I live in Arlington, Virginia, about 4 miles from the Pentagon. Originally I had one of those plans that had the usual 200 or so minutes and unlimited night and weekend minutes, this was back about two weeks before September 11th occurred.
From that point on, I basically could never get a connection during the "free" periods except maybe 1 in 10 tries. During the part where I had metered minutes, I was *always* able to get a call to go through.
I couldn't really tell whether this was the usual and customary performance due to classic overselling of capacity, or an unusual condition triggered by overloading, perhaps due to damage to circuits from the terrorist attack, or because people were using the phones a lot more than they were before it happened.
Being dissatisfied with that carrier I decided to switch to Sprint.
I have a $39.95 plan that is 200/1800 minutes, the 200 being 7am to
7pm Monday thru Friday, the rest being the rest of the month. Or it might be 2800 minutes, I don't remember off the top of my head. Well, technically, if you used up all of the over 1000 minutes then it would use the 200 minute allotment, but it was always the other way around, I'd often use up all of the 200 minute allotment and then some, while still having over 1000 minutes left on the other side.Hell, if it could simply have absorbed the excess minutes on a 10/1 scale, I'd still never have run an overage.
What I have found is that Sprint's service is okay outdoors, but sucks when I try to use it indoors. Sometimes if I'm close to a window it might work, and sometimes it doesn't.
I want to check on the phone used by a neighbor, because theirs not only works indoors, it even works *in the basement*. I need to find out what network they're using!
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Have you seen that television commercial for Cingular (I think?) where a man is sitting on top of a file cabinet, scrunched down, right next to a window with a cellular phone in his outstretched hand? He says, "It used to be this was the only place in my office where I could use my cell phone; then I switched to Cingular(?) from Brand X and now I can make calls all over the place." Whereupon he jumps down from the file cabinet in the corner by the window, answers an incoming call and walks away. PAT]