WSJ. 'Help! My Digital Cell Phone Goes Dead While I'm ...'
February 1, 1999
By NICOLE HARRIS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
NEW YORK -- Digital cell phones are sweeping the nation, but they
come with a catch: spotty service resulting from half-built networks.
That means callers with digital phones may find themselves losing their
signal or, even worse, not getting any signal at all. There's a short-term
solution: dual-band phones that work on both digital and old-fashioned
analog networks. But they often cost more to buy than single-band
phones, and they use up batteries faster.
The industry says it is doing what it can to improve service, but it has a lot
to do. Creating an infrastructure to support seamless digital coverage is
estimated to cost at least $5 billion. Community opposition to new
transmission towers must be overcome in many areas. The result: Seamless
coverage probably will take years to complete.
For phone companies, moving to digital service makes sense. While analog
is a capacity hog, handling just one conversation per channel, digital
networks condense speech so multiple conversations can travel on a
channel. That will allow carriers to increase capacity as much as tenfold
and cut costs 35% to 50%.
"We had to stop running on analog due to its complexity and expense,"
says Dan Hesse, chief executive of AT&T Wireless, who likens analog
phones to black-and-white televisions. But at least those black-and-white
TV sets worked.
Sidney Schmidt, the CEO of an electrical-engineering business, recently
took part in a free 30-day trial of digital cell-phone service. Speeding
down the highway in Alexandria, Minn., he called his broker to sell some
stock, but lost the call in the middle of the transaction. When he
reconnected, the stock had fallen an additional $2 a share, costing him
nearly $400.
"I don't think this digital stuff is all it's promised to be," Mr. Schmidt says.
He later arranged to exchange the digital model for an analog phone.
Anthony Russo, a New York-based public-relations executive, was
attracted to a phone package offered by Omnipoint Corp., because it
provided coverage in Europe. The phone is great overseas when he's
traveling on business, he says. But while commuting from Manhattan to his
home in Westchester County, he sometimes gets cut off. "It's as if you're in
the Himalaya mountains or something," he complains.
'Spotty Areas'
Omnipoint says it is rapidly expanding its coverage areas but has met
resistance in parts of Westchester County, where some regard the
necessary towers as eyesores. "It will take a while, but spotty areas are
becoming fewer day by day," a spokesman says.
Digital phones work much like analog phones in that they depend on
wireless antennas arranged in "cells" to pick up a signal or conversation.
As users travel with their phones, a network computer "hands off" their call
to the nearest antenna.
Strategis Group, a technology consulting firm in Washington, D.C., says
digital networks cover 30% of the nation and 60% of the population. This
means while most of the country's large cities have digital networks, some
surrounding suburbs and most rural areas aren't covered. Even in big cities,
users can lose digital signals between one block and the next.
Two different types of digital service are available. About three years ago,
Omnipoint, Sprint Corp. and PrimeCo Personal Communications, a joint
venture of Bell Atlantic Corp. and AirTouch Communications Inc., began
offering PCS, or "personal communication services." PCS boasts lower
rates, but its coverage is limited because the networks to support it had to
be built from scratch. PCS transmitters also cover a smaller range than
other digital technologies, requiring more cells to fill in the gaps.
To combat the fledgling companies, large cellular carriers such as AT&T
Corp. and Bell Atlantic began to roll out their own digital services. But
they have been able to construct their digital infrastructures on top of their
existing analog networks. This week, C. Michael Armstrong, AT&T's
chairman and CEO, said he expects 80% of the company's
wireless-network infrastructure to be digital by year end.
Until more digital cells are built, the phone companies are offering their
digital customers the option of "dual band" phones, which dump users who
are out of digital range onto an analog network. That approach has
drawbacks. The analog system, already overloaded in many regions, may
be busy, preventing the transfer from taking place. Nifty digital special
features such as text messaging won't work when the phone switches to its
analog band.
The pricing for digital service is often bundled to include lots of "free"
minutes, as well as long distance and roaming fees. That can make digital,
particularly with a dual-band phone, the most practical and cost-effective
approach for road-warrior cell-phone users.
In September, Bell Atlantic launched its SingleRate East plan, which offers
90 to 1,000 minutes of calls a month from most parts of the East Coast to
anywhere in the U.S. at prices ranging from $39.99 to $99. Meanwhile,
AT&T and Sprint have flat-rate plans that allow users to call anywhere in
the country without long distance or roaming fees.
Good Quality
Many customers with digital-only phones who stay primarily within one
calling area say they are satisfied with their service. Alexander Vachon,
chief Social Security analyst for the Senate finance committee, uses his
Sprint PCS phone "countless" times a day to keep in touch with contacts
on Capitol Hill. He says voice quality is "better than regular telephones,"
and he has experienced only a few dead spots in the Capitol Building.
Mr. Vachon is so enthused that he is mulling the possibility of using his
digital phone for all of his voice communication needs and setting aside his
land line for fax and modem use. Other consumers are willing to wait
patiently while the digital carriers build their networks but have meanwhile
adopted their own stopgap solutions.
Jon Clark, a Maplewood, Minn., resident, enjoys the voice mail and caller
ID features of his fancy new Sprint PCS digital phone. Still, he knows the
phone won't give him a signal when he travels to the Arrowhead region of
Minnesota for canoeing. To compensate, he carries a dual-band phone as
well. "I've just gotten used to the limitations," he says.
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