Aloha from beautiful, plumeria-scented Kailua-Kona, Hawai`i! I successfully made a telephone call and sent a text message from the summit of the world's largest mountain, Mauna Kea, from elevation 13,790 ft. I saw a tower on top of Haleakala (the volcano that created Maui) -- surely that couldn't have been it? I can just picture the Verizon guy stopping at the visitors' centre off the Saddle Road to acclimatise at 9200 ft before continuing his pilgrimage to the top... how do you say "can you hear me now?" in Hawai`ian? Cingular coverage is terrible here. My wife's grandfather couldn't make a call from downtown Waimea, let alone from secluded places like Hapuna Beach or Kalapana.
Zaphod, Since there are Verizon sites all around the Big Island, you might be seeing any one of their closer sites. My guess is you were using the one right in the town of Volcano at the entrance to the park since it is on the tallest tower closest to the peak, although the tower nearest South Point "looks" more directly into the peak. The Haleakala tower is mostly broadcast and island-to-island microwave stuff (much of which is Verizon landlines) with a few 2-ways.
Glad to hear that Verizon has worked well for you in a place like this; enjoy the rest of your vacation!
In two prior trips to Hawai'i, Verizon's service had been fantastic, so I can concur with ZaphodB! Aloha and have a great trip!!
Excellent question which I'd like to know the answer to as well, but I'm sure it's such a little delay it's unnoticable.
No one complained about it... BillRadio, I was atop Mauna Kea, not Mauna Loa... the more likely scenario for a tower would be Waimea, Honoka`a or Hilo, not Volcano. In a week and a half I only found two Verizon dead spots and one was in the Thurston Lava Tube (duh) and the other was in Kalapana near my uncle's house which is surrounded by four miles of lava flow and looks directly to Pu`u `O`o, which is the currently-active lava vent... no towers there, no roads, it's an hour and a half hike across the hardened lava to his house!
Good report Z. I've been to Oahu twice, and Kauai the first time as well. I'd love to get to Hawaii (big island), but I think we're going to Europe next summer instead. There was bound to be dead zones as it seems those areas are really rural. Most likely only ATT and Verizon work in most places (who knows if those old ATT sites have even been looked at yet by Cingular to improve).
I never thought it would be. Analog is usually un-usable if digital is. I'm sure Verizon's CDMA and ATT's TDMA work the best. When Cingular gets the ATT 850 gsm network running up to their specs it should be better (assuming it isn't already)...hopefully! I've been bored to death at work today, and TM has a bad network on that island, but supposedly a great one on Oahu. T-Mobile doesn't cover some areas that Sprint does on Hawaii.
