SJMercury. Your call: Cell phones put to test
[G* should hire these guys to point out the numerous dead zones and how quickly cell coverage stops right outside of urban areas.]
Published Tuesday, July 13, 1999, in the San Jose Mercury News
BY JON HEALEY
Mercury News Staff Writer
The first question on the minds of most mobile-phone shoppers is the
one that's hardest to answer: Which of the services works the best?
Ask Deepak Sant of Emerald Bay Systems in Milpitas, though, and
this is what he'll say: The digital version of GTE Wireless does the
best job of placing and completing calls in the Bay Area, while Pacific
Bell Wireless is tops in sound clarity. Sprint PCS is at the bottom in
all three categories locally.
Sant's opinion is based on three weeks of rigorous testing that
Emerald Bay did in April and May. The company dispatched a small
fleet of specially equipped Nissan minivans to crisscross the Bay
Area, with computers in the back dialing thousands of calls on cell
phones to check for congestion and dropped connections.
In other words, Emerald Bay bought a bunch of phones, signed up for
all of the consumer-oriented mobile-phone services, and started
dialing. Its study omitted Nextel, which sells primarily to businesses.
This try-it-and-see approach draws some argument from the
mobile-phone companies, but it's just what they have told consumers
to do. Aside from color-coded maps of coverage areas, consumers
have little on which to judge a wireless service until they buy a phone
and start using it.
While many consumers are pleased with the results, a significant
number switch from one company to another in search of something
that works better. Some never seem to stop switching: John Chua of
Redwood Shores, for example, has gone from Cellular One to Pac
Bell to GTE to Sprint and back to Cellular One.
''I learned through experience by using the service themselves, and
that was very frustrating,'' Chua said. A heavy user who logs about
1,500 minutes of calls per month, his main complaints have been
dropped calls and dead spots -- zones where there is no coverage.
Even after sampling most of the services, Chua said he still doesn't
know enough to judge which network works the best for him. ''I
might go back to GTE,'' he said, adding, ''I think GTE's the best of a
bad bunch.''
Price, coverage
Bruce Kasrel, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, said the
wireless companies are still competing for customers based on prices,
the appeal of their phones and the extent of their coverage nationally.
They probably won't try to compete on performance issues until after
their coverage areas are the same, a year or two down the road.
Sant's studies could help frustrated customers like Chua, but they
haven't been publicly available. Instead, Emerald Bay makes its living
selling the results of its research to the wireless carriers, as do a
handful of other testing companies.
Formed about three years ago by Sant and Gordon Spencer,
Emerald Bay has tested the wireless networks in 40 cities, including
most of the major ones in the West. The tests, which are repeated
every six months, look at three problems critical to consumers: how
frequently a mobile phone call fails to connect, how often it is
dropped prematurely, and how many of the completed calls are
marred by missing or garbled words.
The company's five minivans are outfitted with a rack of phones --
usually the most popular model sold by each of the services being
tested -- mounted at ear level behind the driver. The phones are
connected to a computer equipped with software that can dial
numbers, synthesize speech and check for dropouts and other
problems with sound quality.
As the van moves along its route, the computer on board
simultaneously places a call on each of the phones to another
computer at Emerald Bay's headquarters. The two computers then
send synthesized speech back and forth for just under two minutes --
the length of the average wireless call.
Also on board is a satellite-navigation device that displays maps
electronically for the driver. In addition to all of the interstates and
U.S. highways in an area, the vans travel along the major roads in the
areas where most people live.
In the recent Bay Area test, the vans covered about 4,000 miles and
logged 14,000 calls. They found that the digital services from GTE
and Cellular One -- the companies that have been in the market the
longest by far -- ranked first and second in both placing and
completing calls.
That's not surprising, said wireless industry analyst Herschel
Shosteck. His own surveys of wireless-phone dealers have found that
the well-established cellular networks consistently get better grades
than upstarts like Pac Bell and Sprint, which got into the wireless
market in 1997.
Findings disputed
The newer networks ''don't serve all of these sparsely covered areas
or holes that the (older) cellular networks serve, or their systems have
holes in them,'' Shosteck said. ''From that point of view, the (older)
networks, without question, do a better job.''
Keith Paglusch, senior vice president of operations at Sprint PCS,
said he hadn't seen the Emerald Bay study, but he took issue with the
results. ''We believe that the quality of our service continues to be
very good and extremely competitive, and our customers tell us that
as well,'' Paglusch said.
He also said that the company plans to double the number of cell sites
in the Bay Area over the next few years, expanding and intensifying its
coverage.
David Maischoss, vice president of marketing for Pac Bell Wireless,
dismissed the study as a ''snapshot'' that was too limited in time to
give an accurate view of consumers' experience. GTE, on the other
hand, was pleased with Emerald Bay's work. Harry Thomas,
California marketing director for GTE Wireless, said Emerald Bay ''is
becoming established in the industry and a respected source.''
Jay Noceto, a top engineer at Cellular One, said Emerald Bay's
general approach was solid, but there were some flaws. For example,
he said, different models of mobile phone could produce different
results. So could a change in the timing of the calls, which were made
on weekdays between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.
Contact Jon Healey at jhealey@
sjmercury.com or (877) 727-5005.
©1999 Mercury Center. |
