Darth Jeff wrote:
> I am Verizon subscriber who is considering moving to Cingular. I
> realize coverage between any carrier is different, and depends on the
> user and where he lives. I have been hearing the Cingular is really
> trying to build their network out to match Verizon. From reading both
> newsgroups some questions:
>
> 1. Does the claim that Verizon has superior coverage include AMPs?

It's unclear if Verizon's claim of "Most Reliable Network" includes
AMPS, but since they started making that claim back when most of their
handsets were tri-mode, I would think that it does.

Since the Consumer Reports and J.D. Power surveys are done every year,
and the number of AMPS handsets has been steadily decreasing, it's safe
to say that AMPS didn't play a huge part in the survey results. In some
cities there weren't big differences between carriers, but in the San
Francisco Bay Area, Verizon was rated far better than Cingular, and has
been leading them every year. It was believed that following the merger
with AT&T Wireless that Cingular would improve in its results, but
surprisingly this hasn't happened.

If the survey respondents were like me, and often travel to the nether
regions of the Bay Area and northern California, then AMPS coverage
would definitely figure into the results, though since Verizon isn't
selling many tri-mode phones anymore, AMPS was not a big factor. Of
course if they were mostly subscribers with digital-only phones, or
subscribers that never left the cities, then AMPS would not figure much
into the equation (though even in the major cities of the Bay Area there
are still areas with no digital coverage of any kind).

In the San Francisco Bay Area there are vast areas with no GSM coverage
at all, where you can get at least a Verizon AMPS signal. Of course a
lot of people never go hiking, bicycling, camping, boating, etc., and
never would know the difference.

> Because I would assume when AMPs gets turned off, or if I move off my
> tri-mode phone(I am always in digital areas) that the coverage between
> the two carriers may be more equal? Am I off-base here?

The Verizon CDMA coverage is better than the Cingular or T-Mobile GSM
coverage, but as you stated, Cingular is working on building out their
network. It seems like almost every day for the past couple of years
Cingular has issued a press release about coverage that they've added.
If you take AMPS out of the equation, Cingular will likely be close to
Verizon in the San Francisco Bay Area within a couple of years, though
due to the inherent advantages of CDMA they will never catch up.

Don't think that AMPS coverage is immediately going away the instant the
FCC allows AMPS to be turned off. In the urban areas, where there is
digital coverage, it'll be turned off, but in areas with no digital
coverage it'll stay on until Verizon can cover those areas (at least the
road areas) with digital. The roadside call boxes are all AMPS, and
these need to be converted to CDMA. There was an article a while back
stating that the spacing of call boxes would be widened at the same time
they convert to CDMA. Verizon has committed to their corporate customers
to not worsen coverage when AMPS can be turned off, but this only
applies to areas served by roads. So we'll lose a lot of coverage in
open space areas. The rural carriers will keep AMPS on because it's the
only service in vast areas of the U.S..

> 2. I am always seeing some flamewar about no Cingular coverage in San
> Francisco. Cingular's coverage map seems to have it covered. So I am
> confused there.

I haven't seen such a war. One poster continually tries to attack all
the independent surveys that show Verizon to have a wide lead over
Cingular in coverage in the San Francisco Bay Area, but this is just one
poster, with his own agenda, and no evidence to support his claims.

J.D. Power, Consumer Reports, and Bay Area Consumer Checkbook all had
surveys that ranked Verizon as far better than Cingular, and these
surveys all had very large sample sizes and extremely low margins of
error. This has also been the experience of every person that has ever
experienced both carriers.

As to moving to Cingular, only do it if you must have a single handset
and phone number to use in the U.S., and the parts of Europe and Asia
that are GSM only. In North America, CDMA service is much better than
GSM service, and Verizon's high speed data service has much better
coverage than Cingular's (Sprint also has much wider coverage with high
speed data than Cingular).

[Copied to alt.cellular.attws. Please post all alt.cellular.cingular
posts to alt.cellular.attws as well. The Cingular name is going away,
and alt.cellular.attws is the proper venue for posts regarding AT&T's
Wireless Service.]