveys. for the real life test go with cingular.
> verizon has great coverage.........where they have coverage, but that
> is not that many places. i have verizon and i rv, so i get around.
> verizon is worthless. cingular has twice the coverage that verizon
> has and that is being conservative. i get nothing at all at about 80%
> of the places that we go camping at, yet my friends with cingular have
> never lost the signal. talk all the tech crap that you want, that is
> a real life comparison. verizon sux. their customer support is
> terrible. i will drop them as soon as i can and will go to cingular.

What is your metro area, wireless carriers perform some better than
others in Markets? It is my Understanding that Verizon, Sprint, &
T-Mobile all being CDMA use the same towers, However cingular is
on a TDMA network and would have 1/3rd the towers of the other
carriers if this is true and would also show less dropped calls due
to network capicity although TDMA only holds 8 switchs per
circut vs CDMA holds 64 switchs per circut. Could be good could
be bad but if it were not for churn Cingular would be at full network
capacity.

To: All Sprint Nextel employees


As you may have seen in the news last week, Sprint Nextel took a few
hits from the media, including a less-than-favorable article in
Consumer Reports. A few months ago we had a similar evaluation in the
annual JD Power survey. Tough coverage is always expected when a
company takes action to change and transform itself. Unfortunately,
this type of story will likely continue until we restore confidence
with improved results.

We've always said it will take time to see the improvements over the
long term - research has shown that it takes about 12 months for
people's perceptions to change about coverage and call quality - and
these recent ratings underscore the importance of the strategy we have
put in place and our need to execute.

In the meantime, don't let media coverage rattle or distract you.
Sprint's execution during the past several months is paying
dividends. We know how to get this business moving in the right
direction, and we are making progress.

We recognize that we are in a competitive business and to be successful
we must provide an exceptional customer experience. In many markets,
Sprint is the leader in performance. In most markets it is a
statistical dead heat. We are completely focused on our networks,
improving customer satisfaction, reducing churn, and giving our
customers the best pricing on innovative products and services. In
fact, Consumer Reports cited Sprint specifically as the leader in data
services.

I just spent two days last week visiting a handful of contact centers,
and there's a big difference between perception and reality. What I
saw were determined, passionate employees who are engaged, innovative
and attentive on every call. They care about meeting the needs of their
customers, about making Sprint the undisputed leader in customer
service, and, frankly, they're taking this criticism personally.
Working in Retail or taking Care calls is not any easy job, and I'm
very proud of the commitment I see in those who do it.

One example that our renewed strategy is working: Our Care organization
exceeded its annual forecast/target for subscriber account renewals a
full month before the end of 2006, and they are trending to secure
almost 13% more contract renewals by year end. That's awesome! This
is even more remarkable given the fact that contract renewals were
below monthly targets for the first four months of 2006. Much of our
progress is due to impressive improvements in close rates (we have
doubled our year-over-year close rate performance), despite declining
call volumes into Customer Care.

Also, our Rio Rancho Contact Center was named by New Mexico Business
Weekly one of New Mexico's "Best Places to Work." This team
proves that combining hard work and good fun can deliver powerful
results. Rio Rancho is routinely among the highest performing contact
centers in the company, helping reduce churn while turning in great
sales numbers. Our associates in Rio Rancho are a great example of what
our people can deliver for our customers.

I believe all of us are committed to "righting the ship." We know
that to be successful we must provide the best customer experience.
We're taking new steps to retain customers, and we expect to post
significant gains in customer loyalty in 2007 through network
enhancements, our new marketing campaign and a relentless focus on the
customers' experience with our network and when they call us for
service.

Sprint's mission is to make our customers' lives simpler and more
productive. We are continually working to improve customer service, so
that we can quickly and effectively answer their questions, resolve
their issues, and increase the value they receive.
As employees, make sure you're armed with these facts to deflect
skeptics' opinions and to explain the progress we're making:

* $7 billion to network enhancements in 2006 - more than $2 billion
going into the Nextel National Network.
* 1,600 new cell sites.
* PowerSource (hybrid) phones that operate on the iDEN network for
walkie-talkie services and on the CDMA network for voice and data
services.
* Industry-leading mobile broadband coverage (CDMA).
* EVDO network now covers 219 major markets, 725 airports, and more
than 181 million people.
* Our planned buildout of the 4G WiMAX network - working with
Motorola, Intel and Samsung - will be the standard for future
mobility products and services.
* Sprint was the first carrier to offer live TV, and today we offer
more than more than 50 video channels that feature live and on-demand
programming.
* The Sprint Music Store, an over-the-air music download service,
celebrated its one-year anniversary in November and is the first
service of its kind to reach 8 million song downloads.
* Sprint Family Locator - an innovative tracking system that employs
GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) - represents an overall effort to
attract customers and build loyalty.
* Sprint Movies, our pay-per-view service for mobile phones, is the
2006 winner of the 3G CDMA Industry Achievement Award for Innovative
Use of Mobile Television, given by the CDMA Development Group (CDG) and
Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF).

So you can see, we're not sitting back and watching the competition
pull away. There are many reasons to feel good about Sprint, and you
should know you are making a difference in people's lives by giving
them world-class telecom service.

Tim Kelly

In alt.cellular.sprintpcs [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> What is your metro area, wireless carriers perform some better than
> others in Markets? It is my Understanding that Verizon, Sprint, &
> T-Mobile all being CDMA use the same towers, However cingular is
> on a TDMA network and would have 1/3rd the towers of the other
> carriers if this is true and would also show less dropped calls due
> to network capicity although TDMA only holds 8 switchs per
> circut vs CDMA holds 64 switchs per circut. Could be good could
> be bad but if it were not for churn Cingular would be at full network
> capacity.

What that heck have you been reading?

T-Mobile is and always has been GSM, not CDMA. Verizon and Cingular have some
legacy AMPS service that they maintain. Verizon and Sprint are
CDMA(CDMA2000). Cingular is mostly GSM, with legacy TDMA as well as the
mentioned AMPS.

T-Mobile - GSM
Cingular - GSM, TDMA, AMPS
Verizon - CDMA, AMPS
Sprint PCS - CDMA (and AMPS roaming)
Nextel - iDEN

--
Thomas T. Veldhouse
Key Fingerprint: D281 77A5 63EE 82C5 5E68 00E4 7868 0ADC 4EFB 39F0

In alt.cellular.sprintpcs [email protected] wrote:
> should know you are making a difference in people's lives by giving
> them world-class telecom service.
>

Fix your management software to meet customer demands [one shouldn't have to
wait for the next billing period to review account details, including usage,
when a change, of any caliber is made]. I honestly believe that the software
used to manage the customer is the #1 cause of all Sprint PCS issues
concerning customer service and satisfaction. I think the best ratings from
customers come from customers that have not had to significantly engage with
customer service, at least, that has been my observation, a limitted sample I
admit.

--
Thomas T. Veldhouse
Key Fingerprint: D281 77A5 63EE 82C5 5E68 00E4 7868 0ADC 4EFB 39F0

[email protected] wrote:
>> well, so much for surveys. for the real life test go with cingular.
>> verizon has great coverage.........where they have coverage, but that
>> is not that many places. i have verizon and i rv, so i get around.
>> verizon is worthless. cingular has twice the coverage that verizon
>> has and that is being conservative. i get nothing at all at about 80%
>> of the places that we go camping at, yet my friends with cingular have
>> never lost the signal. talk all the tech crap that you want, that is
>> a real life comparison. verizon sux. their customer support is
>> terrible. i will drop them as soon as i can and will go to cingular.
>
> What is your metro area, wireless carriers perform some better than
> others in Markets? It is my Understanding that Verizon, Sprint, &
> T-Mobile all being CDMA use the same towers, However cingular is
> on a TDMA network and would have 1/3rd the towers of the other

Wow, you're more confused than the resident Cingular shill.

"Thomas T. Veldhouse" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]...
> In alt.cellular.sprintpcs [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> What is your metro area, wireless carriers perform some better than
>> others in Markets? It is my Understanding that Verizon, Sprint, &
>> T-Mobile all being CDMA use the same towers, However cingular is
>> on a TDMA network and would have 1/3rd the towers of the other
>> carriers if this is true and would also show less dropped calls due
>> to network capicity although TDMA only holds 8 switchs per
>> circut vs CDMA holds 64 switchs per circut. Could be good could
>> be bad but if it were not for churn Cingular would be at full network
>> capacity.
>
> What that heck have you been reading?
>
> T-Mobile is and always has been GSM, not CDMA. Verizon and Cingular have some
> legacy AMPS service that they maintain. Verizon and Sprint are
> CDMA(CDMA2000). Cingular is mostly GSM, with legacy TDMA as well as the
> mentioned AMPS.
>
> T-Mobile - GSM
> Cingular - GSM, TDMA, AMPS
> Verizon - CDMA, AMPS
> Sprint PCS - CDMA (and AMPS roaming)
> Nextel - iDEN
>
> --
> Thomas T. Veldhouse
> Key Fingerprint: D281 77A5 63EE 82C5 5E68 00E4 7868 0ADC 4EFB 39F0
>
>


And... you forgot to mention one other thing to our mis-informed friend...

Carriers MAY share towers (forced to by NIMBYs, etc) in some locations.
But they DO NOT share antennas/electronics.

Andrew: Look at the bottom of a tower with 2-3 or even more antenna 'platforms' on it
Notice the multiple equipment cabinets and/or small buildings? Each carrier on the
tower has completely separate radios and antennas.

Lots of ideal spots will sometimes have 'antenna farms' - multiple antenna structures
close to each other. Each carrier built their own...