verbosity

Pretty Crappy Service

My first mobile phone service provider was Sprint. I signed on with them not long after PCS was introduced to the Lincoln, Nebraska market. I was cool. The clarity of my calls was clearly the alternative to cellular, which turned out to not matter that much since the other end of most of my calls was somebody's crappy cell service. Yet, the grass was green, the sky blue, and service agreements short.

Big Bad Nextel came to town, and was for the most part ignored. They have this branch of sales called "marketing", and Nextel wasn't performing so hot in that portion of the standardized test. Some consultant then reminded them -- for a fee of approximately mad props -- that their walkie-talkie gimmick was a feature they should stress in their advertising. Marketshare was born. All the trendy young businessmen began to sport Nextel phones. The fad eventually bled into Binary Net, and all over my belt clip.

Here's the surprising part: Nextel's service was great. They didn't have coverage for smaller towns or most interstate systems, but metro areas were blanketed heavily in wonderful cancer-causing rays. The signal was so strong that nearby computer and car speakers would chirp merrily (just like a pulsating lawn sprinker!) while a call was being serviced, and computer mice would orgasmically emit middle-mouse button events.

But Nextel was also expensive. So expensive that when Binary's contract was done, we switched back to Sprint PCS to save beaucoup bucks (slightly less than a mad amount of props, for comparison).

Around the time of our switch, I bought a house. Well, to be pedantic, I had a bank buy a house for me, and agreed to eventually pay them back for it, plus mad props. It didn't take long for me to realize that the PCS signal strength at my new pad was approximately utter crap. I do live near the edge of town, but my neighborhood is not small, and many homes have been around since the 1970's. It's not as if a boy house and a girl house ran off into the corn field and popped out a few hundred baby houses last weekend. So why is Sprint's coverage so poor? Insufficient retransmission antenna setups, obviously. Sheesh, can't believe I had to tell you that; I had hoped my readers were smart. :P

In all seriousness, Sprint is probably working from some formula, waiting until they have N complaints from an area before adding additional equipment. I intend to ensure their complaint counter is swiftly incremented until it reaches N, incremented solely by me if necessary. They claim to cover my area adequately:

(I'm the pink dot at the arrow's tip. Dark-green is "serviced" area. Coverage map provided by Sprint. City image courtesy of the Lancaster County Internet Map Server. Overlay and shoddy arrow done by yours truly using The Gimp.)

but when I can't take a single phone call without my signal fading and the call ending, I don't consider their coverage adequate by any definition. A coworker of mine loses signal in his basement, and he lives near 70th and Holdrege. Nextel had no problems reaching out and touching him underground...

I'll give Sprint a reasonable amount of time to make excuses, kiss my proverbial ass, and actually fix the problem before I bust out "breach of contract" and go back to Nextel, Alltel *shudder*, or some other provider. I'd prefer to catch up with the rest of the freakin' world and get something GSM-based, but last I checked there weren't any good GSM options in Lincoln. If any of you phreakers know otherwise, speak up.