When I was using Nextel, I never got any signal at my house.
When I was using AT&T Wireless, I never got any signal at my house.
Now that I’m using Cingular… well…
Cingular is having a grand old time promoting this idea that they now have coverage everywhere; their marketing device is a “5 bar” signal icon. Lies!
I figured when I migrated over to Cingular that I’d get better coverage, and hoped against hope that I could actually use the phone at my home. Wrong! The signal strength I’m getting from Cingular — both home and at work — is even worse than AT&T’s signal strength. I’m talking mostly no signal at all at home, sometimes 1 bar if I’m lucky. At work, where I got 4-5 bars with AT&T, I now get 1-2 bars. What I don’t understand is this: if Cingular and AT&T are now the same, why don’t I get the same strength I was getting before? Because while the AT&T phones can use Cingular’s towers when necessary, it seems as if my Cingular phone won’t switch over to the AT&T towers.
Earlier today, I called Cingular to complain. The rep sent new programming to my phone, which increased the bars from 1-2 to 2-3. Wow! Big improvement, eh? Still, 2-3 bars is enough to actually get a call out. Meanwhile, back at home, the reprogramming did no good at all.
Now, I live in a metropolitan area, in a middle-class affluent neighborhood. I’m sure that 90% of the people in my neighborhood have mobile service — there are lots of yuppies here. So, why am I living in a black hole?
The service rep looked up my address and announced, rather pleased with himself, that there is lots of coverage at my house and that I should be getting at least 3 bars. Well, yeah, I should, but I’m not. His solution was to take the phone back and get it replaced. This despite telling him that I’ve used something like 6 different phones here and none worked.
Well, when I moved in here, there was no high speed internet available, either; four years later we finally got cable (still no DSL). I guess that even in this tech-heavy area, your service availability may vary.
