Cingular
Written: May 01 '01
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Pros: Good deals on rates and phones
Cons: Poor coverage
The Bottom Line: Cingular is the new guy on the block. They dont have much coverage, but they have some good deals on plans and phones.
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| frontline's Full Review: General Reviews of Cingular Wireless Customer Serv... |
This is a review for the Seattle and surrounding market areas.
I work in a cell phone store and recently Cingular has been introduced into this market. Their main competitor in this market is VoiceStream. Recently some representatives from VoiceStream did a comparative test of their two systems. Here it is....
We just completed a coverage drive today comparing our coverage with Cingular's new-launched service in Seattle. We drove the greater Seattle metro area (Olympia to Canada, zig-zagging through major highways including I-5, I-90, Hwy 99, etc...) for 8 hours with a VoiceStream phone and a Cingular phone. We observe the following:
* In an continuous call test throughout the Seattle system, we dropped a total of 16 calls. Cingular dropped 107 calls.
* We established 100% of all our call attempts. They got only 75% through.
* In 95% of all our calls, our average signal strength is -94 dBm. Theirs is -99 dBm. In raw power expressed in watts, this means that our signal strength is over twice as powerful as theirs in 95% of the calls. In 100% of all calls, our average signal strength is nearly double theirs. These are averages. There certainly are areas where they would have stronger signal than us (at the base of their towers).
* 100% of our calls are established within 6 seconds. They take 8 seconds to establish a phone call connection, on the average.
* Calls being handed over (handovers) back and forth between cell sites should be minimized to reduce call drops. 25% of our calls handover 4 times per average call. Cingular has 76% of its calls handing over 4 times per call (very excessive).
* Last Friday, our Health Index score was 78. Health Index measures six call components perceived by subscribers (drop calls, voice quality, blocked calls, etc...). While we do not have their scores calculated, the stats seem to indicate that their system score would be around a range
of 10-20.
Cingular does have some upside thought. They have really good rate plans and they also have some good deals on phones. On the other hand what good does having lots of minutes do you if you cant make any calls?
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
frontline
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Member: Erik Caldwell
Location: Shoreline, WA
Reviews written: 16
Trusted by: 3 members
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