When the new iPhone 5 came out, I decided to try Verizon. I had been with AT&T from before the release of the iPhone, back when I was a Blackberry devotee. The fact that it was the only GSM network in the US meant I could take my phone anywhere and just switch out the SIM card. Or roam if I were on some lavish corporate account. However, the quality of AT&T’s network was always its weakest point. When I actually did switch out the SIM in England, the call quality jumped to near landline proportions. Which was surreal to say the least. But back home in San Francisco, I had dead spots in my loft. Including my entire bedroom. In order to get a signal there, I bought, for $150, an AT&T microcell to piggyback the cellular connection over my own broadband connection. This parasitic solution gave me a signal 50% of the time, with a fatal transition between cells.
Thus, AT&T had done nothing to engender any loyalty in me. At the same time, I wasn’t really itching to switch to Verizon either. Frankly, I’m not a huge fan of any of these monolithic telecom providers, as you might infer from any number of anti-Comcast articles I’ve written here. I’d been on Sprint and T-Mobile in the prehistoric past, and never had a positive user or customer service experience with any of them. This impression became magnified in the 5.5 hour odyssey I incurred in doing this switch now. Granted I complicated this situation myself, but I only accept 5% of the overall responsibility for that cluster@#$%. But I’m really not in the mood to explain that. Trust me, you don’t want to read it, either. You’ll want to shoot yourself. It’s the sum of every single customer service finger-pointing nightmare our modern lives suffer through. But no, I’m not going there. At least not today.
But getting back to the decision to switch, while I wasn’t thrilled to stay with AT&T, I wasn’t necessarily eager to join Verizon. First of all, its technology is far more limited than the near worldwide coverage of GSM phones. Second, you have to take a step backward in capability, since it can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Meaning, you can’t talk and use data services at the same time. It’s not quite a rotary dial, but it does seem like a quaint, uphill both ways anachronism. But all their marketing talks about the quality of the network, and as you know, I like to have my own opinion about things based on primary sources. Plus, in the immortal words of Richard Pryor, it couldn’t get any worse.
So I did it. The first thing I noticed was that iMessage didn’t work on the phone. I sighed with genuine hipster disdain, and figured this was a Verizon thing. I was very close to switching back immediately. But I was tired of dealing with those carriers, you really need to have a week’s worth of tolerance and good humor built up to handle them. Or whatever substances the valiant Apple Genius was on who was helping me. So I just dealt with it. iMessage is a nice to have, when it works, but I got by just fine before it existed, so I decided to just let it be.
And then I began to notice it. First, the phone held the connection in my garage. This was quite bizarre. Previously, my AT&T service would cut out every single time. I got used to telling people I’d call them back in a minute, the time it would take for me to park and get to the front bay window in my loft, the only place to send a clear transmission, away from the asteroid field of dead zones in my home. For my phone to now actually work in my concrete and steel bunker of a garage was quite a surprise.
But it didn’t end there. Next, I noticed that the connection held as I walked through the hallway through to the parking entrance to my unit, and throughout my downstairs bedroom. This was surreal. I felt like I was in The Twilight Zone. If only I had actually sprung for the Rod Serling cardboard cutout I contemplated purchasing in college, and kept it in my bedroom all these years, the moment would have been perfect. Certainly, something decidedly creepy was happening, because every dead zone in my home had suddenly been reanimated in full Cinemascope Technicolor. It was one of those moments that you just don’t see coming. When everything you think you know about life and universe gets thrown out the window.
The next day was full David Byrne how-did-I-get-here mode. I follow similar paths through the city on a regular basis. It’s the reason I don’t play Foursquare anymore, it’s too unbalanced in favor of noobs, at least for creatures of habit like myself. The reason I bring it up, is that I’m used to my AT&T service sputtering out with psychohistorical predictability. And so it was, that morning, I was on my regular drive along Geary to drop my daughter at school, the Verizon iPhone held a call from start to finish. Without sounding like the other party was at Niagara Falls. Instead, the person actually sounded clear, like they were on one of those bulbous handset and base combination telephonic appliances from Downton Abbey. Extraordinary. The day continued along this vein, in which calls held at decent quality down 101 and up 280. By the evening, I had passed through denial, and began to accept the impossible. That an iPhone can actually work as a phone in the United States. I know, it sounds like I’m asking you to believe in an old bearded man sitting in a cloud playing Populous with the primates below, but it’s true. I now believe.
Now, I don’t mean to imply that Verizon is perfect. The landline level of quality is not consistent, although part of it may be attributed to the other person still using AT&T. And while iMessage did eventually decide to wake up and get back to work, the Verizon network really can’t walk and chew gum. However, if you think about it, checking your e-mail and surfing the web while you’re on a conference call is kinda rude. The instances when I absolutely and legitimately need data while on a call are relatively few, especially compared to the instances I would like the phone part to work.
So, dear reader, as a person of wit and sagacity, you have likely surmised my conclusion. What you may not see coming however, unless you actually know me IRL, is my proposal. I humbly request that if it’s likely that we’ll be talking on the phone, ever, that you switch to Verizon. As Steve Jobs used to say, it just works. The customer service sucks the same, and it honestly does less than AT&T, but it does actually work as a phone. Which is what you kinda want your phone to do. However, don’t tell anyone else, or the network will overload. And then I’ll have to switch back to AT&T. And we’ll have an infinite regression of Star-Bellied Sneetches proportions. So just you, please.
Thank you.
It amazes me that anyone in San Francisco has AT&T. It was completely unusable the last time I had it — though that was two years ago and I’ve heard it’s gotten better. SF was a total black hole whenever I went in from the east bay for business meetings — and so was our office in Berkeley, for totally inexplicable reasons.
People make fun of my “stupidphone” (LG Octane), but I’m very happy with the combination of it (phone+text messaging) and my 3G iPad, both on Verizon. I never run out of battery (it’ll go 3 days solid no problem), I use it as an actual phone, and have a full sized screen for data engagement. Eventually maybe we’ll be able to replace the phone entirely with bluetooth headset+iPad (and hey, maybe AR text messaging), but as much as I like the iPhone separating the phone function from the data is so functional and practical that it would be hard to go back to a unified device for me at this point.
That’s a great point, I know a lot of people who do the rock-solid phone plus iPad combination. It seems slightly inefficient, although I do myself do at conferences to conserve battery power.
I think the inefficiency works both ways. I thought it would be more of a compromise than it is — the “never run out of battery” thing turned out to be huge, and what I noticed right away was how little use I had for a phone, which means all that data stuff I was doing on the phone improved when done on the iPad. I miss playing iPhone apps on an actual iPhone, but that’s really the only thing about it I miss. Email, twitter, web browsing — all better on the iPad.
Hah! The “never run out of battery” is a pretty sweet state of gadgetry. No contest there.
Yeah, it’s one of those strangely overlooked things like “a phone that can actually receive calls”.
I agree with you about the call quality and drops. I’ve had calls drop twice in two years on Verizon, and both of them were the other phone’s fault. I’ve been thinking about switching to Credo, but the Sprint network makes me nervous.
“However, if you think about it, checking your e-mail and surfing the web while you’re on a conference call is kinda rude.”
Hmmm, I think it depends on the nature of the conference call. I guess for folks who are in too many meetings, it isn’t rude, but integral
.
“The instances when I absolutely and legitimately need data while on a call are relatively few, especially compared to the instances I would like the phone part to work.”
I can’t agree here. When your wife calls you in a huff and needs some data quick fast, being able to talk and surf at the same time is indispensable. Or if you are on hold, not being able to surf would just plain suck.
I’m not an AT&T fan boy – the voice quality is crapola for sure. But I will never switch to another carrier if they can only offer me a on/off experience.
I appreciate your points. I did enjoy the luxury when I had it, but going without, I don’t actually miss it. I’m just so surprised to have a completely working phone, that feature is just so cool!
I’m also not a fan of these telecom and cable companies. The relationship between customer and business is… let’s just say, it’s not ideal.
That said, in the Seattle metro area, I have found AT&T to work great. I know I read tech journalists and users complaining about AT&T service all of the time, but I have had fast 3G, 4G, and LTE data everywhere I go. I can start a phone conversation in my office, go down the elevator to the parking garage, drive home, and still be having the same conversation when I get to my bedroom 27 miles away. I rarely have dropped calls, and I don’t have a problem having long conversations.
Sometimes things don’t work as well during PAX.
I also travel to LA and San Francisco every now and then, and I’ve never really noticed a problem, though I usually don’t use my phone as heavily. However, last year, when I visited San Francisco, I spent the better part of the day on my own, and relied on my AT&T phone for mapping, directions, and searching, and I didn’t really have a problem.
This may be entirely subjective, but I feel that the quality of AT&T coverage and reliability has been getting worse over time. They’ve had notice that people are using their network, for five years now since the launch of the iPhone. But it doesn’t seem like much has happened. I saw a billboard recently where AT&T was bragging that they had 35% fewer dropped calls. Not only does the opposite seem true, but the fact that this is what they’re advertising, that they think they suck less than before, is just a sad admission of systemic poor quality.