TELECOM Digest Editor <ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
> How odd ... I told him I heard many commercials on television saying
> Nextel was either (take your pick) 'Worldwide' or 'Nationwide' and
> the last I heard Kansas was part of the world and part of the nation.
> His response was that to Nextel, the phrase 'x-wide' referred to
> wherever they had towers, not elsewhere. About that same time there
> came another Nextel commercial on _our_ television. Now don't you
> think that is fraudulent to make those claims if they are not true?
Nextel is not a cellular provider. They are something different.
They do not use cellular frequencies or protocols, but use their own
proprietary protocols on bits and pieces of the UHF business band.
This gets to be interesting since the allocations they have are
different in different areas.
Anyway, they do have nationwide coverage. They aren't usable on every
square foot of the country. No service is. Anybody who tells you
that their service is, is lying. If you have an application that is
so critical that you need connectivity at all times and all locations,
you shouldn't be using cellular phones or Nextel at all.
You'll find there are plenty of places where that AT&T phone you got does
not work, too. It's like that. You want reliability, get a wire line.
scott
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, but at least AT&T Wireless, when it
existed, had the 'courtesy' to hold onto your call as long as it was
possible to do so, and only when the signal got to be _so crappy_ it
was no longer possible to hold you then they swapped you off to the
closest Cellular One tower as an 'extended area' user if possible or
a 'roamer' as needed. I know they (AT&T) did not like having to lose
the traffic from a cell phone which is why instead of swapping you out
to Cell One at a reasonable distance, they insisted on holding you
until the signal was mostly (but not totally) unusable. That was my
main complaint with AT&T; I am just a wee bit outside the range of
Tulsa and a wee bit outside the range of Wichita, consequently AT&T
would try to deal with me (and sometimes do so in a very crappy way),
rather than hand me off to Dobson Cell One. When I went here in town
to a very high point on a hill, and dialed zero (the 'O' operator) and
asked her 'who are you?' she would say Tulsa. But Nextel does not even
afford that limited opportunity for communication. But now I
understand they have (or are going to) merge with Sprint. I wonder
what will be the technical effects of that merger? Anyone have any
ideas? PAT]
Scott Dorsey (kludge@panix.com)