At 08 May 2008 02:28:36 +0000 Steve Sobol wrote:

> > Perhaps... or it could be Verizon's and AT&T's 15 year head start?
>
> Good point. Let's look at the facts.


In THIS thread? Why start now? ;-)

> Verizon. Formed by the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE. Verizon Wireless
> included those properties plus the properties of Vodafone AirTouch
> Cellular and PrimeCo (A 1900MHz carrier, Phillippe, FYI).

Funny you mentioned the 1900MHz bit. I was going to throw Consumer
Reports' cellular survey back at Steven Scharf in my last post but forgot
to get around to it- despite his "Verizon-dominates-independent-surveys" as
"proof" 1900 MHz is inferior to 800MHz, CR's survey ranked Verizon as best
in
the Miami market (like in many cities) in the No Signal, and Dropped Calls
categories as well as overall score. The "punchline" of course, is that
Verizon is a 1900MHz-only carrier in Miami. AT&T owns both 800MHz licenses
there. (T-Mobile often came in second to Verizon many markets in the CR
survey, above AT&T, despite AT&T being 800 and T-Mobile 1900. Maybe
Verizon is just a little better at building out a network than the others,
and it has nothing to do with frequency? Or maybe an even simpler
explanation is the "can you hear me
now" brainwashing is market independent?)


> Sprint's network, much newer than the incumbents, had coverage at my house
> along Lake Erie in a neighborhood no one else covered until a year after I
> moved there, and Verizon's coverage in Ashtabula was horrible where
> Sprint's was very good. Ashtabula is about an hour east of Cleveland;
> smallish town, but not middle-of-nowhere small.

Bah! Anecdotal! ;-)

> > Why hasn't the free market done it's job?
>
> Well, that's the thing, the free market IS doing its job.
>
> I believe that was your point.


Guilty as charged!