OC register report on Wireless service in SoCal!!!

[spyder22]

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The link is above...click on it or cut and paste it into your browser bar. Kind of interesting. Cingular and T-Mobile should of received the same score...but handsets can play into this. Also to be fair they should of used the same GSM handset for ATT/Cingular/T-Mobile. Just my thoughts. I guess Verizon's commercials are right......"Can you hear me now?????"......................................... ........ http://www2.ocregister.com/ocrweb/oc...month=2&day=24

[Merlyn3D]

Ha! I don't believe that load of bull-honkey. I'm sorry, but Verizon has the best service in SoCal in my experience. Cingular can't cut it. One of my friends has Cingular and HATES it.

[larry]

Thanks for posting that link. A couple of things.

1) I doubt Verizon & AT&T should have scored that low seeing how they won the JD power award here.
2) They claim Sprint has trouble at the Anaheim Pond. That's ridiculous because they have a cell site right there and the times that I've been there for events I had perfect reception. They also said there was annoying static. HUH? There's no static on digital PCS. Might have been a defective phone.

I also think that making only 23 test calls from a few selected locations is not enough to properly rate any carrier. Try another 23 locations and probably end up with different results. Unless of course they're just biased towards GSM.

[ockidd15]

You hear it time after time, "Don't believe everything newspapers say."

[beno]

I don't believe in the result either. These guys just tested 25 location. People who posted the results here have used their phones for hundres to thousands times, day and night, indoor and outdoor, long or short conversations. Many people have tried different carriers and come with the result at their locations. That's why I believe in users' results posted here than their test result. It's hard to find a happy Cingular customer here. My brothers in Anaheim have Cingular and they have to walk outdoors to make a call. When I shopped for a phone, I came to Circuit City and Best Buy. The salepersons over there told me Cingular had signal problem.

[larry]

This is what I find hard to believe. I know some of those locations very well. Sprint has antennas less than 1/4 mile away on at least 5 of them and yet they only give them a B or a C? Doesn't make any sense at all. It seems like for some reason they were predetermined to give the GSM carriers a much higher score. Verizon, Sprint and Nextel (who all cover Orange County and LA VERY well) were only given one "A" combined??? But Cingular scores A's on just about every location, even where their tower is further away then the others. That's completely ridiculous and totally unreliable!

[gudel]

i'd give cingular an F-
girl i know has a cingular, she's in HB. of course there's no signal in her place. however, i have this Verizon. guess which one that works extremely well. can you hear me now? I guess she can't, because her phone doesn't work! haha

[Phony]

The OC Register is a very good newspaper and I'm sure that they knew what they were doing when they tested these phones. Yikes......sorry Verizon....can...y.. he....me...n

[beno]

I've emailed to Jim Finkle, the author of this article, to express my opinion. Jim is willing to interview people who has bad or good experience with Cingular. He's currently using Cingular and he's happy about the signal reception. Jim tries to understand why there's such a discrepency in what people are telling and what he found in his study. He'll do a follow-up story so he needs some feedback. Any Cingular customer here should email or give him a call. He's a nice guy and willing to discuss. Here is his information.

Jim Finkle
Reporter
Orange County Register
Phone: 714-796-6927
Email: jfinkle@ocregister.com

[larry]

Originally posted by: Phony
The OC Register is a very good newspaper and I'm sure that they knew what they were doing when they tested these phones. Yikes......sorry Verizon....can...y.. he....me...n

I agree they are a good newspaper, but I don't think it was a fair test.

[Phony]

The reality of the matter is that no matter what the results someone was going to say that the test was skewed. If Sprint would have been rated number one there would have been an uproar. All you can do is take you knocks and move on.

[larry]

That's true. But they would have made themselves look more credible if they gave every provider at least one "A".

[AnthroMatt]

Time for me to defend Sprint (OY!)

When I had Sprint service from 1998 to 1999 I was living in Texas but my wife (fiance at the time) was going to school in Irvine. I grew up in San Diego, so I have a lot of friends all over SoCal. I never once had a problem with Sprint in Irvine, LB, Westwood, Hollywood, dtown LA, or Pasadena. I find it hard to believe Sprint's service is worse in the OC/LA area now than it was 4 years ago. My friends that have Cingular (the ones that didn't cancel their contracts early) still complain, though they do indicate that things have improved dramatically over the past 6 months.

[t6821hn]

Why don't you guys or gals imitate the test and see if you get the same results. Face it, each one of us thinks that our service provider and/or phone is the best and can't stand it if someone else says otherwise. I have both Verizon and AT&T Wireless and believe they both have their good and bad spots. Perhaps in the spots that the writer was calling from the non-Cingular phones performed poorly. Heck, who cares what others say especially when you're happy with what you have. We're not here to promote the cell phone company anyway unless you're being paid to do so. Remember, you pay them. Enjoy.

[larry]

Trust me I have used my Sprint phone at 5 of those locations that they claim it didn't work well. My phone perfomed flawlessly. I don't know what they expect. I guess having a tower only a few hundred feet away isn't good enough for them to give an A.

[CaliforniaJay]

I use both Verizon and Cingular between The Fairfax district in LA and my home in San Dimas, about half way between downtown and Riverside. I have been with Verizon for a few years and recently went on a prepaid Cingular plan because I was interested to see how they were and didn't want to get into a contract while I still had a Verizon one. What I have seen is that Cingular is actually very impressive, at least along my route to work. I mainly drive the 60 and 10 freeways and have taken both phones along side roads basically along these routes. If I HAD to pick a winner in reception, I would honestly say that so far after about 2 months of observing, I would have to give the nod to Cingular, not Verizon. I experience some very strong dead spots with Verizon (the most of which is right here in my own home, where I get 5 bars with Cingular), and while Cingular is not stellar either, it almost seems to be a little more consitant. It does not reach 5 bar status as much as Verizon does, but then again, it does not fall to 1 bar status as much as Verizon does either! It also seems as though Cingular's towers may just be set back off the freeways a bit more than Verizon's, so Verizon seems to give stronger coverage when ON the freeway, but Cingular does so on side streets!

So, essentially a review which rates Cingular so high in the LA area does not surprise me at all.

[Phony]

wah, wah, wah......stop crying and please recognize that Cingular while might not be great in all areas (nobody is) is really good.

[minidisc]

THe Register is nowhere close to being a good paper. The test is in almost no way scientific (small sample size, too many uncontrolled variables). I mean, I love my T-Mobile and S105, but there's no way it trounces Sprint. My sister's A500 and my S105 duke it out for best reception when we go around all of SoCal (OC, HB, LB, South and West LA). It's always going to be a back and forth, but if your whole life revolves around Orange County (much like the Register) then I'd actually go with Sprint.

[larry]

This test is really just the opinion of a couple of reporters at the Register who are probably biased towards their own carriers just like most of us are. I wonder what service they use for the personal lives??? Could it be Cingular?

[cellsell]

I find it interesting that he tested the AT&T GSM network, but not the TDMA. I would be interested in knowing how a side by side comparison of the two AT&T networks looked.

[spyder22]

I pretty much agree with all here. Although I am a T-Mobile Engineer....you cannot rate a system by what they tested. Also with 3 GSM systems in the OC area...they should of used the same model phone for ATT, T-Mobile, and Cingular. During the short period of time that they tested...many of the networks could of had issues...which....$#!* happens. No matter what tehcnology you deploy....there is not perfect system. Plus every markets health index bounces due to unforseen issues. That is why we call the air interface the "ugly mother" or in engineering terms the "Um". Enough said.....just found the article interesting.

[frail47]

Originally posted by: larry

Originally posted by: Phony
The OC Register is a very good newspaper and I'm sure that they knew what they were doing when they tested these phones. Yikes......sorry Verizon....can...y.. he....me...n

I agree they are a good newspaper, but I don't think it was a fair test.

It wasn't a fair test at all. The reason why AT&T didn't fair as well in their testing as compared to the JD Power awards was because OC Register used the Nokia 3590 which only works on AT&T's GSM network. AT&T's TDMA network is much better. TDMA is what garnered the award. If you compare AT&T's TDMA network to Cingular's network, Cingular comes out as crap.