Searching For Service
We have cellular telephones that take pictures, make movies, surf the 'Net (on a 1-inch square screen...great) and cook a five-course meal for a family of four. They do everything but give you a working signal from your house in the suburbs. I can go to the Olympics in Australia and Greece and be given cell phones that make it sound as if I'm calling home from a pay phone at UDF. I'm in the US of A and I can't get a signal from my close-in house.
Very good column in the NYTimes not long ago, by Tom Friedman, the best op-ed guy on the planet. He lives in Bethesda, Md., where I grew up, a close-in DC suburb. Friedman said he has trouble making a call from Bethesda to his office downtown. Recently, he bought a disposable cell at the airport in Beijing. He used it to call home. The reception was clear.
Can you hear me now?
Sure can. I need to leave the country to make a phone call.
posted by Paul Daugherty at 8:45 AM
10 Comments:
at 9:12 AM 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 11:50 AM 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 1:40 PM 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 3:13 PM 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 7:18 AM 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 11:33 PM 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 6:45 AM 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 3:05 AM 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 1:02 PM 
Anonymous said...
-
-
at 10:02 PM 
Anonymous said...
-
-
Post a Comment*Tom "Six More Months" Friedman
The lead paint on it will probably give him brain cancer.....
Don't know if you knew this, but most of Indian Hill, the home of a fair share of CEOs and top employers in the city, has terrible if not NO cell phone coverage in most places. Serious. Most residences do not have coverage, no matter the carrier. It's a joke, and I can't believe the big wigs don't care. What, these high powered people don't take cell calls at home? Progress be damned, but IH is determined to preserve it's rural nature. You just can't work from home there. Or make service calls there and expect to hear from or get messages from your other clients.
And I like Tom Friedman, too.
Paul my guess is you use Cin Bell Wireless. If it makes you feel any better their service sucks in Milford also. What is sad is neighbors w/ Verizon get wonderful reception. A couple years ago an friend who works for them heard the following quopte in a meeting from Jack Cassidy; to paraphrase
"Our brand name is strong enough here that our cell service can be weak and we'll be ok". Now granted it is better than a couple years ago but when the bar starts out so low improvement still leaves a lot to be desired.
Robert Young
Milford
I agree with you on everything that you talked about in this column. I talk on my phone all the time and even though it is getting old, i never get good reception, maybe two bars at best. When i am talking to somebody it also goes in and out and i seem to have a lot of dropped calls and i am not able to carry on a good conversation either because i cannot hear the other person on the other line since the reception goes in and out.
Paul,live in a house in Deer park that Im pretty sure doubled as a bomb shelter during the Cold War...Verizon is all that works for us...
I never get more that 2 bars on my mobile, while inside my house or in the yard. I live in Anderson.
Cincinati Bell Wireless doesn't work in my house..or on my street. Verizon just fine, same with Sprint and T Mobile. Parallels between Jack cassidy and Bob Castellini: both talk a much better game than they play, and the end products leave sour taste in loyal fans; mouths.
I have used Nextel, Cin Bell and Verizon. Cin Bell supposedly has the most celltowers and infrastructure in the US, because they have been "in place" since 1905!! However, they have lack of coverage along the Ohio River and even downtown Cincinnati sometimes. Nextel, suprisingly,
has NO service at Beechmont and Salem, on TOP OF A HILL!! Verizon is the best from my experience, and I have only had it 4 months. Also, don't forget...if you can't get through via phone, use the TEXT. It takes a fraction of the bandwidth to send a txt message than it does a voice signal, and even if your phone shows "no bars", meaning no signal, a text message will almost always get through. I was on a dirt road, down inside a valley, 50 miles east of Las Vegas, on my way to Grand Canyon this summer. My Verizon phone showed NO signal - not only did I send and recieve a dozen text messages back to Cincinnati, I sent a dozen photos I had taken with my phone. Verizon is the best.
I switched from Cincy Bell to Verizon and after 2 weeks still can not get a text from any cin Bell customers? Have talked with both companies numerous times
* Our online blogs currently are hosted and operated by a third party, namely, Blogger.com. You are now leaving the Cincinnati.Com website and will be linked to Blogger.com's registration page. The Blogger.com site and its associated services are not controlled by Cincinnati.Com and different terms of use and privacy policy will apply to your use of the Blogger.com site and services.
By proceeding and/or registering with Blogger.com you agree and understand that Cincinnati.Com is not responsible for the Blogger.com site you are about to access or for any service you may use while on the Blogger.com site. << Home