A relative complained to Verizon that she had trouble making calls on
> a trip through Georgia. Her phone is six years old. The saleswoman
> gave the phone to a technician who a said the transmitter was wearing
> out and she needed to buy a new phone. The saleswoman offered her a
> choice of second-hand phones.
> In this area the phone works as well as ever, so my relative decided
> not to replace it until she takes another long trip.
> Do cellphone transmitters normally get weak as they age? Wouldn't
> that cause a problem in normal use? My neighbor has two relatives who
> switched providers because both found Verizon's coverage unsatisfactory
> on trips through Georgia. Does it sound as if Verizon is conning my > relative?
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: At first blush, I would say your
> relative got a con job. The cellphone transmitter has no idea where it
> is at; its job is just to radiate RF. If the phone works okay at your
> house, it should work as well in Georgia; I cannot imagine that Georgia
> has cellphone towers any further apart than cellphone towers are in
> your area of the country, and all that should really matter in the
> case of a 'transmitter getting weak from age' is how far it has to
> look for a tower. If it can find a tower, that should end the problem
> of 'old age'. PAT]
As the cell phone continues to work just fine in her local area I agree totally that there most likely was nothing wrong with the phone itself.
I would be more inclined to suspect that either she was out of range of cell towers during parts of the trip or due to the age of the phone hers might have an analog style transmitter versus a digital one. Quite a few of the new towers being built only support the newer digital style phone as they can support more than one call at a time in the same bandwidth a single analog phone call would use.
If she likes her present phone and does not want to "upgrade" she might want to consider purchasing a TracPhone or other type of prepaid phone for traveling. The model I use will first try to make a digital connection and then switch to analog if that is all that is available, making it compatible with the older towers as well as the new ones.