Submitted 10/11/99 to comp.dcom.telecom:


We recently received a notice on two of our company's Bell Atlantic 
Mobile NY Metro Analog accounts that BAMS was discontinuing their 
unlimited off peak $10 add-on package and capping it at 250 minutes per 
month. 

Although no reason for this change is given, it seems clear that they 
want to push their analog customers over to digital as in the same 
paragraph where they alert customers to this change in their service 
plans they note "...we still have many digital plans with unlimited off 
peak airtime which you can choose from".

They of course don't mention that you have to go out and buy new equipment
from them, obtain a new two year (or maybe one) contract from them,
and suffer the OVERALL inferior quality of Qualcomm's CDMA digital used
throughout BAMS's NY system. (Not that TDMA is anything to write home about;
however, but for the utterly sloppy and incomptetant way AT&T Wireless
implements the product, it *sounds to me* to be a good deal better [and
stay away from AT&T Digital if you are in the NY Market! Everyone I know
who has/had used it hates it and it's commonly the object of jokes and
articles epitomizing poor cellular coverage])

I've pointed out before that there are some advantages to digital -- if 
you are in a strong coverage area and talk a lot on the phone, the sound 
quality is richer than analog (only in strong coverage areas) and the 
battery life is a lot longer than analog. But venture to an area with 
less-than-perfect coverage and the digital signal becomes distorted and 
develops a metallic sounding "twang" during conversation. Additionally, 
the call is effectively half-duplex, so that if both parties talk at the 
same time, essentially only one gets through, and sounds almost like you 
are on some satellite-routed international call or making a call via some 
IP Telephony or Internet phone device or service. CDMA also has the 
tendency to just drop a call for no apparent reason, even in strong coverage 
areas, right in the middle of a conversation.

While this change only seems to apply in the NY Metro Market (00022), the
off peak unlimited plan allowed me to dictate messages, call to the west
coast and abroad, and clear out voicemail and faxes while I was driving
home and to do so in areas WHERE COVERAGE WAS NOT SUFFICIENT FOR .06 watt
analog or even lower-powered digital phones. 

These areas include those where handoffs a tricky or fail with non-3 watt
phones, such as various sections of central New Jersey to the BAMS/Philly
00008 and BAMS/Atlantic City-Ocean County 00250 system.  Handoffs are also
problematic between the NY/00022 system and the Poughkeepsie/Orange County
00486/00404 (can't recall which is which, I think 486 is Pough but it's
hard to tell now). Moreover, digital handoffs between the NY-00022-B side
and the CT-00119-A side (yes, digital phones can switch from side to side
during a system handoff) work so poorly that I can't rely on it to work
during a call. 

Other areas are just poorly covered, such as I-80 near Newton, I-78 
10 miles east of JCT US-22 in Alpha (near the PA border), Staten Island's 
south shore, Cold Spring Harbor (Long Island at JCT NY-25A and NY-108), 
the Taconic State Parkway north of Peekskill Hollow, and a littany of 
other places where coverage is barely adequate for a 3 Watt phone let 
alone a digital or .06 watt analog phone. (A more complete list of 
coverage problems in BAMS and other markets is available at 
http://www.wirelessnotes.org -- no ads, cookies, or anything, just a lot of 
long-winded lectures about poor coverage and all! :) )

As a matter of fact, coverage is poor (or perhaps, not yet optimized for
less than 3-watt mobiles) in so many of the areas outside the immediate
urban core that anyone who obtains a digital account with BAMS could
probably get out of their contract just by saying that they are regularly
dropped whenever they made a calls for more than a few minutes away from 
NYC but still in the 00022 NY Metro Market.

With this having been said, if BAMS should choose to compel us to either
drop service (and since this is a modification to their agreement you can
cancel it WITHOUT an early termination penalty) or use a digital phone
(which due to the coverage and other reasons enumerated about will simply
not work for me/us), I'll simply drop our NY accounts from BAMS and use
our existing Nextel or ATTWS (analog) accounts until something better
comes along (and Nextel's mobile to mobile feature is a lot more
attractive than BAMs as no toll charges are involved for any calls in your
home area; BAMS does invoke tolls if it crosses their traditional
toll-free service boundries). Additionally, I've reviewed our New England
market usage and determined that a number of accounts current with BAMS
may be better serviced by Cell One/VT (00313) and Cell One/Boston (now
that they dropped most of their most offensive and silly charges). 

Is this punative? Sure. Do they care? Probably not...But I'd love to hear
the voice to the BAMS rep who tries to save the "churn" and tell me about
all their wonderful digital plans when I then say "You know, since you
guys are making me go through all this trouble to have to change accounts
and all, not only am I cancelling the NY accounts, but I have 4 more
accounts out of Philly, Boston and Vermont that I want to cancel at the
same time which are no longer under contract. Can you help me with those
too?" 

It's one thing to stop offering a service plan to new customers while 
grandfathering old ones. It's quite different to force customers off 
existing plans -- even before the contract terms expires (eg, we can't 
decide to cancel or modify the contract if WE want, but Bell Atlantic can 
at THEIR whim change the contract, incovenience us, and suffer no loss 
for it). IMO, it's an outrageously heavy-handed approach, and I will not 
continue to reward them for it by either obtaining a practically useless 
digital account and new digital phone or keeping other accounts in other 
markets open when good alternatives exist elsewhere. (And if we did 
switch to digital to replace the analaog accounts, what's to say that 
two months later BAMS doesn't decide to change its digital plans and cap 
the unlimited off peak airtime? We'll then have obtained -- and paid for 
-- two digital phones which we no longer need either.)

Finally, I'm not "anti-digital"; indeed, we have two BAMS digital accounts 
(and one with GTE) which we use in urban areas. Digital pricing is MUCH 
better than analog, and offers caller ID, voicemail, first incoming 
minute free, etc, etc. But handheld coverage -- and especially digital -- 
just doesn't work well nor hand off properly in many areas, and we thus NEED 
(it's not an option) 3-watt analog service. (Not to mention how much 
safer it is to have a 3-watt phone in poor coverage areas than a handheld.)

If BAMS is no longer interested in our business, we will need to find
alternatives to them, but it seems to be a penny-wise pound-foolish
approach as it alienates long-time customers and forces them to
re-evaluate their service with BAMS. As a result of our re-evaluation, and
if they proceed with this course of behavior, I will order the
cancellation of two NY Analog accounts, a Philly digital account (and
switch to Comcast's analog service), a Vermont analog account (and switch
to Cell One/VT), and potentially a Boston digital account, as well as
getting rid entirely of the GTE/SF account. 

So add it up, 5 accounts with monthly *base* (non-usage) revenue of about 
$150.00 in total all gone. Maybe if they spent a little less time having 
Darth Vader travel all over touting the great digital service and more 
time building out their network so that handhelds work reliably this 
wouldn't be an issue. But if they intend to coerce analog customers over 
to their digital network, have them buy new equipment, and at the same 
time force them to accept a lower overall level of service they can find 
some other idiots to pay them. We sure won't.

Overall, a pretty poor show from Bell Atlantic Mobile, leaving some soon 
to be ex-customers very disappointed with them.

(This post and updated SID list are also available at www.wirelessnotes.org. 
You can also write to the addresses on that page for more information 
regarding alternatives to BAMS in the NY Metro market.)

Regards,

Doug