Verizon Wireless is “The Network” in coverage
J.D. Power and Associates released Volume 2 of their biannual Cellular Call Quality Survey Thursday and it appears as if “Can you hear me now?” is a phrase not uttered by many Verizon Wireless customers. In every region of the country surveyed, Verizon was either the sole winner or tied for first place. The survey asked 22,000 customers from across the nation to rank their cellular provider based upon the frequency of dropped calls, static/interference, failed connection on the first try, voice distortion, echo, no immediate voice mail notification, and no immediate text message notification. Let’s take a quick look at how each region fared:
- Northeast Region: Verizon Wireless ranks highest in the region.
- Mid-Atlantic Region: Verizon Wireless ranks highest for an eighth consecutive time.
- Southeast Region: Alltel ranks highest in the region. Verizon wins this one by proxy since they are in the process of acquiring Alltel.
- North Central Region: U.S. Cellular and Alltel rank highest in a tie. Another win for Verizon through its Alltel merger.
- Southwest Region: Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless tie to rank highest in the region.
- West Region: Verizon Wireless ranks highest in the region.
Surprisingly, AT&T, the largest scammers US provider, does not show up anywhere in the leader board; not so surprisingly, neither does T-Mobile. We wonder, though, if these results will help or hurt Verizon as it seeks regulatory approval for its merger with Alltel. By scooping up Alltel, it really will become the nation’s largest network, both in sheer number of customers and in coverage. Psst, Verizon, some words of advice? You may want to sweep these results under the carpet and only boast about them after that merger of yours is approved. We’re just sayin’…
Tags: Alltell, Call Quality, Cellular Coverage, J. D. Power and Associates, Merger, Regional Coverage, verizon wireless
Thats funny, my company uses Verizon here in atlanta and i have more issues making calls where i go than my personal ATT blackberry? go figure
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Well I was recently shown some statistics regarding consumer reports I believe that ranked Verizon Wireless, Alltell and T-Mobile within the top 3 in all regions. T-Mobile did not rank in top 3 in 1 of the regions but was just above sprint/nextel. Att was under all the above name carriers even sprint in most categories. I guess its a good thing they have that iphone! ps side note has anyone heard the rumor that there was some tmobile high up who left and went to alltell and shared the myfaves idea to create my circle? Has this been discussed before?
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I still don’t believe in these surveys, people use thier displeasure with some other aspect to slam all the rest
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I too find these surveys mostly useless. I mean, really, how can a customer compare unless they have multiple phones? So when they ask me who is best, unless I have big problems of course my carrier is best.
Oh, BG, on the flip side, why NOT use this as justification for the merger? Sell the gov that they are doing SO well for the consumer and with Alltel on board will do even better?
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I am assuming they don’t ask the consumers to compare providers. they ask them about their own experience with their own provider. the company with the lowest number of reported problems is the winner.
@DavidB
I suppose they could promote they fact that they would be providing the “best coast to coast coverage”. It sure sounds a lot better than monopoly.
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Well, I would hope that ATLANTA has coverage 50 feet underground since that is where BS HQ is.
Don’t worry ATT boys/girls you have a ton of 700mhz frequency available to you and if your people ever see the light they may turn that bad boy on.
Of course no phone in the world has 700mhz
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Yall have to keep in mind, these surveys are customer perception surveys. So, if a customer paying $30 a month to t-mobile and perceives a couple dropped calls, but has a good value for their spend, they tend to rank their carrier higher even though actual call records and CDRs do not support a high ranking.
The same is true in the opposite direction. If a customer perceives they have crappy customer care from sprint, then every dropped call exacerbates the negative perception even though the dropped call count is actually lower than t-mobile. Thus, Sprint could have a lower ranking.
And last but not least, the marketing geniuses at Verizon (I mean that in all sincerity) have created the “Call you hear me now?” tagline, emphasizing the network. Thus, they will always have higher customer perception rankings in network than any other carrier.
Make of these reports what you will.
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VERIZON never fails…i love it…Blackberry Storm on the way too…this is why I have no need to switch
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Brian has it right. You explained it very nicely. Chris brought up a rumor that is entirely just a rumor. Why…Alltel released MyCircle long before T-Mobile brought out MyFaves. Need I say more. However, believe what you want, people always do. That goes for both sides…the netwrok reliability and Alltel’s MyCircle.
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Ok
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J.D. Power & Assoc. couldn’t find thier asses in a dark room with both hands. These surveys are completely bogus.
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I agree, I think all surveys are mostly BS. However, that being said, surveys are the opiate of the masses.
Real or made-up data, if people perceive that their choice is justified because of any supporting ’surveys’ or ‘data’, then they tend over look smaller issues and maintain a more positive opinion of their carrier, and it just propagates.
And as an earlier comment pointed out, it’s marketing. Take the accolades, as thin as they may be, and build an elaborate campaign around them. T-Mo used to run these things into the ground.
A company has to really go to pot like Sprint (who still get’s a nod in this survey over AT&T) to begin losing big time.
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Hurts for you guys to keeping hearing this from different surveys time and time again! LOL So they are all wrong ? Give Verizon credit they rock on the signal side, get out of denial…
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LOL…the ratings aren’t going to impact the merger at all. Yup…corporate America is going to stop everything because of a report published by JD Power & Associates. So naive.
Not to mention that Sprint/Nextel share the same technology with 50+ million customers is argument enough. Add in the GSM side of the equation and that present plenty of competition. If the AT&T and Cingular merger was allowed, then I’m sure the Verizon/Alltel merger will get the thumbs up.
As for VZW being tops, I’d have to agree. You can dig deeper into the surveys where they get into customer service. TMO has always been a top performer in that area along with VZW. I’ve used them all in various locations and would have to say TMO gets tops in customer service and VZW in coverage and quality. I currently reside in AT&T’s corp. location and dropped them after all the dropped calls I was going through. Plus they had an outage for close to half a day last week where you couldn’t receive calls. Great for the business user. So bad it made the news.
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Suck it iphone loosers. Your shinny object is nothing with a shit network like AT&T.
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What’s interesting is that all the top carriers are CDMA… No GSM carriers anywhere to be seen. (Well, I believe Alltel has a GSM network in a few areas that they use to get roaming fees from other providers, but I don’t think that’s what they’re talking about)
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JD Power means jack nasty to me. When have you EVER heard someone say, “Well, it was between the Mazda Protege and the Subaru WRX, but the Protege is a JD Power and Asssociate award winner. I’d be crazy to NOT buy the JD Power winning car! I mean, for real, it’s J to the D!
You know that’s gotta mean something!”
1. Awards and ratings don’t mean jack when you drill down awards to every little detail,
‘JD Power CUSTOMER Service award’
‘JD Power Quality Award’
‘JD Power It does’t smell like puke award’
‘JD Power completely making up new award uses badder grammar’
‘JD Power’s Best in Excellence for devices held horizontally and do not have a black finish and between .5 - 1 inch thick with one dead pixel award’
Yeah. Awards are dumb. If they have an award for the most awesome-est person born with my U.S. Social Secuirty number, I guess I’d have to accept. I would accept on behalf of myself.
2. They give the above awards to just about anything shiny.
Although, interestingly enough, Consumer Reports does the same thing but they base their ratings on FCC complaints. At&t consistently the worst. But at the same time, and to be fair, bigger company = more customers = more complaints.
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EPS is correct, this really is an acknowledgment that CDMA is far superior to GSM.
A few years from now, perhaps we will wish that Qualcomm’s UMB had won the LTE vs UMB battle (yes, I know that Qualcomm’s royalty demands had much to do with UMB’s poor showing).
Let’s just hope that LTE (once voice & data are all flowing over LTE) doesn’t have GSM’s poor quality.
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I would be interested to see a similar survey of carriers in other countries. In that same line of thought-which of those companies are affilliated with any over here? I currently am out from under contract with AT&T and am considering my options. This last week on AT&T has been horrible as far as reception and dropped calls. Atlanta area and have been customer since 1991-reception has never really been too much of an issue…until this last week. When I escallated up the chain at Cust Serv on Friday-was finally told that there have been problems with the towers in the Southeast and repairs are being done-but no ETA on completion. Probably a line of BS.
I was really wanting to try out the Bold on AT&T-but with the service issues coupled with the estimated release date of the Bold(read-probably going to get pushed back more)
I may be forced to move(which I’m not totally against by the way) It’s just I was hoping to be the winner of the BGR AT&T branded Bold. My luck-I will have to switch to VZW and 2 days after the switch-BGR will announce me as one of the winners.
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I have known this all the time vzw is the best all around SP. After all you get a cellphone to use it whenever its needed. The only real thing that effects vzw is it’s plans and pricing. Although for a better product you should expect to pay more. So are you a person that likes secound rate stuff. My friends Att Altell. My brother has T-moblie for the plans. My dad did have sprint now he is with vzw. My phone always has a signal and I travel alot with my friends.
So I guess Its based on you prefence
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Yes att does have nice phones and the rollover min arent to bad. When you think about it rollover min are a bit of a scam. Because to have rollover min you must pay for more minutes than you use to have extra minutes and chances are you will hardly ever go over your min. So you will never get to use those rollover minutes. And T-moblie and Sprint just suck all around.
And what if you spill milk on your min and your lactose intolerant
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I have first hand experience when it comes to VZW vs AT&T. The company that I work for is an indirect cell phone agent. For about 5 years we were Cingular/AT&T… that is, until this April when AT&T dropped 85% of their independent stores. We happend to be one of them. With that being said, our company switched to Verizon. (Yes, that’s right, if you put two and two together, I sell Verizon and own AT&T) Before April there was not a chance that I would have considered switching carriers, BUT after working for Verizon for the last few months I CAN’T WAIT till November till I am out of contract to switch.. for many many reasons.
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While I always consider this surveys with a grain of salt, to this day some of the best money I ever spent was my ETF on AT&T. After seven years on Verizon, I can’t imagine going anywhere else.
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Here in Atlanta Verizon has the worst service hands down ,dropped calls no signal
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@ Rob,
It’s funny that you say that. I’ve lived in Atlanta, downtown Atlanta, Decatur, Tucker, and the perimeter area for many years now, and I’ve never had call issues. Makes me wonder what ATT department you work for.
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