It is alleged that Nick Danger claimed:

> A couple weeks ago, I finally decided it was time to move up from my two old
> AT&T TDMA phones. I also needed a third phone, so that required some sort of
> a new plan. I got three Razr phones with a Cingular family plan (550
> minutes). One handy feature that my old phones didn't have was the ability
> to sound a tone whenever it passes in or out of a no-service area. While
> driving home one day on the secondary roads, I found that I was in a
> no-service area for almost half of my 25-mile commute. During this time, I
> saw other people talking on their phones, so it appears someone was getting
> service. Also, I found that almost all of our friends had Verizon and
> claimed that they got great service everywhere. This is in Northern
> Westchester County, NY.

The two networks have different coverage maps, and those maps they have
at the stores may not be 100% accurate. Note, too, that those others
you saw on the road may have been with Alltel or Sprint, as Sprint
roams on Alltel towers. I do not know if Alltel has service in your
area, though.

> Given that Verizon apparently had better coverage and we would have someone

They may have better coverage where you are, but that does not mean
that they have better coverage everywhere.

> to talk with with our "In" minutes, I finally decided to sign up for Verizon
> and do some comparisons. I ordered three Razr phones from Verizon and they
> arrived today - V3M model. I spent a lot of time driving around the Danbury
> area and northern Westchester, and I have to report, to my surprise, that
> Cingular has had better coverage, better signal strength, and much clearer
> sound. It's difficult to tell from looking at the phones. The Cingular phone

I learned the hard way that you cannot reliably compare signal strength
to voice quality on a CDMA network, nor strength quality between CDMA
and GSM because of the very fundamental differences in the two
technologies.

CMDA works by dividing the bandwidth per user based on tower load. When
this reaches a threshold, sound quality degrades. It is entirely
possible to have full signal strength from a CDMA tower and still get a
lousy connection. Just like trying to watch a high-bandwidth online
video on a slow connection.

OTOH, GSM works by dividing the timeslots per user based on tower load.
The more phones connected to a tower, the fewer timeslots are available
per phone. When this reaches a threshold, no more connections can be
made until phones move to another tower or are turned off by their
users. This results in retaining good voice quality even with marginal
signal strength because the actual bandwidth per phone remains the
same.

> Bluetooth. International roaming with GSM sounds like a nice thing to have,
> but in reality, it's entirely possible that I might never leave the USA
> during the lifetime of this phone. And even if I do, roaming is so expensive
> that I wouldn't want to do it even if I could. I do wonder how much of a
> contribution the analog towers make to Verizon's much-vaunted superior
> coverage. In rural areas, it appears much of the coverage is analog, which
> would do me no good with an all-digital phone.

My last Verizon phone, a Kyocera 7135 smartphone, never, ever made an
analog connection, even in such marginal areas where digital service
was poor to non-existent yet an analog tower was in range. So I
eventually told it to not even bother trying analog.

Then I moved 40 miles north-west of where I was, and got zero coverage
from Verizon Wireless where I needed it most, and marginal coverage
around the rest of the town. So I eventually switched to Cingular
(Treo 650) and problem solved. I used to live just south of Boston,
MA.

Also of note, since you're in NY: When I'd drive to visit friends in
Kingston, NY, I'd get no CDMA service at all for most of the NY
Throughway between the MA border on Rt. 90 (Throughway exit B3) to exit
20 (Rhinecliff Bridge) on the Throughway/Rt 87. That's about 60~70
miles of major interstate highway with NO SERVICE!. That problem, too,
went away when I switched to Cingular.

> Based on what I've seen (and heard) so far, I honestly have to say that
> Cingular is winning. Could it be that Verizon's better coverage is all a
> myth, perpetuated by a well-orchestrated advertising campaign? I won't have
> time to travel around extensively to test the two thoroughly before one set
> of phones has to go back.

As long as you have both, continue to use both for the duration of
their respective trial periods, and make sure that you do not go over
the prorated allotment of your airtime. IIRC, VZW has a 15 day trial
and a 30 day billing cycle, so a prorated allotment on 15days would be
half the total minutes, and Cingular's trial period is the full first
billing cycle.

Test them both as much as you can during that time frame, and when the
first one's trial period is up, decide which to keep and which to
cancel.

--
Jeffrey Kaplan www.gordol.org
The from userid is killfiled Send personal mail to gordol

"The robot is fully armored in heat treated, triple-folded titanium. It
can resist high-powered artillery blasts or a point-blank Senate ethics
committee hearing." - Riff, Sluggy Freelance