'Help! My Digital Cell Phone
Goes Dead While I'm ...'
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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