Verizon Wireless is “The Network” in coverage

By on Sep 8, 2008 at 5:09 AM
General September 8, 2008

J.D. Power and Associates released Volume 2 of their biannual Cellular Call Quality Survey Thursday and it appears as if “Can you hear me now?” is a phrase not uttered by many Verizon Wireless customers. In every region of the country surveyed, Verizon was either the sole winner or tied for first place. The survey asked 22,000 customers from across the nation to rank their cellular provider based upon the frequency of dropped calls, static/interference, failed connection on the first try, voice distortion, echo, no immediate voice mail notification, and no immediate text message notification. Let’s take a quick look at how each region fared:

  • Northeast Region: Verizon Wireless ranks highest in the region.
  • Mid-Atlantic Region: Verizon Wireless ranks highest for an eighth consecutive time.
  • Southeast Region: Alltel ranks highest in the region. Verizon wins this one by proxy since they are in the process of acquiring Alltel.
  • North Central Region: U.S. Cellular and Alltel rank highest in a tie. Another win for Verizon through its Alltel merger.
  • Southwest Region: Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless tie to rank highest in the region.
  • West Region: Verizon Wireless ranks highest in the region.

Surprisingly, AT&T, the largest scammers US provider, does not show up anywhere in the leader board; not so surprisingly, neither does T-Mobile. We wonder, though, if these results will help or hurt Verizon as it seeks regulatory approval for its merger with Alltel. By scooping up Alltel, it really will become the nation’s largest network, both in sheer number of customers and in coverage. Psst, Verizon, some words of advice? You may want to sweep these results under the carpet and only boast about them after that merger of yours is approved. We’re just sayin’…

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  • gadgetchic

    too bad their phones are crippled to the point of uselessness. why would i pay 200+ for a brick?

  • JustMe

    @gadgetchic Are you kidding me? Crippled to the point of uselessness? 200+ dollars for a brick? I’d love to know which carrier and what phone you have… How your phone is sooooo much better. Please enlighten me.

  • kelly

    I know that a mediocre consumer survey wont really affect a million dollar merger…I said that kinda half jokingly at the end…

    all surveys do have some error but even with its error, I think the results here are accurate. This is just one more thing that shows vzw has the best nationwide coverage, for better or for worse. Yes, there are some areas where vzw is poor and AT&T/Sprint/T-Mo has better coverage but those cases are the exception and not the norm. I wish other carriers had as good coverage as vzw…I would probably be sporting an iPhone or an Instinct instead of an LG Dare.

  • Avi24

    VERIZON OWNS! Iphone is considered a piece of shit since it was with AT&T if it was Verizon it would have no glitches or problems and it would be one of the best phones , but we the Storm which is better so I don’t care about the Iphone

  • Avi24

    A Phone is only as good as it’s network it is on VZ

  • Flip

    lol, is this a early april fools joke or what or the early stages of denial. Clearly GSM is better quality ask Europe and Asia. I mean did anyone on the JD team actually use verizon? What about Sprint?

  • Chad

    It is great that there are several people stating that Verizon has the best call quality. That’s good that you stick to your guns, however, do you know that they pay out of their butts every month to quite a few of the other carriers to allow their customers to use their towers? That’s because of roaming agreements that they have with the other carriers. For instance…Verizon pays Alltel 2.2 million dollars per month to let their customers use Alltel’s network? Alltel owns roughly 54% of 800 Mhz CDMA wireless licenses in the US and Verizon owns roughly 38% of the remainder. Now that is not counting the 700 Mhz freqeuncy that they dominated at the auction earlier this year and any of the 1900 Mhz frequencies either. Can you blame Verizon for wanting to merge with Alltel? Also, I seen a comment in this thread about Alltel having a GSM network. Yes they have it in 16 states of their 35. Alltel has roaming agreements with AT&T and T-Mobile (along with other smaller GSM carriers) to allow them to utilize their GSM network. This network was purchased when Alltel bought Western Wireless (CellualrOne) a couple of years back. This network fills in the gap that T-Mobile and AT&T don’t have throughout the Rocky Mountain and Midwest states. It is considered a GSM overlay on top of the CDMA network. It will be exciting to see what Verizon will do with the GSM side if the deal goes through. There still are several questions that no one can answer right now.

  • FarmerBob

    That’s not entirely true. Since you can buy a JDP award they don’t need to do anything. Which means they are probably sitting on their hands and not even using them to find their asses.

  • SpellCheck

    To Dan who crafted this gem – “Suck it iphone loosers. Your shinny object is nothing with a shit network like AT&T.”

    It’s spelled losers, genius. Also, I think you were going for shiny instead of shinny.

  • Paul

    It would be nice if somebody would go and make an actual scientific study of network reception rather than customer surveys which will always be colored by other emotional factors (advertising perception, customer service experience, quality of the phone itself). Basically five people traveling around testing the signal on the same model phone in various places, like a competitive version of the “can you hear me now?” guy. Apparently they should start in Atlanta.

    Another interesting study might be to find out what drives some of the posters on these pages to rabidly defend their carrier as though it were their favorite sports team. “Your network sucks and you’re a loser for using it! Go Ubercast Wireless!! Yeah!”

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