Comments on: Verizon Wireless is “The Network” in coverage

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:28:56 +0000

It would be nice if somebody would go and make an actual scientific study of network reception rather than customer surveys which will always be colored by other emotional factors (advertising perception, customer service experience, quality of the phone itself). Basically five people traveling around testing the signal on the same model phone in various places, like a competitive version of the “can you hear me now?” guy. Apparently they should start in Atlanta.

Another interesting study might be to find out what drives some of the posters on these pages to rabidly defend their carrier as though it were their favorite sports team. “Your network sucks and you’re a loser for using it! Go Ubercast Wireless!! Yeah!”

By: SpellCheck

SpellCheck — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:50:14 +0000

To Dan who crafted this gem – “Suck it iphone loosers. Your shinny object is nothing with a shit network like AT&T.”

It’s spelled losers, genius. Also, I think you were going for shiny instead of shinny.

By: FarmerBob

FarmerBob — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:56:47 +0000

That’s not entirely true. Since you can buy a JDP award they don’t need to do anything. Which means they are probably sitting on their hands and not even using them to find their asses.

By: Chad

Chad — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 22:51:38 +0000

It is great that there are several people stating that Verizon has the best call quality. That’s good that you stick to your guns, however, do you know that they pay out of their butts every month to quite a few of the other carriers to allow their customers to use their towers? That’s because of roaming agreements that they have with the other carriers. For instance…Verizon pays Alltel 2.2 million dollars per month to let their customers use Alltel’s network? Alltel owns roughly 54% of 800 Mhz CDMA wireless licenses in the US and Verizon owns roughly 38% of the remainder. Now that is not counting the 700 Mhz freqeuncy that they dominated at the auction earlier this year and any of the 1900 Mhz frequencies either. Can you blame Verizon for wanting to merge with Alltel? Also, I seen a comment in this thread about Alltel having a GSM network. Yes they have it in 16 states of their 35. Alltel has roaming agreements with AT&T and T-Mobile (along with other smaller GSM carriers) to allow them to utilize their GSM network. This network was purchased when Alltel bought Western Wireless (CellualrOne) a couple of years back. This network fills in the gap that T-Mobile and AT&T don’t have throughout the Rocky Mountain and Midwest states. It is considered a GSM overlay on top of the CDMA network. It will be exciting to see what Verizon will do with the GSM side if the deal goes through. There still are several questions that no one can answer right now.

By: Flip

Flip — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 07:05:59 +0000

lol, is this a early april fools joke or what or the early stages of denial. Clearly GSM is better quality ask Europe and Asia. I mean did anyone on the JD team actually use verizon? What about Sprint?

By: Avi24

Avi24 — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:00:07 +0000

A Phone is only as good as it’s network it is on VZ

By: Avi24

Avi24 — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 23:57:53 +0000

VERIZON OWNS! Iphone is considered a piece of shit since it was with AT&T if it was Verizon it would have no glitches or problems and it would be one of the best phones , but we the Storm which is better so I don’t care about the Iphone

By: kelly

kelly — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:48:49 +0000

I know that a mediocre consumer survey wont really affect a million dollar merger…I said that kinda half jokingly at the end…

all surveys do have some error but even with its error, I think the results here are accurate. This is just one more thing that shows vzw has the best nationwide coverage, for better or for worse. Yes, there are some areas where vzw is poor and AT&T/Sprint/T-Mo has better coverage but those cases are the exception and not the norm. I wish other carriers had as good coverage as vzw…I would probably be sporting an iPhone or an Instinct instead of an LG Dare.

By: JustMe

JustMe — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:34:31 +0000

@gadgetchic Are you kidding me? Crippled to the point of uselessness? 200+ dollars for a brick? I’d love to know which carrier and what phone you have… How your phone is sooooo much better. Please enlighten me.

By: gadgetchic

gadgetchic — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:01:30 +0000

too bad their phones are crippled to the point of uselessness. why would i pay 200+ for a brick?

By: The One

The One — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:12:28 +0000

@ 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.

By: jnsnappy

jnsnappy — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:07:51 +0000

Here in Atlanta Verizon has the worst service hands down ,dropped calls no signal

By: wsfanatic

wsfanatic — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:01:12 +0000

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.

By: JustMe

JustMe — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:36:33 +0000

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.

By: ATT sucks kinda

ATT sucks kinda — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:21:26 +0000

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

By: Greg H

Greg H — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:10:09 +0000

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

By: The Jackal

The Jackal — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:45:44 +0000

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.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:38:34 +0000

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.

By: ThisIsAFormicaTable,It'sColorIsGreen

ThisIsAFormicaTable,It'sColorIsGreen — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:32:57 +0000

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.

By: EPS

EPS — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:30:51 +0000

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)

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:22:45 +0000

Suck it iphone loosers. Your shinny object is nothing with a shit network like AT&T.

By: bluehorseshoe

bluehorseshoe — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:17:46 +0000

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.

By: likephonesthatwork

likephonesthatwork — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:14:05 +0000

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…

By: Jacksplat

Jacksplat — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:08:02 +0000

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.

By: Mr. Fingers

Mr. Fingers — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:46:46 +0000

J.D. Power & Assoc. couldn’t find thier asses in a dark room with both hands. These surveys are completely bogus.

By: Jdslim

Jdslim — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:44:24 +0000

By: Chad

Chad — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:39:10 +0000

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.

By: likeabite

likeabite — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:34:04 +0000

VERIZON never fails…i love it…Blackberry Storm on the way too…this is why I have no need to switch

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:56:09 +0000

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.

By: dave pp

dave pp — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:02:53 +0000

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