News and Comments from the Mountain
2005 Archives
Current Articles

The part I find extra cool is that Primus will also provide a number for your cellular phone from your choice of countries. Suddenly you have an overseas telephone presence! Just when I thought they might be on to something, Verizon Wireless announced a new program of very reasonable International LD for a small monthly fee. But no cool, local numbers in, say, Argentina.

So, this may boil down to whether you like the Sprint PCS network or Verizon's. But Verizon's 'discount' rate to Argentina is .30 per minute, and Primus' is .062, so the Primus plan may be a lot better depending on where you call. Primus's free calling includes less than a dozen countries, but a local number in Paris sure conjures up romantic thoughts, even if you can't justify it for business.

OK, so it may not be the next 'killer app', but we have to keep looking for what telecom companies are doing to make themselves stand out. And if you make a large number of international calls, and you're tired of being tied to the phone at work to call, you just may be on to something.

Oh, BTW, that family member of ours wouldn't be caught dead with a cellular phone, but take away his email, and he'll roll up in a ball on the floor.

April 16, 2005. Sprint PCS in the Crosshairs. We have been extolling the virtues of the great improvements made in Sprint PCS coverage in the west, primarily, but not totally, by the addition of most Qwest Wireless sites. Overall, we noted much improvement, and we wanted to share the good news with those who we knew were using Sprint.

Yes, Sprint is working better now at the offices of our primary employment, but hold on. These regular Sprint users are not as overjoyed as those of us who are more casual users. One user still complains that coverage at home is marginal at best. Another still knows where in his office he can and can't get service on his Sprint phone. Then there's the DJ who was trying to make a Sprint phone call as part of her morning 'bit', only to have the call, and service, fail. She stated, "this happens to all services from time to time..." dutifully rationalizing what she has come to expect with her service.

We have been very critical of Cingular's delay in bringing the ex-AT&T Wireless network up to the standards we would expect of one with the good fortune of having the cellular band licenses (850 MHz) in most major markets. But AT&T Wireless messed that up by introducing their new GSM service strictly at PCS (1900 MHz) frequencies. Cingular is now correcting that problem, but even our Cingular phones still seem to find themselves on the PCS channels more often than not, and susceptible to frequent dropped calls. Sprint also uses those PCS frequencies.

We now find we may have been overly generous to Sprint. Back at the turn of the century, Sprint technicians began to withdraw from the Rocky Mountains to focus on seeking "gold" in the big cash markets of California. Coverage there has made noticeable improvement. Other areas of the west, while still receiving some improvements, were not on the fast track like southern California. Then came the conversion of many Qwest sites. We thought this was a dramatic turn of events.

It initially seemed that Sprint was headed for stardom. But upon further review, Qwest's additions were not as helpful as we thought. Therefore, we began to understand why our friends with Sprint, while still happy enough, weren't as overjoyed as we expected. It seems that while Qwest located their sites in centralized locations, they did not provide any better localized service that Sprint's existing sites. That means people like me are getting better service at work, but it's still iffy at home. Yep, that bad area a mile from home is still bad.

So, after our initial exuberance, we are back to our challenge for Sprint PCS. Slow down the building in California and come back to other areas of the west. There is a window of opportunity that is open while Cingular gets its act together.

April 8, 2005. Convergence of the Plans. I have never been a fan of that trendy term, "convergence", but that is what is happening among cellular plans. Convergence means things are coming together, and in the technical world it referred to different aspects that were combining to make a superior product, much like the internet and its many virtual features. Local promoters observing this trend decided to call a certain techie center part of our town "Convergence Corridor." They were looking for a handle to equal "Silicon Valley", but the timing led to a Bankruptcy 'Burb, instead.

In cellular terms, converging are two extremes of wireless features: Unlimited minutes and Unlimited coverage. Leap Wireless announced their Cricket system will begin offering some newly-packaged features, one of which is roaming on the entire Verizon network. Cricket's claim to fame is their Unlimited anytime minutes, Verizon hangs their hat on expansive coverage.

Each year, Verizon has been offering plans with more and more included minutes, some of which are already Unlimited: Unlimited mobile to mobile, Unlimited Nights and Weekends and Unlimited data. Unlimited Anytime minutes is certainly within the realm of possibilities.

Over at Cricket, they are retiring the green couch and are about to offer limited roaming on Verizon which effectively gives the Cricket customer Unlimited minutes around their home town, and the ability to roam on Verizon in rural America and the vast majority of the Top 200 urban markets. It sounds just like what many of us want, and it certainly will be the best of both worlds for some. There have been similar proposals from other "Unlimited" (or almost Unlimited) carriers like Metro PCS and ClearTalk, some of whom have paired with different roaming partners like Sprint PCS.

We had been predicting that we may have reached the plateau of package anytime minutes, that any increase in included minutes will be more smoke and mirrors than realized gains. We were expecting higher prices. The newest Cingular plans appear that way in certain price tiers. But at other carriers, including Verizon, the additional minutes per dollar are real. Whether they are actually keeping up with our usage is another question.

Our favorite little cellular system in Colorado, Blanca Telephone Wireless, already offers just this kind of plan. For about $16 a month you get Unlimited local minutes across their 6-tower system, and roaming all across the Verizon network for only an additional .06 minute. All the minutes and coverage you can eat! Fortunately for the carriers, we keep feeding at the cellular buffet, so we'll probably eat faster than they can dish it out.

April 2, 2005. Roaming in Mexico. It has been a challenge to find a way to post this from South of the Border. First, I must admit using a cellular phone here is just a curiosity, not a necessity. I have tried to actually use existing Verizon and Cingular (both GSM and TDMA) phones here to no avail. I'm told I can roam in Mexico, but it just doesn't happen, neither incoming or outgoing. I don't know where the problem lies.

Strolling around most tourist towns, the two most-visible options are Iusacell (CDMA) and TelCel (GSM). For our ever-so-minor-usage, the absolute cheapest choice was to buy a simple TelCel SIM and place it in our 'unlocked' GSM phone. For about $21 USD, the SIM even includes 100 Pesos of calling time, good for 5 minutes of calls to the U.S. or 13 minutes of Local calls.

The 200 Peso card (about $18 USD) gives much more: 15 minutes to the U.S. or 260 Local minutes. It's much cheaper to buy a prepaid LD calling card to call the U.S., .50/minute vs. $1.50/minute, but for local calls, the 200 Peso TelCel Amigo card is way better than your hotel's .45 per minute rip-off. The only problem is many calls just plain ol' don't go through.

The Mexican cellular systems have some peculiarities. Calls are not as reliable, and with Amigo Prepaid we are charged for busy signals and calls that are intercepted as "can't be completed as dialed" (I think that's what she says). Cell phones must use 10-digit dialing for Local calls, where wireline calls do not. Calls TO cell phones must not only include the city (area) code, but also an additional three-digit prefix.

We know enough Spanish to get around, but it is great to have the network offer prompts in English, as well as having an English option on the phone. Yes, it is enlightening to be on the 'other side'. Virtually all the agents I talked to spoke no English. Getting a SIM shouldn't be a mystery, but these girls only know them as "cheeps."

The biggest surprise was that Text Messaging worked flawlessly. It was just a guess that the American phone's number address was the entire international number combination, which is the 10-digit cell number preceded by "001" to U.S. phones. The return number is annoyingly long, but can be just entered as 'return message'. I am told I can re-initiate service by just buying another prepaid card, even a year in the future. You can easily get balance information, although it isn't always available.

Keeping our visit in proper perspective I normally leave the phone off. It's scary to be somewhere so delightfully 'third world' and still be 'in touch.'

March 25, 2005. Prepaid gets expensive. Cingular recently raised their KIC and Free2Go prepaid rates, some as much as 50%. Verizon's new In-pulse prepaid plan now charges .99 a day whether you use it or not. T-Mobile has ended their one-year expiration promotions. Boost and Virgin are no bargain.

The carriers have been working on us for years, trying to raise what we're willing to pay for their regular plans. Now prepaid gets pushed upward. The biggest disappointment is the lack of roaming. While the carriers are expanding the included coverage of their regular plans, the prepaid plans just don't roam, and some of those that did, don't any longer. Some of the prepaid resellers are still offering bargain prices, but their phone selection is quite limited.

The best native coverage is the Alltel/Verizon combination for Simple Freedom available only at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club. The longest expiration date (1 year) is Speak Out at 7-Eleven stores. The best roaming performance comes from the AT&T (yes, using only the "blue", TDMA half of the Cingular network) resellers like GoBeyond Wireless, CallPlus, and Consumer Cellular.

Fortunately, there are many flavors of prepaid, ranging from free to expensive. Yes, bring your own AT&T phone to GoBeyond and they'll give you 35 minutes just for signing up. GoBeyond is great if you don't need a local number. Make sure you know what you're getting when you look at any one prepaid plan. Like Beyond, some have very few local numbers. Some charge for receiving voice mail, others for retrieving for voice mail. Others need to be topped up as soon as 29 days to get minutes to roll over. But play your 'cards' right and you can still tailor a prepaid account to your usage.

We direct people to prepaid who need a second (or third) phone, or want a low-cost, low-usage plan. Don't spend a penny on prepaid until you consult Dave's Prepaid Comparison page. What's our personal choice? We use a GoBeyond phone, but would be equally happy with CallPlus if we didn't roam very often. We hope these resellers survive, they may be at the mercy of the big carriers who are trying to convince us we want fries with that order, and for a few dollars more.

March 18, 2005. Cingular Passes the 50 Million Mark. Even though we have reservations about the new Cingular in the interior west, they keep signing up new customers at a good clip. If they didn't have champagne and a free phone for the 50 Millionth customer, they should have at least popped the corks at the corporate offices. Competitors, and even their own CEO, predicted customer losses for the first few months of the combined company, but the net result is the country's largest carrier is growing.

This is not overlooked at the competition, and Verizon has already responded with their new, America's Choice No-Roam plan with more minutes than before. The 'new thing' always gets people excited, and in this case, it's enough to keep the Cingular numbers moving in the positive direction. Good for them. But what is moving them? Is it the result of greater coverage, cheaper plans, or massive marketing? We think it's the latter. To their credit, they are quickly converting their GSM overlay at 850 MHz in the mountain region and things should be noticeably better, soon. Our screen still says "AT&T Wireless", though.


Yet another America's Choice II Update. This past Wednesday, Verizon issued a revised PRL after barely three weeks of the AC II. They pushed Midwest Wireless down in priority, did some housekeeping, but the BIG news is that they added Blanca Telephone Wireless back. This small carrier we wrote about in previous weeks went from a .69/minute entry in the "old" America's Choice, to unavailable in AC II. We asked Verizon and Blanca what happened. Blanca was in disbelief, Verizon was in denial. Verizon officially stated it was a "business decision," but the PRL change tells us it was a mistake!

As soon as we heard Blanca was back in, we changed one of our phones to the AC II plan. I called and asked to be switched to "AC II." The agent replied, "um, are you certain you have the right number? You might be looking for AT&T." See our report, below, on 'Customer Service Roulette.' I excused myself and reloaded. The second call yielded Doreen, one of the most knowledgeable, helpful and capable agents we have ever encountered.


Verizon Gains More Spectrum. This time Verizon is trading service, a few customers, and some spectrum with Leap Wireless, parent company of Cricket, the 'unlimited' wireless operator. Verizon gets several more markets with added spectrum, a few totally new markets, and a few thousand customers. Leap gets some needed cash and a roaming agreement on the Verizon network. Before Cricket customers get too excited, the new roaming will probably be offered to Cricket's new "pre-paid" customers. Hmmm. Cricket's going pre-paid? What`are they now?

Verizon also gained some California spectrum from a similar carrier, Metro PCS.

March 11, 2004. Let's Play 'Customer Service Roulette'. Part of our advice in trying to get certain features added on your cellular account was to keep calling the carriers' Customer Service department until you got the answer you hoped for. You do need to do it rather unobtrusively so the agent doesn't note your account as being a "difficult" customer. Remember that episode of Seinfeld when Elaine kept trying to find a doctor for her rash, but they refused to help her once they saw her medical file that marked her as a complainer?

But we have discovered an even more disturbing trend, and that is Customer Service outsourcing. While each of the major cellular carriers seem to have high standards for their own Customer Service employees, no such reliability can be depended on among their outsource brethren. This happens when you are looking for a change in your account that may be difficult for an agent to accomplish. So, you just may be told it can't be done, or you'll have to switch plans to do it, which would allow the change to happen automatically with a new plan.

And some of these outsource agents are actually in this country, so you don't automatically need to hang up if you hear an Indian accent. But you do need to persistent without being obnoxious. Calling right back may deliver you to the same call center so you might want to attempt the call in a different time period, preferably early in the day. Calls to 611 are routed differently, too.

This is not an attempt to 'get away with something', it's just when you need your account adjusted to fit the specific circumstances of you or your family. Promotions can be extended, roaming charges can be credited and data features can be tweaked. Before identifying yourself, you can call them anonymously as a new customer and ask if you signed up for an account could such a change be possible. But since the new signups department and Customer Service are usually separate, you should say thanks, hang up and call again...and call again...and again, if necessary. Roulette is my favorite casino game, so I've learned playing the game right is very rewarding.