Best Cell Phone Service ~ Dead Zones

Monday, November 02, 2009

Best Cell Phone Service

Benchmarking Cell Phone Service by Customer Complaints

The single most common question we get asked on a regular basis is "Which carrier has the best cell phone service"? My answer is always, "it depends where you live and work." Cell phone coverage is a very personal issue due to the number of variables that can create coverage like terrain, distance the tower handsets, building material, weather and heavy users competing for the network near you. The US carriers have been pulling the wool over our eyes for the last two decades and have conditioned consumers to look at their coverage maps from a 20,000 foot level and assume all customers are equal. We all know that their coverage maps are useless especially if you are indoors, on the fringe of their network or roaming on another carriers network.

So we have developed a methodology of benchmarking cell phone service to determine who has the best cell phone coverage based on who has the worst coverage. The proper questions should be stated as who has "less bad coverage" or who has the most pins on your "inverse coverage map". The only challenge with this methodology is it assumes that you are reaching equal amounts of customers for AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. For better or worse AT&T and Verizon have two thirds of the entire US mobile phone consumer market so our data is a bit skewed to them right now.

Choosing a cell phone carrier can be a little overwhelming especially if you are moving to a new area or traveling. Understand equally your wireless needs, coverage in your neighborhood and what features each carrier offers is important before selecting coverage. Once you find the best cell phone coverage or learn how to fix your in-building coverage using femtocell, microcell, UMA phone, VoIP, or repeater it is easy to pick the plan that fits you best. The top four carrier service plans and coverage are compared below.