NYT article about "holes" in cell phone coverage areas.
December 24, 2000
Those Black Holes in Your Mobile Phone Service
By AMY ZUCKERMAN
When Andrea Levy signed up
for cellular telephone
service, she thought she
was getting seamless coverage for
the entire country. But Ms. Levy, a
marketing executive from
Manhattan, complains about being
cut off intermittently everywhere
from Westchester County to New
Mexico, and she sometimes finds
unexpected roaming and
long-distance charges on her
monthly bill.
Stewart Cheifet, an independent
video producer from Mountain
View, Calif., also laments about
coast-to-coast disruptions. "I can
drive around the San Francisco Bay
area and lose service," he said. In
New York, he added, "I couldn't get
a signal from a skyscraper on Wall
Street." He said that he, too, had
encountered unexpected charges.
As cell phone use mushrooms —
there are an estimated 107 million
users in the United States, up from
28 million just five years ago — so
has the number of consumer
complaints.
Roderick Porter, the acting chief of the Federal Communications
Commission's consumer information bureau, says his department often hears
complaints like those of Ms. Levy and Mr. Cheifet. And Lou Richman, the
finance editor at Consumer Reports magazine, says he is swamped with
reader letters about poor service or confusing billing. "There's overloaded,
congested networks, dropped calls and holes in coverage that are all sources
of aggravation for consumers," Mr. Richman said.
Most of the problems reflect an industry that is still in flux. The networks
and infrastructure of the wireless service providers, analysts say, cannot fully
support the vast and rapidly increasing number of customers. A cell phone
customer, they say, should understand that he cannot simply buy a phone,
sign a service contract and expect the phone to offer the same service as a
traditional phone mounted on the kitchen wall.
But consumers can take steps to find the kind of services that best meet their
needs. First, experts say, they should understand something about the
technology and how it works — or doesn't — with various carrier service
plans.
Many users, for example, may not know the difference between a digital and
analog phone. (The analog system, which is being phased out, breaks
conversation into sound waves that are carried over radio signals. The newer
digital method, which provides clearer calls with greater security, breaks a
voice message into a binary computer code and sends it in short bursts.) And
consumers also may not understand what is meant by "anytime minutes" —
basically, no restrictions for calling times.
Consumers may complain about costly roaming fees, which wireless
providers charge when customers use their phones outside their service area.
They may not realize that their phones may be set on "roam" even when they
are not traveling outside their service area. To save money, they can simply
shut off the roaming feature, said Scott Relf, a senior vice president for
marketing and product development for Sprint PCS, based in Kansas City,
Mo. And because of technological incompatibilities, he added, different
carriers' equipment may not be interchangeable.
Consumers should also check the fine print of the plans — and there are
many from which to choose. For example, CellularOne in Boston — soon to
be absorbed into Cingular Wireless — offers 13 plans, ranging from $19.99 a
month for a basic analog plan to $174 a month for a digital plan that offers
2,500 "anytime" minutes.
The costs depend on several factors, including whether the customer has
signed up for local or national service, or has opted for "bundling of
minutes," a combination of the two.
Another catch phrase is "buckets of minutes." "Some providers will offer you
so many minutes per dollar amount, whether that's local or long distance,
whether you're at home or whether you're traveling," said Chris Pearson,
executive vice president of the Universal Wireless Communications
Consortium, an international group based in Bellevue, Wash., that is working
on standardizing incompatible cell phone technologies. "Others will offer you
200 minutes, for example, but only for calls at certain times, on certain days
or in your home area."
Mr. Richman of Consumer Reports said users should understand what
they're getting into. Buckets of minutes "can be consumed far more quickly
than you realize," he said, because billing policies count partial minutes as full
ones, meaning that a 30-minute allotment can be used up in as little as 15
minutes.
To decide how much time to buy, consumers may want to keep a log of all
calls they make over a week or two, he added.
Consumers should also ask about late fees and read the fine print on
promotions.
Then there is the issue of coverage. Most companies offer some form of
local service with national service sometimes bundled in. But the
advertisements promising no roaming or long-distance charges for the whole
country can be confusing — as both Ms. Levy and Mr. Cheifet have found.
Ms. Levy, 37, a vice president for research at Shepardson Stern &
Kaminsky, a New York advertising agency, chose Sprint last year, primarily
because it did not require a long-term contract. Although she signed up for
the basic $29.99 monthly package for 180 minutes, and has supplemented
that with an additional $10 a month for 200 nighttime and weekend minutes,
she has incurred about $50 in unexpected roaming or long-distance charges.
Ms. Levy says that for as much as she is resigned to the fact that coverage is
flawed, she expects future improvements.
Mr. Cheifet, 61, who relies on his cell phone to keep abreast of business
while meeting with clients around the country, first signed up with AT&T at
$89.95 a month for 1,000 minutes. "The company was great and the bill was
consistent, but the coverage was lousy," he said, referring to problems with
dropped calls or dead zones. He said he switched to Sprint but eventually
dropped that plan because of billing problems — instead of the $75 a month
he had expected, he was repeatedly billed $140 a month "even though I never
went over my 600-minute maximum."
Thomas Murphy, a Sprint spokesman, said he could not comment directly on
the complaints of Ms. Levy and Mr. Cheifet because he was unfamiliar with
their service plans. He said there could have been errors in their bills, or they
may have misunderstood their coverage plans. Reception or service problems
could reflect a number of factors, including weather or clogged networks,
Mr. Murphy and representatives of other providers said.
Annabel Dodd, author of "The Essential Guide to Telecommunications"
(Prentice-Hall) said that service "isn't perfect yet nationwide" but that she
was optimistic that mergers like the one recently approved between SBC
Wireless and Bell South Cellular to create Cingular Wireless would lead to
truly seamless service nationwide.
Industry experts say no single provider can yet cover the entire country.
Those who advertise seamless service are doing so by creating alliances with
other providers, Mr. Pearson said. When customers move into an alliance
partner's network, he said, they may sometimes pay roaming charges.
To help avoid them, Mr. Pearson advises consumers to request network
maps so they can track — on any given trip — whether they will be in or out
of their provider's network. But they should make sure they have the latest
maps, he said, because coverage keeps changing.
The major companies are rapidly expanding their coverage zones by
combining operations through mergers, building coverage alliances and
establishing additional cell phone transmission sites. But Michael Althschul,
vice president and general counsel for the Cellular Telecommunications
Industry Association, a trade group based in Washington, said providers as
diverse as AT&T and Verizon Wireless were hampered by the lack of
available spectrum, or frequency bands. To expand, he said, the industry has
been negotiating with the F.C.C. to obtain additional frequencies.
William Clift, chief technical officer for Cingular Wireless, said his company
has had difficulty expanding networks in dense markets like New York City.
"When demand for wireless service outpaces a forecast, it can take six
months to a year for some networks to catch up." he said.
Kenneth Woo, a spokesman for AT&T Wireless in Redmond, Wash., said
that "people want service, but you can't imagine the protests we get because
neighborhoods don't want cell phone transmission sites." Moreover, he said,
"cellular is not a perfect technology."
Equipment, of course, is another variable in reception, service and cost.
Expect to spend more, for example, for Web-enabled phones. "Newer is
actually better," Mr. Pearson said, but there are still many users with
old-fashioned analog phones trying to complete calls in areas where their
equipment cannot pick up frequencies. Even dual-band or dual-mode phones,
which can distinguish between different frequencies and various cell phone
technologies, will not guarantee coverage from one carrier to another, he
said.
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company |
