The current issue of Bay Area Consumer Checkbook
("http://www.checkbook.org/") has a long article and survey on Bay Area
wireless. They do this survey every five years, the last one prior to
this was in 2002. Much has changed in five years.

The last Bay Area Consumer Checkbook article (2002) had AT&T Wireless
slightly above Verizon, but this was pre-merger and pre-GSM. Many people
only remember the troubled last year or two of AT&T Wireless, when in
fact for many years they were the premier wireless carrier in the area
with their TDMA/AMPS network.

Cingular was tied for last place with Nextel in 2002, but this was when
Cingular was going through all their capacity and coverage problems, and
didn't have the more developed AT&T Wireless 800 MHz network to rely on
(T-Mobile is now using the old Cingular network, and their local
coverage clearly shows the problems that Cingular used to have).

Cingular/AT&T did better this time around than the old Cingular. They
were worse than the old AT&T Wireless, but much better than the old
Cingular 1900 MHz GSM network. They are still in 4th place overall, but
are 2nd to Verizon in the important categories of local and out of area
coverage, though a distant second in local coverage. This survey had no
surprises, as all the other national surveys have reached similar
conclusions.

Here are some of the rankings from 2002 and 2007. I didn't include
percentages, but these are available from the current issue and the
Summer/Fall 2002 issue of Consumers Checkbook. You actually can't see
the 2002 article and survey on-line, but the magazine is available at
most libraries. The 2007 article and survey is on-line, but you can't
see it for free, you either have to subscribe, or buy the survey if you
want to see the actual numbers. It's $10, see "http://tinyurl.com/2x2dxb"

Overall 2002 2007
------------------------------------------
AT&T Wireless (old) 1 n/a
AT&T/Cingular 4 4
Nextel (& iDEN on Sprint/Nextel) 5 5
Sprint (CDMA) 3 3
T-Mobile n/a 2
Verizon 2 1

Local Coverage 2002 2007
------------------------------------------
AT&T Wireless (old) 1 n/a
AT&T/Cingular 4 2
Nextel (& iDEN on Sprint/Nextel) 4 5
Sprint (CDMA) 3 3
T-Mobile n/a 4
Verizon 2 1

Dropped Calls 2002 2007
------------------------------------------
AT&T Wireless (old) 1 n/a
AT&T/Cingular 3 3
Nextel (& iDEN on Sprint/Nextel) 5 5
Sprint (CDMA) 4 4
T-Mobile n/a 2
Verizon 2 1

Out of Area Coverage 2002 2007
------------------------------------------
AT&T Wireless (old) 1 n/a
AT&T/Cingular 5 2
Nextel (& iDEN on Sprint/Nextel) 4 5
Sprint (CDMA) 3 4
T-Mobile n/a 3
Verizon 2 1

Local coverage is as expected, with Verizon having a far higher rating
than any of the other carriers, beyond any possible margin of error.

Clearly Cingular's claim of fewest dropped calls is not what was
experienced by the respondents to this survey.

Out of area coverage mirrors what every other national survey has shown.

There were a bunch of other categories, including sound quality and bill
accuracy. As expected, the CDMA carriers topped the rankings in sound
quality. For billing accuracy, Verizon was ranked #1.

What was strange about this survey was the rankings of the MVNOs was
very high, though the number of respondents was low (around 125). Some
of the numbers made sense if you understand the MVNO in question. For
example, Virgin had a very good dropped call rating, but Virgin's
network is limited to Sprint, no roaming onto AMPS or other CDMA
carriers, so no one that needed wide area coverage would choose them in
the first place (they did very poorly in out of area coverage).

This survey had a high sampling rate, and very low margin of error. Of
course any survey that conflicts with Navas's famous "survey of myself"
is no good according the CSO (chief shilling officer).