worth reading AT&T and iPhone

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: David Josephson <dlj () josephson com>
> Date: December 13, 2009 3:28:17 PM EST
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: Re: [IP] worth reading  AT&T and iPhone

> Dave,
>
> Of course Verizon and AT&T each trumpet the advantages of their own  
> "networks." Writing as a sometime telecom and RF engineer who rents  
> space at one of my mountaintop sites to both AT&T and Verizon, it's  
> not as simple as their ads, or the NYT article, make out.
>
> First, the network exists mostly for billing convenience. Both the  
> Verizon collection of sites and the AT&T are a collection of  
> individual licenses connected to the wireline telephone network. In  
> each market half of the original cellular channels were assigned to  
> an incumbent wireline carrier, and half to non-wireline carriers,  
> some of whom were entirely new to telephony. The Verizon "network"  
> is based on wireline channels, from when it was originally GTE. The  
> AT&T "network" is based on non-wireline, mostly having done business  
> as Cellular One and Cingular. Their different views of the  
> marketplace back then are still visible in the situation today where  
> the Verizon network covers more area and AT&T covers urban areas  
> more densely.
>
> What does "superior performance" mean? The "network" has failed both  
> if you're downtown and the response time is so slow that you can't  
> do what you want (which some claim for Verizon) and it has also  
> failed if you're somewhere outside the city and you can't make a  
> call at all (which is said to happen more often with AT&T). Which is  
> more important to you? The coverage maps don't lie, but they're also  
> not the whole story. The difference between the air interfaces as  
> mentioned in the article is also significant to the individual  
> connected user, but far less important than the planning strategy  
> for the location and provisioning of the individual sites. If on  
> average your signal is reaching half a mile to a site for one  
> carrier, versus two miles for another (or on your particular travels  
> you're more often near one carrier's sites than the other's) your  
> perception of the network performance will be drastically different.
>
> --
> David Josephson



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