Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Cutting the cord, struggling to connect

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2003 18:11:24 -0500

Cutting the cord, struggling to connect

By LOUIS HAU, Times Staff Writer

St. Petersburg Times, published January 27, 2003

There are special places in my South Tampa apartment.

One is on the left side of the couch. Another is in front of my bedroom closet. I spend a
lot of time there.

Why? Because sometimes they're the only places where my !^&@%# cell phone will work.

About six months ago, I had the phone company shut off my home phone. When I cut the cord
in August, I had just gotten a
new cell phone and was connecting to the Internet through a high-speed cable connection.

So, I figured, what use did I have anymore for an old-fashioned land line phone?

Ah, the naive optimism of the innocent. If I weren't so hellbent on living within a $100
monthly budget for my phone and
Internet needs, I'd run back into the arms of Verizon tomorrow.

The main problem is poor reception, a major challenge for U.S. wireless carriers. (Or,
more precisely, for their frustrated
customers.)

At my apartment, the reception is curiously lousy. At least several nights a week, I'll be
talking to someone on my cell phone
and the call will just die. To stay connected I sometimes have to walk around the
apartment in search of those sweet spots
where the signal is sufficiently strong. On really bad days, my wanderings prove
fruitless.

(My wireless carrier, also Verizon, says my cell phone is blameless. Their technicians
give it a clean bill of health, and it's been
updated with the latest onboard programming.)

Don't get me wrong. Most of the time, I can use my cell phone without any problems. But
that's like saying my car runs most of
the time. Or that the elevator at work functions most of the time. It's an unacceptable
level of performance, especially when the
rest of the world has it better.

Want proof? Travel to virtually any other industrialized country -- Japan, Germany,
Britain, France, you name it -- and you're
bound to find wireless services that are far more reliable than what we put up with here.

I returned to the United States last year after spending three years in South Korea. Over
there, I could use my cell phone
wherever I wanted -- on the Seoul subway, from a taxi hurtling through a mountainside
tunnel, everywhere.

Now that I'm back in the United States, my cell phone occasionally slips into roaming mode
in -- I swear I'm not making this up
-- the Times newsroom in downtown St. Petersburg. (And I'm referring to the type of
roaming that sacks me with extra
charges, not the roaming mode that's free of charge.)

I feel as though I've traveled backward in time. The fact that a major U.S. wireless
carrier still feels it necessary in 2003 to run
ads with a guy running around the country asking, "Can you hear me now?" probably says
more about the state of the
American cellular market than my whiny words ever could.

The United States is, of course, vastly larger than countries that have near-blanket
wireless coverage. As a result, I wouldn't
expect my cell phone to pick up a strong signal in the middle of a North Dakota wheat
field. Or an isolated stretch of the
Everglades.

But roaming in downtown St. Petersburg?

U.S. wireless companies don't help their cause by boasting about their "national" or
"coast-to-coast" networks that in reality
have more holes in them than Swiss cheese. Gaps in wireless networks pop up in the most
unlikely of places. I grit my teeth
sometimes when I talk to my siblings on their fade-in, fade-out cell phones. They live in
or near a charming river town in the
Northeast. New York City.

My poor cell phone reception at home stems from the fact that my apartment is located
between two cell sites but not close
enough to either to pull in a consistently strong signal, says Dennis Lawler, Verizon
Wireless' regional director of network
system performance in Temple Terrace.

"Any time you do a handoff (from one site to another), there's a chance for a lost call,"
he says.

Lawler confirms that the Times building in St. Petersburg is located in a weak-signal area
where Verizon is working to set up a
new cell site. He says it's something the company is doing throughout the country as it
identifies weak spots in its network.

"Our goal is to fix all of those but it takes a lot of time and a lot of money to do
that," he says.

Admittedly, I could have closed my Verizon Wireless account without penalty during the
first two weeks I had the phone and
switched to another carrier. But reception problems are hardly exclusive to Verizon. At
one point or another, I've had a hard
time placing calls on my land line office phone to cell phones operated by AT&T Wireless,
Sprint PCS, Alltel, Nextel and
T-Mobile. (I don't happen to know anyone who uses Cingular.)

The weakness of U.S. wireless networks is one reason why the percentage of wireless
customers who have opted to dump
their land line home phones remained stuck at about 3 percent in 2002, virtually unchanged
from three years earlier, according
to a survey conducted by the Yankee Group, a Boston technology consultancy.

And 76 percent of the survey's respondents said they think home and wireless phones will
always be separate, also virtually
unchanged from 1999. That's not to say that continued growth in wireless services isn't
having a significant impact on
home-phone usage. Respondents in the Yankee Group survey said 25 percent of their
home-phone minutes were being
replaced by wireless minutes, up from 12 percent in 1999.

Relying on just a cell phone at home does have its advantages. There's one less bill to
pay. You don't get charged extra for call
waiting or caller I.D. You don't need a separate answering machine. You receive few, if
any, telemarketing calls, as long as you
give out your cell number only to family and friends. Finally, there's something appealing
about being able to carry your one and
only phone with you at all times.

But cutting the cord still has some significant downsides even if your cell phone gets
good reception at home. Your number
won't be listed in the phone book (although some may view that as a positive). Some
wireless companies charge an extra fee
for itemized bills that include a record of your phone calls, even those calls that are
assessed extra charges if you go over your
monthly time allotment. If you shut off your home phone, then change your mind, you may
have to pay Verizon a $55
reconnection fee.

Most important, not having a home phone can seriously hamper your ability to call for help
in an emergency. Consumer Reports
recently conducted tests of wireless 911 calls and found that a troubling number of them
weren't getting through to emergency
communications centers.

But a proper connection still won't eliminate the added risks inherent in calling for help
on a wireless phone. If you dial 911 on a
land line phone, emergency personnel can trace the call instantly even if you're
incapacitated and unable to speak (or if you're
too young to give directions or if you don't speak English).

But on a cell phone, the best technology available in the Tampa Bay area can trace a 911
call only to the closest cell tower,
which could be miles from where you are. Such a call, without further directions from you,
might help if you were trying to
report that your house was on fire. But it wouldn't help at all if you were stricken with
a heart attack inside your home.

For this reason alone, don't cut the cord if you're frail. And don't do it if you have
kids, or if anyone in the house doesn't speak
English.

As for me, I intend to stick with just my cell phone for now. But if you ever call me when
I'm at home and the line goes dead,
please forgive me. I don't mean to be rude. It's just my wireless service.

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/01/27/news_pf/Technology/Cutting_the_cord__str.shtml

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/