Cingular (now: AT&T) used to advertise the fewest number of dropped calls
by Ron Lindeboom
on
Jul 13, 2008 at 3:12:11 pm
When I was on the phone yesterday talking to my sister down in Orange County, she and I started laughing about how many times we have to call each other to complete a conversation. We are both iPhone users now on AT&T (which was Cingular when we started with the first iPhones), who came over from Verizon.
Neither of us ever had a dropped call, ever, when we were on Verizon. Verizon never advertised themselves as "The Network with the Fewest Dropped Calls" -- Cingular did that. But we never knew what a dropped call was until we got onto Cingular/AT&T.
I told my sister that I learned something about marketing that I should have remembered from the days of Lee Iococca and the Chrysler/Dodge/Plymouth Reliant K series cars -- the ones with the 10 year, 100,000 mile warranty! (Yes, the ones that were lucky to last four years and if you got 50,000 miles out of them before they rattled and shook themselves into parts, you were lucky.)
Lee Iococca and his research team learned that fewer than 1/4th of the people who buy a new car will keep the warranty in effect. So they sold against their negative. Cingular/AT&T did the same.
So now, we enjoy the network with the fewest number of dropped calls. (Which we never knew about or appreciated when we were on Verizon but now fully miss as we see the Cingular/AT&T marketing team tearing a page out of Lee Iococca's play book.)
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Remember: Burt Bacharach lied. What the world really needs now is an undo button.
Re: Cingular (now: AT&T) used to advertise the fewest number of dropped calls by Mitch Ives on Jul 13, 2008 at 5:37:32 pm
Ron,
I think it depends on where you live. I had Verizon (and it's predecessor) from the day the cel phone network was powered up here in 1982 until I switched to Cingular in 2005. Verizon continued to add customers without improving the network and eventually over-subscribed the network by a factor of 2-1/ times. They had outmoded equipment, ZERO support outside the U.S., and were the last to start implementing digital... they actually tried to charge more for their digital service... at a time when their analog network gave me dropped calls on a daily basis. At that time the original AT&T network was half priced, had better phones and bigger minutes packages. Nothing changed with their digital network, and it continued until I left them. I live near the Scottsdale AirPark, a huge business park surrounding Scottsdale Airport, and with Verizon I couldn't call anywhere near 8am nor anywhere near 5pm. I've heard that Verizon is in no hurry to have the iPhone, since they know their network doesn't have the capacity to support all the iPhone data activity and still provide decent cel phone service. I can understand why the passed on the iPhone.
All that changed with Cingular. My cel phone actually became useful. I have traveled all over the country, been on both coasts in Canada... been to Mexico, England, Ireland and Italy... and the phone service ALWAYS works. I rarely get a dropped call driving all over the valley... in a place that all the cel phone companies say is one of the most difficult markets they serve (we're in a bowl). I will say that the iPhone I have (original 16GB) doesn't have as good of reception as my previous BlackBerry 8700c. I'm hoping that the the new 3G with it's all plastic back made out of a patented polymer that transmits radio waves more easily will help with the reception.
Now, having said all of that, I expect the introduction of the 3G iPhone and the huge number of people moving to the iPhone to have an adverse effect on our future iPhone experiences. I suspect that there will be more posts like yours in the future. One of the problems with making a product everyone wants, is that they all come running, and the service inevitably suffers...
Re: Cingular (now: AT&T) used to advertise the fewest number of dropped calls by Jeremy Garchow on Jul 13, 2008 at 5:43:27 pm
I've had four different cell companies now in Chicago. They all suck. Also, there's different coverage for different markets and they can also vary by neighborhood. In my work and living neighborhood, AT&T happens to have a black hole, yet Sprint seems to be strong. It's opposite in other neighborhoods around the city. In the outlying suburbs, at&t's signal is always strong. In other states it also varies. I have never had better cell coverage than when I was in China. Expensive, but the calls always held on and were clear, from the tops of skyscrapers to the basements of factories.
While I'll agree the marketing tactic is 'aggressive' I have a lot of disdain for all mobile companies in the amount of money they charge for bad reception. It never gets better either, yet prices go up.
