Posted on 01/10/2011 6:02:34 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion
Verizon Wireless . . . is confident enough in its network that it will offer unlimited data-use plans when it starts selling the iPhone around the end of this month, a person familiar with the matter said . . .
Verizon Wireless . . . has a lot at stake as it starts to carry the iPhone, which it will announce Tuesday at an event in New York City, people familiar with the matter say . . .
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said Wall Street is expecting sales of the Verizon iPhone to boost Apple's overall sales by 5% - or more if Verizon does a better job of luring new customers than it does turncoats from AT&T.
Ping.
Can’t wait.
Wife will swap her BlackBerry Storm in for a shiny new iPhone 4. She’s been envious of mine since I jumped to AT&T and got it. It is a FANTASTIC phone!!
Me, I intend to sell my phone on EBay as soon as I can either order the Verizon version, or I know that Verizon has iPhones in stock. I’ll use the proceeds from that sale to pay my termination fee from AT&T - and will pay that termination fee gladly.
I do not have reliable data, or phone coverage at work, at INTERNATIONAL airports (!!!) My phone is largely a brick on my recent trip from Salt Lake to Minneapolis. My step-son’s Verizon phone never lost coverage - I had hours where I had “No Service”. Most of the trip I didn’t have data coverage - on an Interstate!!
I had Verizon for 12 years, and switched to AT&T so I could try the iPhone 4. This is an amazing phone!! But, I typically get more dropped calls in any given week - than I had in my total of 12 years with Verizon.
By and large these are maintenance issues, although some of it is due to poor RF engineering of the frequency reuse schemes. I founded and ran an engineering company for just over 20 years that catered field engineering services to wireless carriers. I sold my company in 2001 because the carriers were getting rid of engineers and replacing them with warm bodies. As a veteran of the wireless biz dating back to the original cellular deployment with over 7000 cell sites under my belt I can tell you it does not surprise me in the least that dropped calls and poor service are increasing......
Why have engineers when they are so expensive and you can simply claim to have the best network? Once a real engineer sets the system up you can just cookie cutter reproduce the cell right? I mean a trained ape can do that can’t he?
What is the customer going to do about it anyway, complain?
Much easier to hire drone customer service reps who easily stick to the script, an original thought in their head would die of loneliness. Better yet, hire only a few and make the customer play touch number ring around the rosie or be put on terminal hold with with elevator music.
What happens a lot is engineers like me will design and build the system, but the carrier won't spring for optimization of key aspects of the system's operation after the initial turn up. For incidence, one thing we would optimize is call hand offs between cells. When these parameters haven't been properly optimized a high percentage of dropped calls is the typical result. Another thing that seriously degrades system performance is lack of routine maintenance. Power amps go bad. Radios go bad. The interface cards between the cellular switch and the PSTN go bad. The whole system is essentially slowly self destructing. Antennas are subjected to lightning transients all the time and get damaged, wounded, if you will, but are still somewhat functional, but with dead spots. These things are all easily diagnosed if you know what you're looking at.
More often than not what I have seen coming into a system populated by "warm bodies" is, for example, channels taken out of service because of routine maintenance issues that have not been addressed. They do this because it's easier to take the bad channels out of service, rather than diagnosing and repairing the problem. The way the systems are now the computer monitors all sorts of parameters of each aspect of the system. These stats show call durations, failed hand-offs, all the way down to individual stats on each radio and power amp in the system. Some systems even have lightning detectors to let the operator know if the tower has been hit. If you know how to use the statistics you can see trends that indicate failing components and can swap them out before they become customer complaints. That's the difference between someone who knows how the system really works versus someone who is just sitting there watching it go blinky blink. You get what you pay for.....
99% coverage from Denver all the way to Springfield on Verizon but at most 5% coverage on AT&T. I have maybe 75% coverage just within the Denver area on AT&T and 95% on Verizon.
I will switch my iPhone to Verizon and get the iPhone 4 when I do. AT&T is a good company overall but their network planning is very poor.
FYI
Just as soon as my contract is ending!
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