Does the US have the worst mobile service in the developed world?

[randomrogue]

So I have sim cards and have used mobile service in Africa, Asia, North America, and Europe. The US has by far the worst service. Now before anyone says "It depends on your provider" let me say I've used a handful of different ones both CDMA and GSM over the years. Sprint blew, Pacbell/Verizon blew, Vodafone sucks no matter where you are in the world, Nextel was useless, and I forgot that I was using ATT at one of my jobs and how hit and miss it was.

I'm currently using ATT/Straighttalk/Tracfone which uses the ATT network and I get dropped calls and NO service all over the place. I have no service in my own house without a microcell. In the middle of the Bay Area there are dead spots in cities with 100,000 people in a metropolitan area that has over 7 million people. It doesn't work anywhere on the Northern Coast, and on major freeways that criss cross through the state the service blows and I have to pull over when I get near a town and just hope that the internet might work there. I have spent a lot of time driving around the state doing touristy things and it's very difficult to use something like google maps when there is no internet on major freeways. Yeah I downloaded maps but that's not the point. There's a huge difference between using it with the net where it adjusts my route according to traffic and using predownloaded ones.

I don't get it. How is this even possible? What I really don't understand is what do these poor people who live in cities with only 5000 or 8000 people do? Do they have to bring out the styrofoam cup and string? There were times where I didn't have cell phone or data service for hours and I kept asking myself what I'd do if I had a car accident.

 

[Tsavo]

Telecom in the USA is a global joke; so it's not just you feeling it.

The worst part of it? The service is never ever going to get any better. It'll get worse and more expensive over time.

 

[luv2liv]

the US is vast. there is no way carriers will blanket the entire US with coverages. the equipment is ridiculously expensive to cover every square inch. in some small countries like japan, they can easily upgrade the whole system overnight.

so why not just focus on big cities where most people live in NYC and LA right? well, in big cities, you got another problem... too many people and again...not enough equipment to handle the demand. everyone is walking around holding onto their phone and checking stupid facebook.

 

[Bateluer]

Prepaids using MVNOs have different access to the networks, such as no roaming. But it shouldn't be as bad as the OP describes. While in the city, I rarely lose all signal. And I'm on T-Mobile here.

 

[soccerballtux]

no, we actually have some of the best with 3 different carriers providing LTE offerings, and all of them consistently hitting speeds > 25mbps the majority of the time. That's unheard of in the rest of the world excepting a couple western european countries and Japan. One of success stories of American capitalism-- people paying $110 for cell service, of course we can afford fantastic LTE deployments.

this reminds me, I need to revert to an older radio to test out this dead zone I found at a restaurant

on the major carriers (AT&T (straight talk here like you) and Verizon ) the coverage is there 98% of the time for me.
Sprint I have had problems with-- I'm not sure why in 2014 they haven't managed to fix their PRLs. I would be next to a tower with 4-5 bars of service and 3G and it would regularly decide to switch to one with 2 bars and hop to 1xRTT.
Changing the phone icon to always be 3G was bad for them-- people see it and say, well their 3G must suck. In actuality, on 3G I regularly got 100kBps, which was more than enough for whatever I needed (streaming audio + browsing web at same time), the problem was in spite of coverage I was on 1xRTT half the time. I got fed up with fighting it and just went to ST-ATT

 

[A5]

Canadians pay more for worse speeds, so no.

 

[RockinZ28]

No complaints with Verizon. I traveled quite a bit for work to different parts of the US last year, and drove from Los Angeles to Indiana twice. Their 4G coverage is excellent. Never had problems when I lived in L.A., and service works just as well in Indiana. Pretty rare not to have at least 3G even in the middle of nowhere, often times it's still 4G. Really have to go out to the boonies to get no voice.


I now live on the outskirts of a town with like 2.5k population, still have 4G. In fact that's what I use as my home internet since it's the best option.

 

[mmntech]

Canadians pay more for worse speeds, so no.

I've never had any problems with the quality of the service on Rogers/Fido. But yeah, it's definitely expensive. Canada ranks between 25th and 32nd on affordability out of 34 OECD countries.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2013/07/oecd-on-wireless-pricing/

I don't know where the US lies but I think there's is slightly less affordable.

Land line telephone rates are also really expensive. I have a VOIP phone through an indie ISP which I pay $25 a month for. Comes with everything; voice mail, call display, unlimited North America wide long distance.

I thought about getting it for my grandma. She talks, a lot, but won't pay long distance to call my mom. Plus her Bell service has been unreliable. Nor do I want to fuss around with a dry loop for her. So I looked up Rogers Home Phone. Not only does it cost $10 a month more than what I pay, it comes with no calling features or long distance. The exact same package I have would cost more than double with them. And it still doesn't come with unlimited long distance. What a rip off.

 

[s44]

AT&T is spectrum crunched in the Bay. Verizon LTE is the way...

 

[master_shake_]

Canadians pay more for worse speeds, so no.

this.

and data caps glorious data caps...

1gb cap for a month?

where in the civilized world is that enough?

 

[nickbits]

Canada is way worse. Less population over a much larger area.

 

[BrightCandle]

On the one hand coverage in the US is a bit hit and miss with any one carrier in different places and there is a lot of the US that has no coverage at all. But its also a vast country with a lot of empty space and no real reason for cell coverage. Compared to very best from places like Japan the USA's infrastructure is kind of poor even with LTE factored in, but then Americans don't make lots of video calls like the Japanese do which drives a much higher bandwidth need than you use. Its kind of expensive compared to much of the world but its also relatively quicker compared to most places as well.

Its certainly not a awful service, too few companies involved is the main threat to it in the long term.

 

[randomrogue]

California is a state with a lot of people. There are countries that are bigger or the same size and have less people and have better coverage. There really isn't any excuse. If anything it's because each provider builds their own network. Other countries build one network and then the providers split the cost. That's why I pay $12-$15 everywhere else per month but $45 here.

Other countries are really stupid and require passports or citizenship from certain countries to use wifi or mobile service but at least they have service once you jump through the hoops. Here I don't get service outside of big cities and even in metro areas it's spotty. I don't live on a farm in the middle of Kansas. I live in an area with hundreds of thousands of people and millions within easy driving distance.

The fact that I can't get edge service or even phone service in large parts of the richest state in the union though bothers me.

 

[pm]

I'm writing this while on vacation kayaking through Biebrze National Park in the middle of absolute nowhere in Poland (Google it... it really is out there) and I have 4 bars of HSPA+ and can download at 7Mb and upload at 1.1Mb and most of the rest of the populated country is blanketed in LTE. My service cost 30 Polish Zloty - or $10 US dollars and should easily last me until the end of the trip 14 days). Last week in Germany speeds and service were even better (but a bit more expensive).

I'm sort of with the OP. If a country in Eastern Europe like Poland can give me excellent service in a giant swamp for pennies per day it makes me wonder why the US system is so bad. I can go 7 miles out of Fort Collins -a city of 160k - and get "No service" on AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint (Verizon is ok though... At least in that one area) and I pay $50 per month after taxes and congratulate myself on the deal that I have (Straighttalk).

 

[jpiniero]

Straight Talk / Tracfone is definitely inferior to "regular" AT&T service.

 

[vshah]

I'm writing this while on vacation kayaking through Biebrze National Park in the middle of absolute nowhere in Poland (Google it... it really is out there) and I have 4 bars of HSPA+ and can download at 7Mb and upload at 1.1Mb and most of the rest of the populated country is blanketed in LTE. My service cost 30 Polish Zloty - or $10 US dollars and should easily last me until the end of the trip 14 days). Last week in Germany speeds and service were even better (but a bit more expensive).

I'm sort of with the OP. If a country in Eastern Europe like Poland can give me excellent service in a giant swamp for pennies per day it makes me wonder why the US system is so bad. I can go 7 miles out of Fort Collins -a city of 160k - and get "No service" on AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint (Verizon is ok though... At least in that one area) and I pay $50 per month after taxes and congratulate myself on the deal that I have (Straighttalk).

poland is miniscule compared to the USA. There's your answer.

 

[Strk]

Straight Talk / Tracfone is definitely inferior to "regular" AT&T service.

It does help that some carriers are now offering good prepaid plans. Cricket is a pretty good deal, although phone selection could still be better. It's still such a pain to get an unlocked phone in the US.

 

[openwheel]

US carriers suck balls compared to most other nations. I think the main reason is customer loyalty. For some reason lots of Americans defend and stick to their carriers to death. Regardless how much they get screwed over. As long as customers are willing to be spanked, why should carriers improve?

 

[mmntech]

this.

and data caps glorious data caps...

1gb cap for a month?

where in the civilized world is that enough?

I can top that. I was paying $65/mo for a 500mb data cap and 250min up until very recently. That was Fido's original iPhone plan. For the longest time, they refused to upgrade me to a better plan up until early this year. I've now got unlimited talk, text, Canada wide long distance, call display, voice mail, and 2GB of data. Same price.

Coverage still isn't great though. Good in the city but if I go 2 hours north to my buddy's cottage, I might get one bar if that. I keep debating going with Wind Mobile. Cheaper, true unlimited everything, but their coverage is even worse.

 

[Yongsta]

California is a state with a lot of people. There are countries that are bigger or the same size and have less people and have better coverage. There really isn't any excuse. If anything it's because each provider builds their own network. Other countries build one network and then the providers split the cost. That's why I pay $12-$15 everywhere else per month but $45 here.

Other countries are really stupid and require passports or citizenship from certain countries to use wifi or mobile service but at least they have service once you jump through the hoops. Here I don't get service outside of big cities and even in metro areas it's spotty. I don't live on a farm in the middle of Kansas. I live in an area with hundreds of thousands of people and millions within easy driving distance.

The fact that I can't get edge service or even phone service in large parts of the richest state in the union though bothers me.

California population 38 million, Japan population 127 million. Indiana population 6.5 million, South Korea population 50 million. These countries are much more densely populated (less towers, more people use them). If you go to a sparsely populated part of Japan (Kyushu), you will notice the service isn't that great as well.

 

[randomrogue]

California population 38 million, Japan population 127 million. Indiana population 6.5 million, South Korea population 50 million. These countries are much more densely populated (less towers, more people use them). If you go to a sparsely populated part of Japan (Kyushu), you will notice the service isn't that great as well.

So you use two countries and think that explains it all away? What about all the countries in Europe? I can understand if LTE wasn't as widespread but even that's better in many places and my gripe is when there is NOTHING. I'm not in the middle of the Amazon Jungle when I'm around Yosemite. 4 million visitors a year and the service is awful there. That's just one example. More relevant would be not getting service in the middle of the bay area though. "Yeah, sorry, I know we're 20 minutes from Silicon Valley but our phones don't work in this area despite there being 10,000 people here". Where I live we barely get a signal with an additional microcell in the house. I live in a nice area with big houses so the population density is apparently not high enough for them to build any towers nearby. I have to go down the hill before things work properly. I'm stuck with a house phone because of this just in case of an emergency.

I was up in the arctic circle last winter and I got service. I think there were more reindeer there than people but they managed to get a functional mobile network setup.

You gotta understand. I'm not asking for 100% LTE coverage. Some kind of perfection. I'm asking for the US to get at least to the level of the rest of the developed world. Yeah they're not going to have Tokyo level coverage in all 50 states. However how about no dropped calls and 3G in areas where millions of people live? I don't have 4 neighbors. I have like 12,000. Why do we not have a tower?

As far as straight talk not being the same as ATT that might be the case but I haven't noticed a difference in coverage compared to my family who has ATT contracts. If there are no towers, there are no towers.

 

[MongGrel]

I still do not use a mobile service I guess.

I must be in the stone ages still but I have wireless in the house on the modem, but I still use mine hardwired to the desktop.

The wife does it on the phone that way when at home.

 

[Accord99]

I'm not in the middle of the Amazon Jungle when I'm around Yosemite. 4 million visitors a year and the service is awful there.

Isn't that because of the desire to minimize technological disturbance to a National Park. I suspect a lot of people prefer it that way.

 

[randomrogue]

We're talking a huge area where there is no service. If you look at their coverage map you can clearly see that they don't touch the national parks. However they supposedly service the areas outside of them. In reality that's not the case. The 395 for example was a dead zone. I drove a 200 mile section of it and only got coverage in a couple towns. Driving along the 1 was even worse. I don't know if I got any coverage in Mendocino County at all.

 

[JoeMcJoe]

Canada has much better coverage and service than the US, higher prices, true.

The US doesn't have legal requirements to provide service, just a requirement to 'use' the spectrum a little in some areas. Other countries have coverage requirements.