On 2007-03-06, SMS <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
> Darth Jeff wrote:
>> 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.

I don't believe that, in the Bay area at least. I've yet to be anywhere
in the Bay area which had *Verizon* AMPS coverage but which lacked
Verizon CDMA coverage. It may be I've not been everywhere yet, but
I've been a lot of places so areas where Verizon has AMPS but hasn't
added CDMA must be fairly rare.

I have seen reasonably large areas, however, which have AT&T AMPS coverage
but no digital service detectable to me (no GSM at least; there might
be TDMA). An example of this is the area in the vicinity of 94020.
You can get analog service on a Sprint phone some places here. The
problem for Verizon users is that, unless things have changed recently,
with Verizon's current plans their phones no longer roam onto Cingular
AMPS, so a new Verizon customer gets no service here. I lost this
coverage when I switched from Sprint to Verizon.

So I doubt that Verizon makes any claims based on AMPS coverage in
the Bay area since Verizon doesn't seem to have much AMPS-only coverage
and they don't (officially) allow roaming on Cingular AMPS, and that's
all the AMPS there is in the Bay area.

I have heard a rumor, however, that Verizon has recently started to
allow free roaming on Cingular AMPS for AC2 customers, but I've not
been places where I could test this recently.

Dennis Ferguson