Slightly OT -- who gives the best Cell Phone service in Summit County?

[Jim Ramsey]

I currently have Sprint, and it's OK, sort of.
Around my own home in Tallmadge, the signal quality is bad enough
to discourage using it for much more that "Why don't you call me
on my land line".

Are any of the other carriers better?

Does CDMA vs. GSM make any difference (or any sense) around here?

Regards,

Jim Ramsey

['G' Gaurav Saxena]

I live in Chardon.
I used to have Cingular and it gave me headaches.
Then I switched to Alltel. It has worked pretty much everywhere I have been so far.
If you're on the road, you might have dropped calls, but coverage wise, Alltel is pretty cool.

My two cents.

-Gaurav

--
Gaurav Saxena

[Jeff Sutherland]

CDMA is better than GSM around here coverage-wise. CDMA carriers are in the
800MHz band (in Tallmadge that would be Verizon and Alltel) whereas GSM
that's already been deployed is at 1900MHz in the PCS band near where Sprint
is. AT&T is rolling out a lot of new rural coverage in the GSM 850 band,
that should at least do something for the rural coverage issue. CDMA
technology doesn't have that annoying buzz that occasionally happens on GSM
due to GSM's TDMA modulation. I had a T-Mobile sim with a USA number for a
while to use in my gsm phone that I take overseas but I let the sim expire,
coverage was crap. You can go pretty much anywhere with CDMA these days,
even out in the boonies, and it just works. Overseas where they have GSM 900
I've noticed the phone's performance and battery life is a lot better than it
is here. So unless you travel overseas a lot and want to have just one
mobile phone number, CDMA seems a better choice. There are newer services
being rolled out that have highter digital data rates primarily for folks who
can't seem to live without TV, no matter how small or how crude. I can't
vouch for those services since all I've ever done with my mobile devices is
make phone calls...

Regards,
-Jeff
--
Secure your email with Gnu Privacy Guard and Thunderbird, the open source
cross platform solution for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
See http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

[Christopher Cole]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 03:35:49PM -0400, Jim Ramsey wrote:
> I currently have Sprint, and it's OK, sort of.

Jim,

Sprint has acceptable coverage, until you get off the expressway.

The best coverage you'll find around here is by Alltel and (hate to say it)
Verizon.

When I had AT&T years ago, their coverage was fair but not perfect.

Take care,
-Chris

--
| Christopher Cole, Cole Design and Development, LLC co...@coledd.com |
| Embedded Software Development and Electronic Design http://coledd.com |
| Stow, Ohio, USA 800-518-2154 |

[Allan J Zadiraka]

Have only had Alltel.  Experience a dropout every  couple of years, primarily on 77 to Columbus.  Have had access anywhere in the US that I have been.

zeke

[Jim Kvochick]

I have AT&T.  Not too many issues just about anywhere I've been in Northeastern Ohio, most of the US, (with the exception of Montana).

 

However, I'm only slightly biased.....

 

James A. Kvochick WB8AZP

40 Years in Amateur Radio (1968-2008)

kv...@att.net

810-220-2098 Voice

810-220-2126 Fax

330-283-7070 Cellular

 

---

From: Akro...@googlegroups.com [mailto:Akro...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Allan J Zadiraka
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2008 8:37 PM
To: Akro...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ALUG] Re: Slightly OT -- who gives the best Cell Phone service in Summit County?

[J Alexander]

I have Cingular and I have great coverage *except* in Tallmadge.  For some reason, right around Tallmadge Circle, it pops out.

On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Jim Ramsey <jwra...@pobox.com> wrote:

[Jim Kvochick]

The Tallmadge Circle might be linked to the Bermuda Triangle.....

 

Jim

---

From: Akro...@googlegroups.com [mailto:Akro...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of J Alexander
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 1:47 PM

To: Akro...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ALUG] Re: Slightly OT -- who gives the best Cell Phone service in Summit County?

[flyingtiger]

I have Verizon. I have excellent coverage in Akron area as well as
most of Portage County. With my previous phone CDMA as soon as I
entered the west side of Ravenna I lost coverage until I drove to the
east side of Ravenna. The signal on my new phone drops to 1.5 bars but
I am still able to send/receive calls now with little problem. This
phone has GSM. I have a close friend that lives a stones throw from
Tallmadge Circle on Highland. I still have a good signal when driving
around the circle.
The only location I've had some difficulty with in Ohio is west of the
last Ohio Highway Patrol post on the turnpike to the west border. I
haven't been in southeastern Ohio so I can't vouch for that area.
Driving south on I-71 or I-77 I experience no signal loss. I don't
talk a great deal when driving but I frequently check the signal
strength, unless I QSO'ing on the 2-way.

Terry L. Morris
KB8AMZ
Kent, OH

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[steve-a...@adelphia.net]

Tallmadge Circle isn't the only Cingular problem area. There are
several spots along the West expressway (!!) where I would consistently
lose connections. Also along Waterloo Rd near Kelley, in the Northern
part of Summit county on Rt21, on Rt 18 just West of Montrose, in Stark
between Hartville & Mogodore. "Can you hear me now" was 80% of my
conversation w/ Cingular, I really couldn't count on holding a 3 minute
conversation while driving.

I'm currently with Verizon and have no real problems related to
service/signal strength. My home location (Copley) has pretty bad signal
strength for several carriers. I wouldn't beoverly concerned about CDMA
vs GSM, but lookup the detailed coverage maps and see what they show for
home & work.

-Steve

[Scott Mace]

Cingular has a notorious problem when traveling down the highway, and you are jumping to a new tower.  It almost always drops, and it doesn't seem to matter what phone. My v600, Razr, and now my iPhone, all had this issue.  Other than that, I haven't had too many issues with "The New AT&T" tm.

Scott

[Jim Ramsey]

Steve,

Where do you find the "detailed coverage maps"?

Regards,

Jim Ramsey

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[stevea]

http://www.wireless.att.com/coverageviewer/
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/CoverageLocatorController
http://coverage.sprintpcs.com/IMPACT.jsp

Focus in on a neighborhood level view. You can probably google
others. The verizon map shows all red for N.Ohio - but last year their
maps had better detail. Take the signal level descriptions with a
grain of salt - "moderate signal" means you'll lose calls or hear noise.

[arch3angel]

I work for a very large cell phone company in their NOC, and I can
tell you first hand Sprint SUCKS!!!!

The technology used CDMA or GSM does not make the difference it has to
do with the equipment being used. Meaning the back side of the
picture.

I have personally owned Sprint, AT&T (Before it was Cingular), Alltel,
and Airtouch (Now Verizon), and I can say for Ohio in general AT&T and
Alltel are far superior, however if you take a closer look at things
as far as sections of Ohio it becomes a bit more complex.

Northern Ohio = Alltel, Verizon, AT&T seen to get the most coverage.
Keep in mind that Alltel & Verizon seem to reach the more areas that
are either out of the way or in low land areas.

Central Ohio = All but Sprint seem to work well

Southern Ohio = Alltel, Verizon, and AT&T all seem good, but again
Alltel & Verizon seem better.

The reason you seem to see Alltel & Verizon is because they have a
roaming agreement where the customers of each other can roam free of
charge on each others network. Along with those two Sprint also has a
roaming agreement with them as well, however the equipment is by far
more troublesome than the agreement is worth. Thus the reason Sprint
is close to bankruptcy and going through a buy out process. All the
major players are looking to pick up Sprint to make their network
ENORMOUS because the majority of Sprints issues can be fixed for
little money, Sprint just don't have it...

Just my two cents, hope it helps...

On Apr 14, 3:35 pm, Jim Ramsey <jwram...@pobox.com> wrote:

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[Bill Mayhew]

I've had phones from most of the major players: Cellular One (now
Verizon), GTE (now Alltel), Sprint, SBC (was re-selling GTE at the
time), Alltel and TracFone.

The worst customer service I experienced by far was SBC. They are now
Cingular. They tired to falsify the contract, leaving their effective
date blank, then changing it on their store copy. This was at the SBC
retail store near Chapel Hill mall. They also made gigantic billing
errors that were almost impossible to get fixed. The techical quality
of the service was good since it was just re-marketed GTE service. At
the time, everything was 900 MHz analog, and GTE had significantly
better coverage than even Cellular one in rural areas.

Cellular One and GTE both had exemplary customer service. I believe
Verizon still gets very high marks for customer service. Cellular One
had a funny little coverage gap slightly north-west of Streetsboro. I
tink the gap may persist even now in the digital world.

Sprint has pretty awful customer service. You have to spend a lot of
time talking to the voicemail-jail robot to do anything. It is almost
impossible to talk to a real person. I still have a Sprint PCS phone,
and I've found the coverage is pretty good along highways. Service
can be spotty in rural areas, but sometimes there is coverage in
fairly remote places like Pakwood, Washington, near Mt. Rainier.
Since Sprint is 1900 MHz PCS, there can be little pockets of dead
space where you wouldn't expect it; right by my house Sprint is weak,
and it used to be spotty in downtown Kent - but better there now, I
belive. I like the fact that the whole country is one service area,
and no roaming charges apply as long as there is PCS coverage. If you
can tolerate the absence of customer service, Sprint is quite
economical, provided there is coverage where you need to use the
phone. I still have the same Sprint phone I got in 1999 - a Denso
Touchpoint 2600 and it has been able to update it PRL so far. Of
course, the analog mode is now useless. I found the people at the
Sprint retail store fairly helpful when I boght the phone - but that
was nine years ago.

I have an Alltel phone issued by my employer. It has good coverage
pretty much everywhere. Thanks, I'm sure to the size of what used to
be GTE and the roaming agreements they have executed. My main
complaint about Alltel is the plan our company has gives us a
ridiculously small home area that is only approximately Summit County,
Cuyahoga County and a little bit of Stark County. This is a like my
home area was back in 1990; maybe even smaller. At least the boss is
paying the bill.

I bought TracFones for a friend and for my mom. TracFone seems to
have agreements with a variety of carriers. One phone, a Nokia, wound
up provisioned on Alltel and the other, a Motorola, wound up
provisioned on SBC's GSM network. TracFone has pretty helpful
customer service. We switched the service from the Nokia phone over
to the Motorola, and the human service representative patiently walked
us throgh the process and all the air time was preserved. If you buy
a generous enough pre-paid air time card, you can get double minutes
and minutes that never expire. If you use your phone 100 or fewer
minutes per month, I believe TracFone is still the least expensive pre-
paid carrier, and probably still cheaper to maintain than any
traditional service plan. The phone was about 30 bucks, and 1000
minutes of service good for a year was about $150. Even if you
replace your phone every year, TracFone is works out to $15 a month or
so if you aren't phone talk-junkie. On the SBC-provisioned phone,
incoming text messages are free and out-going are charged 1/3 minute.
On the Alltel-provisioned phone, both incoming and out-going messages
were charged 1/2 minute. Otherwise, TraceFone service is flat rate
per minute.

Sometimes, more than coverage area matters. Accuracy of billing and
accessiblity of customer service should not be over-looked.

Bill

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[John Wesp]

Rob, I think you should disclose what company you work for (Alltel in this case) when making a post dissing a competitor and also add the disclaimer that your opinions don't reflect your employers views. Just to be on the safe side legally for both you and your employer.

I don't know anything about Sprint's service per se as I have only ever used T-Mobile and Cingular/AT&T, but can only imagine what kind of flame wars this could start. And legal consequences.

With kind regards
   John Wesp

[arch3angel]

I understand why you said this, however I did not know the rules on me
speaking in public places regarding services. Along with that I was
not wanting to say Alltel is the only good place and make people think
I was full of it just because I was pushing a product. I was hoping
to be as "fair and balanced" (I know you just love that phrase) as
possible, not trying to deceive people in any way

All and all I have to say Sprint service is HORRIBLE, AT&T was very
good to me and if I was not working for Alltel I would not even look
elsewhere. However, since I started working here I have found that
Alltel service, the "home area" the previous poster explain is MUCH
Larger. I am not sure of his arrangement but you can use an Alltel
phone nearly every nook and cranny from the AZ to the east cost.

We do not have to much "native" coverage in the California area
because of the massive restrictions and the cost of the regulations
that the government places on carriers. This area plays big when it
comes to the roaming agreements.

Of all the carriers, have to say AT&T was very good to me, and with
the Alltel Circle plan I have dropped my minutes down to nearly
nothing now. Which in turn saves me TONS of money, something I need
for gas to drive to work now... :)

On Apr 29, 5:59 pm, "John Wesp" <johnw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Rob, I think you should disclose what company you work for (Alltel in this
> case) when making a post dissing a competitor and also add the disclaimer
> that your opinions don't reflect your employers views. Just to be on the
> safe side legally for both you and your employer.
>
> I don't know anything about Sprint's service per se as I have only ever used
> T-Mobile and Cingular/AT&T, but can only imagine what kind of flame wars
> this could start. And legal consequences.
>
> With kind regards
> John Wesp
>

[Jonathan Woodall]

Gentlemen,

 

I've got a policy in my place of employment that prohibits me from going on record in any format regarding the performance of the ATMs, vaults, voting machines and burglar alarms my employer sells and services.

I'd advise anyone placing themselves in similar circumstances to avoid such discussions without being fully aware of any such policies at their own place of employment, especially if they're posting with their actual name.

Just a friendly heads-up. I don't actually mind anything you're doing.

 

[Rick Nemer]

ALUG Mail list members,
As long as its fair and technical and not biased it's fine.
If you work for a company just mention that, its understood there may be a in unintended bias that's hard to avoid.
I see no problems with the original posting and welcome that type of discussion.
I would like to see more Linux directed threads that deal with the things this list is focused on.

If some one wants to give a talk on digital cell data networks I think that would be great!
I have a call in to a Verizon engineer to give a talk on that topic.
If it works out we will have that on Thursday or a later month.

I don't want any bickering or flaming on this list. If you have a problem with a posting just let me know in a privet email. I don't want to moderate the list but i will moderate individuals.

Keep it a nice friendly list to get technical info on problems and notification of events.
Thanks.
--
Rick// www.AkronLinux.org
n8noq 145.17- PL123 www.w8upd.uakron.edu

[Bill Mayhew]

I made the remark about Alltel having a small home service area. I
don't know what sort of agreement my employer has with Alltel, but I
have noticed that soon after I cross the borders of Summit County,
that my phone indicates it is roaming. Since I don't get the bills, I
can't tell if the roaming minutes are any more expensive. Back when
Alltel was GTE, and I had analog service, the home service area
minutes were about $0.09 and roaming minutes were $0.40. No dobut,
prices are lower now. I switched from GTE to SBC becuase SBC conunted
all of Ohio as a home service area, but GTE still had a roughly
triangular home area from Youngtown to Elyria to Canton. At that
time, SBC was re-marketing connectivity it was purchasing from GTE.

In the case of Sprint PCS, the minutes are flat rate anywhere in the
continental US, and perhaps other palces, provided it is on Sprint's
own network. I have a service plan that I got about nine years ago
that included 250 prime time minutes (7am - 7pm) and 1250 minues for
ohter times for $39 - a 10% aggregation discount.

I've found pretty good parity between the coverage of Sprint and
Alltel. In fact both phones worked in the tiny and remote town of
Packwood, Washington. I had a lengthy tech support call with the guys
at our office at 1 AM PST, and tne connectivity with Alltel was good.
It was digital service - I have no idea on whose network it was
connecting.
Sprint has native coverage in that location.

Bill

[flyingtiger]

Whew! This is a long running post. Didn't it begin around September
2007?

Still using Verizon. Very few problems in local area. On my visit to
Columbus, GA (Fort Benning) I had spotty signal dropouts. Couldn't
receive a good signal inside ex-daughter in law's domicile. Had to go
to parking lot to send/receive calls. Replaced 4 year old phone with
newer one when I returned home. Places in Ohio that I had had problems
with the older phone now corrected with newer phone. Note: older phone
had external antenna while newer phone has internal antenna. On my
trip to Columbus, GA in March 2008 signal inside ex-daughter in law's
domicile improved. Not much though. 1.5 bars for a good signal. Either
something on Post is blocking the signal (EMI) or the nearest cell
tower is too far away. I noticed many soldiers on post using cell
phones. Many don't have a land line. My ex-daughter in law, doesn't.
She had a lot of problems with Verizon signal in her home. Went
through 3 models before a particular model phone received a good
signal for in home use.

Overall, I am very happy with Verizon. Any cell phone user should
realize that there will be areas where a signal can't be received for
service, e.g. valleys surrounded by mountains, basements where the
house has metal siding or metal studs that will block radio waves,
dead zones, etc.

Terry

[arch3angel]

Hey Bill,

Which phone do you have?

Is it a blackberry?

If you do *228 one the key pad and then send it, follow the directions
on the recording to upgrade your phones software. This helps alot
with things like the phone believing you are in a roaming area when
your really not.

When I first powered on my HTC 6800, Ya I know it is a windows device,
please don't get me started... :( It showed me roaming at my desk
inside our building, once I did the software (phone software) upgrade
i never see the roaming indicator.

Hope that helps...

[arch3angel]

I almost forgot to mention, I have known John for many years now and
by no means was he trying to cause problems in our threads. He is an
awesome friend, and a true lover of the Linux world. He was just
lookin out for me and my family.

Thanks!

On Apr 29, 5:59 pm, "John Wesp" <johnw...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Rob, I think you should disclose what company you work for (Alltel in this
> case) when making a post dissing a competitor and also add the disclaimer
> that your opinions don't reflect your employers views. Just to be on the
> safe side legally for both you and your employer.
>
> I don't know anything about Sprint's service per se as I have only ever used
> T-Mobile and Cingular/AT&T, but can only imagine what kind of flame wars
> this could start. And legal consequences.
>
> With kind regards
> John Wesp
>

[Terry Morris]

Verizon phones use *228 option 1 and option 2 for program update and program upgrade, too. The download is minutes free to the client. When the download is complete, the phone cycles off, then back on again. Verizon recommends performing the update/upgrade every 2 months to correct software/add new software to your cell phone. Oops, I haven't reprogrammed since the end of February.

Ciao,
Terry

--
Terry L. Morris, KB8AMZ

<registered Linux user FC2, Xandros, SuSe, & Ubuntu>
Org's: North East Ohio - OMIK Amateur Radio Club; Portage County Lodge 70 - F.O.P., NTHS, ALUG, PCARS, National OMIK, ARRL, &QRP-ARCI.