Horrible CellularOne Service in Orange County NY area

[tabcourt]

Their service has been degrading lately to the point that it has become ridiculous. On my commute from Pine Bush to East Hanover, NJ via Route 17, the NYS Thruway and US 287, I am experiencing maddening lapses in service. I get a crazy number of "Call Failed" messages and dropped calls. Something must have changed lately in thois geographic area becuase the service wasn't this bad when I signed up a year ago. Now I face the nightmare of running out the last year of my contract with this crappy service. I called Customer Service and they claim that no one else has complained - I find that hard to believe. The problem exists across 3 different phones so it's not my equipment. Has any of you out there experienced this same problem?
-Mark

[PCSuser]

well I know at&t is merging with them...

this is one of two things:

1. CellOne just dropping the ball; hoping at&t will pick it up and run with it.

or

2. CellOne is making their network 'AT&Tanized' by making it halfrate codec as is the rest of the at&t network (which would explain your sudden drop in voice quality).

I think the latter option would be your best bet - welcome to corporate AT&T!

[RadioFoneGuy]

Originally Posted by PCSuser

well I know at&t is merging with them...

this is one of two things:

1. CellOne just dropping the ball; hoping at&t will pick it up and run with it.

or

2. CellOne is making their network 'AT&Tanized' by making it halfrate codec as is the rest of the at&t network (which would explain your sudden drop in voice quality).

I think the latter option would be your best bet - welcome to corporate AT&T!

Please do not bash companies or technologies or try to give advice on things that you are not familiar with. Its understandable that you are Pro CDMA and PRO PCS but this forum is for everyone regardless of techology, frequency and carrier used.

Mark,

I work for Cell One in Michigan but this is what you do call 611 and tell them you would like to put in a trouble ticket for your area. Tell them to put in the notes what area or areas you are having trouble with if you dont tell them specific you will have someone testing the area by your house as they use the adress on your account. If you can use a second phone if you can thru these areas just to rule out the phone. I have dropped phones before and they stopped picking up towers as good as they should. Nevermind I just seen you have 3 phones.

Are your 3 phones GSM or TDMA this question is important as the TDMA/Analog has been down graded over the years to improve the GSM.
Easy way to tell is look under your batteries for a little memory chip or SIM card as it is normally called. If there is no card you have a TDMA phone.

Did the change happen after a lighting storm? More than likely if your phones are both GSM there may be a problem at the closest tower and it needs to be investigated further.

Service degredation has nothing to do with a Merger that may or maynot get approved for 6 months to a year. Cell One is business as usual period, no waiting for ATT to take over waiting around sitting on our thumbs.

Enuff with the half rate cracks, its not as bad as it sounds and the few ATT markets that have problems (mostly notably being LA County, CA) is making a bad example for GSM.

If I had a problem with CDMA dropping calls because of Cell Shrinkage due to increase capacity at a Cell site it would be fairly Naive of me to state to everyone that CDMA is notorious for dropping calls> - Make sense?

Mark if you need any more help, just PM me. Customer service calls the trouble ticket a Call Trax and you can call in anytime and check on the status of the ticket.

[Fire14]

Originally Posted by PCSuser

well I know at&t is merging with them...

this is one of two things:

1. CellOne just dropping the ball; hoping at&t will pick it up and run with it.

or

2. CellOne is making their network 'AT&Tanized' by making it halfrate codec as is the rest of the at&t network (which would explain your sudden drop in voice quality).

I think the latter option would be your best bet - welcome to corporate AT&T!

I agree with CellOnetech, lets not bash a carrier without some facts & neither of these are facts especially since the buyout was just announced & they have a way to go with getting approvals before doing anything with the networks.
Aslo half rate is not a problem around here like you make it out to be.