Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Sun, 28 Apr 91 0:24:05 CDT From: TELECOM Moderator Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Roaming Through the Midwest: Cell Phone Comparison Message-ID: Organization: TELECOM Digest Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 312, Message 1 of 5 Lines: 185 I took my two cellular phones with me last week on my trip to Kansas. Here are some observations: The phones: (A system) Cellular One/Chicago. Three Watt 'bag phone' with window mounted antenna. Plugged into the car's cigarette lighter. Technophone MC-915-A. (B system) Ameritech Mobile Communications. Hand held unit from Radio Shack, CT-301. Half-watt output, with small antenna on the unit. Recharged as needed from time to time from the cigarette lighter in the car. The route: From Chicago, south and southwest on I-55 to St. Louis, MO. Then west on I-40 to the intersection of US-54. South and southwest on US-54 through the Ozark Mountains, until we reached Fort Scott, Kansas. Then a couple of local highways going south, including Highway 169. Destination: Independence (Montgomery County), KS. The return route was the same in reverse. Two side trips: From Independence, northwest to Wichita, KS and back (140 miles each way). Also, from Independence south to Tulsa, OK; I think about 60-70 miles each way. We started on Monday at 9 PM, and arrived in Independence early Tuesday afternoon. Returning, we left Friday night about 7 PM, and arrived home in Chicago Saturday about 2 PM. Before leaving home, I consulted with both Cellular One and Ameritech to make sure there would be no difficulty roaming. In addition, Ameritech had 'Fast Track: Follow Me Roaming' in place, which allows the user to notify his home system to send calls to wherever he happens to be by pressing *18 when entering a new cellular service area. Unfortunatly, despite what the national directory said, and Cellular One's own reference materials said about 'NationLink', and the use of *30, *31, and *32 to use that feature, the representative I spoke with insisted it was 'still in the testing stages here.' With that in mind, I call-forwarded my home phone lines to the Ameritech cell phone, then used *18 throughout our trip to enable calls to my home (landline) phones to reach me. My mother 'kept tabs' on us throughout our trip down and back by calling my 800 number in Chicago, and it in turn called the Ameritech cell phone switch, which in turn hunted me down. Since I have 'transfer to voice mail on busy/no answer' from Ameritech, on those occassions when there was no cell service along the way and the call could not be forwarded, it simply went to my voice mail here in Chicago instead. Going south on I-55, both phones went out of 'home' mode and into roaming mode just south of Morris, IL, the outermost limit of the Chicago service area. Ameritech's phone was usable in roaming mode, but Cell One's was not. Even though *711 produced a response saying I was in Cellular One territory, I was told 'the phone was not authorized to make calls'. This was about midnight, and the local office of Cell One had no one on duty to help. And this was despite the rep's assurance earlier that day that it would work. Meanwhile, I punched *18 on the Ameritech phone and from the truck stop in Bloomington, IL I tried making a call from the payphone to my home phone -- the call came through to the cell phone with no delay. In Springfield, IL, *both* phones roamed. Apparently Cell One did not update their switch in Chicago until about midnight, and on doing do, they were also equipped to handle my calls. But I *know* about these things and planned ahead ... what about the less knowledgeable user who simply starts out on a trip and suddenly finds the phone won't work? As we got near the Missouri border, a company called 'Mac Tel Cellular' very briefly took over the Ameritech (B) unit. Before long, Mac Tel was gone, and Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems took over on the B side. Once again, roaming worked fine on the Ameritech unit, and *18 got me connected immediatly for incoming calls. But the A side was messed up again! St. Louis is served by a company called 'Cybertel Cellular', and they would have nothing to do with me. I was told I was not authorized to make calls. When I switched the bag phone over to roaming on the B side however, Southwestern Bell was more than happy to accept me -- an A subscriber -- right along with the handheld B phone. On a lark, I tried an experiment: using the bag phone on the B system instead of its 'normal' A system, I punched in *18, and Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems had no objection, saying calls would presently be transferred to me from my home system ... but it never happened. On the B side, I was able to use follow me roaming through St. Louis. SWB did notify Ameritech to forward calls. I assume they also notified *someone* to forward calls on the A phone also ... (who? were they smart enough to know it was Cell One in Chicago and not Ameritech?) ... but whoever they notified did not do it. Incidentally, throughout the whole trip I tried several times on the A unit to get whatever company I was in to accept *31, but no one would accept it. I guess it is just in the 'testing stages' here as the rep said. In general, coverage was much better this last trip than it was a year ago. We had coverage the entire length of I-55, and for quite a distance west on I-40 from various companies on the B system. Once we got onto US-54, coverage was spotty at best; available here and there for a few minutes at a time on either unit. The carrier we seemed to get a lot was 'United States Cellular'. Both the A (bag phone) and B (handheld unit) would wind up getting the same carrier in many of those little places; I assume the service was mostly 'B', since the handheld phone based on Ameritech could always do *18 and keep getting calls; the bagphone based on Cellular One could make calls, but always on the same carrier as the handheld, but *18 and *31/32 would usually not be accepted. Through much of the Ozark Mountains there is no cell service, nor is there any the last 100 miles of the trip. I checked the phones from time to time and both sat there blankly, saying only 'no service'. Once in Independence, the results were curious: in parts of the town which are higher than others, the little Ameritech half-watt phone would roam through Tulsa, OK -- sixty miles away! The bag phone would work okay also under certain circumstances there. On the trip to Wichita, neither phone had service until we got about forty miles from Wichita, then both started roaming on their respective carriers. Naturally, the Ameritech phone accepted *18, and in fact I got a call from my doctor on the way to Wichita asking why I had missed an appointment a few minutes earlier ... it was entirely transparent, and the doctor did not even know he was being call forwarded through several links to a cell phone driving down the highway outside Wichita! We were in two cars, so I used the handheld to call the Wichita 'A' dialups and then was able to call the bag phone that way ... my brother had the bag phone in the car following us. On the trip to the airport in Tulsa, we started with a poor signal on both phones almost as soon as we were outside Independence heading south, but within a few miles both were roaming nicely on Tulsa on their respective carriers. Coming back, there was nothing of any special note. I kept entering *18 on the Ameritech phone each time we would enter a new service area, and everything seemed to work fine. A very disappointing thing occurred though in the final 200 miles back. We took a slightly different route returning, taking US-54 up into Illinois, then a little side road several miles to where it connected into I-55. This was no problem for the Ameritech phone, but the Cell One phone could not place calls without making prior (credit card) arrangements. I called the customer service for that company (also known as Cellular One, but of Peoria, I believe), and they apologized 'for the trouble caused by my home carrier, Cellular One of Chicago ...'. I asked them what they meant by that, and they said Chicago had cancelled their roaming agreement just a few days earlier. By the time we got within about 100 miles of Chicago, we were all so cranky, sleepy and hostile toward one another (in the car) I decided to crawl in the back of the station wagon and sleep the rest of the way home ... end of testing! Overall, I think the Ameritech unit on the B system worked better, especially considering it only had a little antenna on it and it put out only a half-watt. The bag phone with three watts output was always connected to the window mount antenna (little suction cups that stick on the glass on the inside). There were times the handheld would say there was 'no service' and the bag phone would still have a tiny signal from somewhere, but it was seldom useable. The bag phone also had instances of *appearing* to have service -- it would say it was roaming and have a fairly decent signal for maybe three or four minutes while the handheld did nothing. The tech guy at Technophone said that 'probably there were other signals in the area which confused the phone into thinking there was service' ... I noticed that when this happened -- the bag phone claimed we were roaming but the handheld knew nothing about it -- that attempts to call on the bag phone always failed; it was obviously not a cellular phone signal we were getting, but probably some other form of radio signal. In terms of the quality of the units however, everyone who has talked to me on both cell phones seems to think the Technophone actually sounds a lot better than the Radio Shack unit. Comments and feedback welcome. If you know a little about cellular roaming, please share your experiences and insight. Patrick Townson