TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: How to Make The Right Call On Cell Plans

Re: How to Make The Right Call On Cell Plans

CharlesH (hoch@exemplary.invalid)
Tue, 02 Nov 2004 20:17:59 GMT

In article <telecom23.523.2@telecom-digest.org>,
Marcus Didius Falco <falco_marcus_didius@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Analog is what gave cell phones a bad name: It kills a phone's
> battery life, sounds lousy and will run up massive roaming charges.

Someone else suckered into the analog = roaming model spread by
SprintPCS. SprintPCS is itself all-digital. Until recently, they
disabled digital roaming on cellular systems, such as Verizon
Wireless, forcing the phone to use the cellular provider's analog
service, even if that provider had compatible digital service. So on
SprintPCS, if you were digital, you were on SprintPCS; if you were
analog, you were roaming (and paying for it). But in reality, analog
has NO CONNECTION to roaming charges. It all depends on the roaming
agreements between your provider and the provider you are roaming on,
and the specifics of your rate plan, not the modulation scheme. As a
Verizon Wireless customer, there are quite a few analog roaming
providers included in my rate plan, and quite a few digital providers
who are not. Similarly if you lose the digital coverage on a cellular
provider and fall back to their analog system; if your call was
included when you were using digital, it still will be if you fall
back to that provider's analog service.

And concerning sound quality, you wouldn't believe the number of
people on the cellular Usenet groups who complain about the artificial
sound of digital service and sing the praises of the natural-sounding
analog service. And if the signal gets weak, analog gets static, and
digital has drop-outs; why is one better than the other in this
respect?

There are a lot of good reasons to use digital, but roaming costs and
sound quality are not among them.

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