Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Wireless wanderers ; Verizon team goes extra mile in search of dead zones.

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 11:52:16 -0400

Wireless wanderers ; Verizon team goes extra mile in search of dead
zones
Source: "Record, The; Bergen County, N.J."
Publication date: 2003-04-17

Irritated that your cellphone drops calls?

Try keeping the antenna up.

It's one of the most common misperceptions about cellphones - people
think
the tiny antenna doesn't do much, but by raising it you can improve
reception by as much as 30 percent to 40 percent.

So says Mark Funka, and he's a man who should know.

Funka supervises a group of engineers who test Verizon Wireless'
cellular
network in New Jersey.

They are the real-life team behind the Bedminster-based company's
multimillion-dollar "Can you hear me now?" ad campaign featuring a
Verizon
test man who walks around repeating the sentence and saying "good" to
indicate his calls are going through.

The tests done by Funka and his team help pinpoint dead zones, areas
where calls don't go through for a wide variety of reasons. They also
give
company executives a chance to boast about superior service, despite
other
companies' claims to superiority.

With confusing price plans and similar phones, the only way wireless
carriers can distinguish themselves is service quality, said Robert
Rosenberg, president of Insight Research, a Boonton- based
telecommunications market research firm.

And claims of having the best service notwithstanding, the only really
effective way to decide if a cellphone will work well in your area is
"to ask
your neighbor," he said.

Some carriers will have better service in certain areas than others
because
of the location of their cell towers, the number of users trying to make
calls
at the same time, and the technology the carriers use to run their
network.

These are facts Funka, Verizon's system performance manager for the New
York metro region, knows well.

Every month, his team drives 1,200 miles through the northern part of
the
state in a nondescript white Ford Taurus station wagon packed with a
quarter-million dollars' worth of testing gear.

Along with Verizon phones, the back of the wagon carries cellphones from

five of Verizon's competitors: AT&T Wireless, Nextel, T-Mobile, and
Sprint
PCS.

The engineers drive some of the state's most heavily traveled routes
while
computers carry out simultaneous tests of each phone, recording the
results on a laptop. Calls lasting 140 seconds, the average length made
by
Verizon Wireless customers, are placed from each phone by a computer
that speaks odd-sounding sentences such as "a chicken leg is a rare
dish"
and "he carved a head from a real block of marble."

The sentences are designed with various sounds so a computer at the
receiving end can accurately judge the voice quality. Among other
things,
the computer senses and records garbled speech, dropped calls, and calls

that don't go through.

Across the company's nationwide territory, a 60-car fleet has been busy
testing the network, riding about 100,000 miles a month.

As for the frustrating dead zones, Funka knows of about 300 areas the
company calls "search areas" in a northern New Jersey region that
stretches from the New York border south to the border between Monmouth
and Ocean counties.

The search areas, however, don't necessarily mean dead zones that are
the
result of, say, poorly placed towers, said Funka.

On a recent trip around Bergen County to test the network, Funka sat
behind the wheel with a laptop at his side, pointing to parts of the
Bergen
County courthouse where service is available outside but not in some
rooms
where walls have embedded quarter-inch steel plates that do a good job
of
blocking cellular radio frequencies.

Funka's team spends two weeks every month "sniffing the RF" - the radio
frequency - in the Taurus around the northern part of the state, placing
calls
on Verizon phones and rivals' phones. The rest of the month his team
does
more extensive tests and zeroes in on any trouble spots.

And does Verizon Wireless come out on top?

Not surprisingly, yes, they say. (The Bedminster-based company has
confidently offered ride-alongs to dozens of members of the media.)

In Northern New Jersey, for example, Verizon dropped one call out of
about
500 placed over the 1,200 mile test last month.

That compared with six dropped calls for the closest competitor and 24
for
the poorest.

Verizon Wireless is loathe to discuss specifics when it comes to the
competition and won't reveal the closest competitor or the one which "is

consistently bad each month," according to Funka.

"We're not here to bash the competition," he said.

What they are trying to do, however, is create a strong impression in
people's minds that Verizon Wireless has the highest quality network.

Again, not surprisingly, the other carriers have the same goal.

AT&T Wireless and Nextel Communications, for example, point to highest
ratings in overall customer satisfaction and overall carrier performance
in a
survey by the technology research firm The Yankee Group.

"All coverage is local," says Linda Barrabee, senior analyst with The
Yankee Group.

"Some carriers have the best coverage in one market, but are perceived
as
lacking in others."

And there are other surveys and other claims.

Consumer Reports, in its February issue, surveyed cellphone service and
gave high marks to Verizon.

But a whopping one-third of those polled told Consumer Reports they were

seriously considering switching providers and the overall satisfication
with
the companies fell well below marks given to other industries such as
auto
insurers and hotel chains.

That's bad news for the carriers, which face the possibility that
federal
regulators may enforce number portability starting in November; a rule
change that would enable customers to keep their numbers when they
switch carriers.

Some analysts predict a big increase in "churn," the rate at which
customers change providers. And high churn is bad for business.

***

Martha McKay's e-mail address is [email-masked]

(GRAPHIC, page B01)

Selling cellular

The top wireless companies, with their number of customers and market
share*:

Other: 37 million - 27%

Verizon Wireless: 29 million - 21%

AT&T Wireless: 19 million - 14%

Sprint PCS: 18 million - 13%

Cingular Wireless: 15 million - 11%

Nextel: 11 million - 8%

T-Mobile USA: 10 million - 7%

*Percentage total exceeds 100 due to rounding.

Source: Allied Business Intelligence Inc.

Publication date: 2003-04-17
http://cnniw.yellowbrix.com/pages/cnniw/Story.nsp?story_id=38162629&ID=cnniw&scategory=Business+and+Finance&

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