Filed under: Features, Alltel, GSM, CDMA
Ok,
cellphone
quiz! Question one: which wireless carrier has the most subscribers in the US? Verizon would have been a lot
of peoples’ guess, but if you answered Cingular, good on you, they’re
href="http://cingular.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=1505=_new">up to about 56 million now.
Question two: who has the smallest amount of subscribers in the US, not counting strictly small regional carriers and
MVNOs? Nope, it’s not
T-Mobile (they supposedly have somewhere around 30 million now), it’s Alltel, with their 15
some-odd million. Question three: who has the largest network in the US? Well, according to Alltel, the answer’s not
Cingular, nor Verizon, Sprint-Nextel, or T-Mo.
It’s them.
So
after we noticed Alltel’s seemingly spurious claim not too far back, we decided to look into the matter. Regarding
Alltel’s emboldened stake in having "America’s largest network," the disclaimer on their page says the
following: "Largest Network Claim: Based upon analysis by an independent research company in December 2005, which
compared marketed coverage patterns at the time of their creation of each wireless carrier without allowance for
variations due to electrical interference, customer equipment, topography & each carrier’s translation &
defined preferences of their own internal engineering data."
Well, that didn’t really help very much –
in fact, that’s nearly incomprehensible. But in plain English it sounds like the firm that conducted the analysis was
comparing the coverage of each carrier’s network at the time it was originally rolled out, and did not take into
account carriers’ own "internal engineering data," i.e. carriers’ data on their own networks. Surely Alltel
would never make this claim — and fashion a marketing campaign around it — based on such dubious information. So we
contacted their VP of PR, Andrew Moreau, and asked for: a) a statement regarding these claims, b) a copy of the study,
c) to know who conducted the study, d) information on where the study could be found, and e) hard figures on the study.
Click on to see what we found out.
Alltel’s Vice Prez of PR met our queries with two rather terse replies. (Since neither of which disclaimed
them to be unofficial or off the record, and we asked for a statement on the claim, we will republish them here.) The
first simply said: "Our wireless network — built out and lit — covers more square miles than any other
carrier. Hope this helps. Andy." And the other, sent in reply to asking for more information simply said:
"It’s more s.f. covered than any other provider." That’s it. Not even a "Hope this helps. Andy."
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Now, we had a pretty difficult time tracking down any solid figures for square mileage covered by the big four
(and we’re sure as soon as we publish this we’ll get flooded with the information we’re after). But from what we could
tell the biggies play in terms of millions of square miles — not square feet. We did have some vague figures (for
example, Verizon covers "more than two million square-miles," Sprint covers "more than 2.8 million
square miles." ). And, of course, measuring coverage isn’t an exact science; roaming partnerships, spectrum
sharing, indefinitely dead zones or areas with just generally crappy service can make a difficult proposition to
accurately gauge. But Alltel laid out the terms for us, and going by those terms Sprint made things really easy.
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In a release
dated 2003, Sprint (now Sprint-Nextel, of course) stated their network "covers more than 96 percent of the
population and more than 2.8-million square miles in the continental U.S." Now, we can’t imagine their network
would have shrunk, so let’s go to the maps. We know they’re not incredibly accurate, but we think they’ll do the
trick.
![]()
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/04/alltelmap.jpg" alt="" />
Here is
href="http://www.alltel.com/corporate/media/coverage.html">Alltel’s map. Some decent coverage of Eastern, Mountain,
and Central time zones — even a little on the west side (if you count Nevada, anyhow). Alltel suppoesdly has AMPS and
CDMA roaming agreements in every state, but that apparenty
is not an official part of their "built out and lit" claim. Now let’s check out Sprint’s map.
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![]()
src="http://www.engadgetmobile.com/media/2006/04/sprintmap2.jpg" alt="" />
So this is
href="http://www1.sprintpcs.com/media/Assets/Maps/U.S.coverageMapSprint_64e2b1.gif">Sprint’s service map. We’d like
to point out that those white speckles comprise the entirety of their uncovered area. Hell, they even cover portions of
Alaska (which isn’t to scale, and would probably easily make up for those dead zones in the contiguous US), Hawaii, and
regions in the commonwealth of Puerto Rico and portions of the Virgin Islands. So, the nation’s largest network
"built out and lit… in square miles," eh? Just for reference, let’s look at the other carriers’ maps.
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![]()
src="http://www.engadget.com/media/2006/04/cingmap.jpg" />
Here we have Cingular, whose very decent nation-wide
coverage is also supplemented by service up in AK, down in the ‘Rico, and over in Hawaii.
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T-Mobile’s, well, you know, T-Mobile. They may not provide the widest area of coverage, but we love ‘em
anyway.
Okay, so maybe these USB EV-DO modems would be a bit more lovable if they were in dongle form, but they’re still a reasonable alternative if your ExpressCard slot is busy handling other (likely frivolous) activities. AnyDATA’s ADU-E100D is a tad larger than a standard business card, but will only add about 4 extra ounces to your trusty knapsack, and sports an integrated battery as well as USB
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