The Reader

I keep seeing comparisons of service - people not happy with ATT, not happy with Verizon, not happy with Sprint, not happy with T-Moble. After having three of them, I can tell you that all have dead spots, all drop calls, all are less than satisfactory somewhere.

I've worked with a cell phone base station manufacturer. That is the other side of your cell phone, the radio towers that connect it to land lines and make it work. I can tell you this - for the most part - all providers co-locate on cell towers. Just look at one of those masts sometime. They are about a hundred feet tall, and the antennas are vertical rectangles. There is an array of those antennas on towers, hidden places like water towers, on power line towers, just about everywhere. The reason why there are so many is because more than one provider, sometimes all 4 are there. If not, they are sharing antennas / leasing from somebody else.

Coverage from multiple antennas creates moire patterns, which is a fancy way of saying micro-nulls, which equal drop outs. So you may have a drop out if you wander a few feet, a drop out that won't be there with another provider. If you happen to make a lot of calls from a "bubble" six feet in diameter, and if that happens to be in a null from your provider, you are probably going to be dissatisfied with your carrier. The solution to the problem is to move the darn phone to where you have a node - a strong reception point - instead of a null. It is a little like twiddling with rabbit ears in earlier days of television.

Cell phone users have done this to themselves. Somehow somebody decided antennas weren't cool looking on phones, so the manufacturers struggle to put a good enough antenna hidden inside the phone. And using fractal technology, they do a pretty good job. But a whip antenna would still make everybody's phone, regardless of carrier, drop less calls. So don't complain about ATT or other carriers, point the finger at the coolness police that force less than adequate antennas on the darn phones! Most users wouldn't have a clue about how to add an antenna to a phone, and it would void warranties if they did.

I will also say - CDMA - a standard used by Verizon and Sprint - just doesn't work very well. It is asynchronous, using code division instead of time division to divide up multiple conversations. Talk long enough, download long enough, your phone will get further and further out of sync with the base station, your audio or data will get more and more garbled, and eventually you WILL drop. Period, end of story. TDMA, or GSM, is time division multiple access, and both your phone and the base station are sync'd with GPS satellite time, which is darn accurage. So your ATT and T-Mobile phones are also darn accurate clocks, you can set your clock by them and be close to atomic time. But accuracy isn't nearly as important as having both your phone and the base station tied to the same accurate time source, they will not get out of sync, and theoretically you call could last forever.

I find Verizon audio quality awful, and it gets worse as I talk, and in a hurry. Duh - CDMA - why should I be surprised? I've never had Sprint, but since it is CDMA I expect it does the same thing. ATT and T-Mobile audio are both great, and don't deteriorate over time.

Coverage - there are so many variables the subjective statements of ATT sucking or Verizon sucking or whoever sucking that these statements are useless. The service sucks for one user, under a peculiar set of reception conditions they have - that make one carrier a little better in their situation. Move ten feet, or move to another city, another highway, or whatever, they themselves will flip-flop and think another carrier is better. When in reality they are just facing real world limitations of cell service, coupled with absolutely horrendously small antennas in the phone.

--- In apple-iphone@yahoogroups.com, Allan Aunkst <aaunkst@...> wrote:
>
> Does anyone know if there's talk of better service,I know At&t says its
> working on it but yesterday while doing some traveling through the state of
> Ohio. My iPhone had the worst service ever..most places no service.
>
> My contract ends on June 17th and I would hate to give up the iPhone but for
> security purposes I am seriously thinking about going to a new company just
> so I can get some decent service.
>
> If there's talk of the new iPhone having better service I might think about
> staying,
> This is a very hard choice being a mac guy .
>
> Thanks
> Allan
>

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