Brian,

Some background.  My husband and I have multiple homes – East Lansing, a “cottage” up north, and my husband’s family farm on the Michigan-Ohio border due south of Lansing.  We both work.  We both travel a lot.  We generally do some work (at least email) on evenings, weekends and while on vacation.  We vacation up north in the summer and spend most weekends at the farm or up north.

Back in the beginning of mobile phones we first had a mobile device for the car.  It weighed several pounds, had a multi-foot long antennae, and was impractical to use outside the car.  But, as I recall it worked great and it even did data.  (Could hookup a computer.)  I don’t recall the carrier. 

Then came the cell phone.  Our first carrier was Verizon.  No service at farm or cottage.  Poor to no service for me at work.  Dropped calls on common East Lansing travel routes of ours.  Our relationship with Verizon as our cell carrier ended when they refused to honor our service contract several days prior to its expiration.  They wanted us to instead renew our contract, get new equipment and select an “expanded” (= more costly for less function) service. 

We opted to switch carriers.  We moved to Sprint.  No service at farm or cottage.  Spotty service at work.  Dropped calls on common East Lansing travel routes of ours.  Used Internet/Web browsing functionality frequently and generally successfully.

Then came the iPhone.  I not believe I have Apple religion.  Judge for yourself.  After evaluating smart phones and carrier coverage we selected iPhone based on functionality and coverage.  You are right – this meant a move to ATT.  But as we anticipated, our coverage improved.  Great coverage at cottage.  Good at farm.  Lots of drops at home.  But we were keeping our land line anyway and ATT indicated the MicroCell would be available “real soon”.  Real soon turned out to be 1.5 years, but now coverage at home is also very good.  Coverage on our travels is much better – including a trip to Alaska on a friends private boat where we were general surrounded by more wild life than people.

I still think iPhone and recent addition of iPad best meet our needs.  I use the iPhone/iPad in all facets of day to day activities – and once in a while make a telephone call on the iPhone.  I have an ATT hotspot for the iPad and am very pleased with that.  The interface is also great for my husband, who expects he should be able to use a phone, even a smartphone, without any instruction/training.  And he loves doing his email on the iPhone.  We both prefer the iPad interface to Outlook for reading through all of it, quick responses, and deletion of “junk”.

My complaints with Apple are with support.  Apple “geniuses” who don’t know what they are doing, don’t know where backup files are stored, and end up losing your data despite repeated prompting that it is critical that we don’t do anything before we are sure we have sufficient backup.  And then there is having to go to Novi or Ann Arbor every time the battery fails.  But it looks like these issues may be fixed now that you can get support through Best Buy.

Hopefully you find our behavior rational.  J  /Diana

Rich’s point about the broadband is interesting.

The part that astounds me is that you folks have stuck with a carrier that you don’t get a good signal at home or work – arguably where you are the vast majority of your life. Until today I believed the point of having a cellular phone was to have coverage and be able to make and receive calls.  You can’t (without this band aide).  Years ago I tried Sprint as they were the better deal at the time. It wasn’t. I got poor coverage at my house. Before signing up for the contract I confirmed I could return the phone if it didn’t work at my house.  I went back the next day and cancelled the contract and returned the (effectively non-working) cellular phone, and went to one of their competitors.

If MSU is paying for your phone, they just give a stipend and you can choose your phone and carrier. The only reason I can imagine you kept this phone with ATT and paid significant monthly carrier fees you effectively couldn’t use is that you absolutely had to have an iPhone and that was only available on ATT.  Is that the case?  If so I need to add a chapter to my ongoing study of the fascinating behavior of Apple devotees.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Brian Hoort     |     517-355-3776

ANR Technology Services, MSU

From: Richard Wiggins [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, September 09, 2011 3:58 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] Ethernet based Cell repeaters

I am an AT&T cell customer in an area with lots of dropped calls.  Better in the last few months, but not great.