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GOING DIGITAL IN DORSET
INTRO
A long weekend in Dorset provides a chance
for Rick Maybury to try out his new GSM phone, and say goodbye to an old friend...
COPY
‘Hello Mr Maybury’ said the chirpy voice, ‘I’m
calling from Martin Dawes Communications, to find out how you are getting on
with your new mobile telephone, and to see if you have any comments about our
service’. Funny you should ask...
If Martin Dawes Customer Care hadn’t called I
would probably have put my experiences with the new phone down to, well,
experience, but following four entirely trouble-free years with an analogue cellphone,
this looked like a good excuse to compare differences between phones, service providers
and coverage.
My personal cellphone is a Nokia Technophone
305, it has performed brilliantly, good clear reception, a 100% reliability record
and many useful features, but it has long since been discontinued. Accessories
are now (and always have been... ) few and far between, spares like batteries
are becoming difficult to obtain, moreover it’s no use outside the UK; it was
time for a change.
SUNDAY SIGN-UP
One sunny Sunday morning in March I signed up
for a GSM phone. I’d done my homework, shopped around and ended up with what looked
like a pretty good deal from Makro. The Motorola 7500 cost a nominal eighteen
quid, there was no connection fee to Cellnet and I was promised a £2 reduction on
the monthly line rental for the first two years. I chose a GSM phone because of
the international coverage. I’m not too concerned about air time charges, most
of my calls are incoming, so I opted for a low-user tariff. The 7500 has
everything I need and the quality is okay. I go way back with Motorola Flips
and TACs, car kits are readily available, accessories are both plentiful and
reasonably cheap.
The formalities took around three quarters of
an hour, lots of signatures, two credit checks, including one for my trustworthiness
to make international calls. Apart from the added bureaucracy for the overseas
connection it took no longer to complete than my analogue airtime contract with
Astec, made through the Carphone Warehouse four years earlier. The big
difference, however, was the Technophone cost me £250, there was a £35 connection
fee and calls cost a small fortune. That was a good deal back then! The score
so far: digital one, analogue nil.
Everything checked out and inside an hour the
phone was mine. The sales assistant assured me all I had to do was wait another
hour or so to get connected. He was wrong. The phone was actually working by the
time I got back to the car park. I vividly recall signing the Technophone deal
on a Friday afternoon, and being extremely annoyed at having to wait until the
following Monday morning, for it to be operational. Digital two, analogue nil.
GRIM SIM
I resisted the temptation to try the 7500 out
until I got home. Being a responsible citizen the first thing I did was to change
the security codes on the SIM card and the phone from the factory defaults. I
found the section in the instruction book, read it carefully (really!), entered
the new code then switched the phone off and back on again to confirm my PIN number.
I entered the new code, but the phone reported an incorrect entry. I tried again,
with the same result.
It was downhill all the way from that point
onwards. Martin Dawes customer helpline doesn’t operate on a Sunday, so I had
to wait until the next day to sort it out. Finally, after lots of engaged tones
and successfully navigating their multiple-choice telephone exchange I got to
talk to a real human being. And very helpful she was too, supplying me with the
phone’s unlock code. Unfortunately after several attempts, with help from their
technical department it still didn’t work; it turned out the SIM card had become
permanently blocked.
After some fairly heated discussions with Martin
Dawes, who wanted to charge me £25 for a replacement SIM card, one eventually
turned up, six days later. The first bill that arrived was incorrect, I had
been put on the wrong tariff, with no line rental discount, and I’m still
waiting to find out if I’m going to get a refund for the first week, when the
phone was unusable. No points for digital. From the moment I brought the Technophone,
to the end of its active life I never had a moment’s problem with it, or the
service contract. That’s got to be worth at least a couple of points. The score
now stands at: digital two, analogue two.
To be fair most of the people I dealt with at
Martin Dawes were quite helpful and in the scheme of things these were fairly
minor teething troubles. Apart from the refund, all of the problems have now been
sorted out, but now we move on to the most crucial part of the story, coverage
and quality.
COVERAGE CLAIMS
My main reason for choosing Cellnet was the
assurance from various sales persons and publicity blurb that suggested their
GSM digital coverage was pretty much the same as their analogue network. Time
to put those claims to the test. I’ve used both Cellnet and Vodaphone analogue
phones all over the UK and I know all the local dead-spots. Around many large
towns and on motorways I’ve found there’s not a lot to choose between the two
networks, but I’ve usually found Cellnet to be a little better in remote or
hilly areas, like Wales and the West Country.
The first serious test came on a long weekend
trip to Dorset, where I was able to make some broad side-by-side comparisons of
network coverage with the Technophone, an analogue Micro TAC Classic connected
to Vodaphone and the Motorola 7500 GSM.
Along the motorway corridors there was hardly
anything to choose between the three phones. The signal strength meters --
admittedly a fairly rudimentary guide -- showed three quarters to full almost
all the time. On A and B roads the differences did begin to show. The GSM phone
was almost always the first to show a reduction in signal strength, the first
to loose contact, and the last to regain signal lock. There wasn’t a great deal
to choose between analogue Cellnet and Vodaphone signal strength readings;
sometimes Cellnet disappeared first, other times it was Vodaphone.
The quality of contact on medium signal strength
readings -- i.e. meters showing two or three bars -- were definitely better
with GSM, but below that, analogue was usually clearer and it was often possible
to obtain a useable line with just one or two bars showing. Of the three my trusty
old Technophone was the most consistent in the locality, sometimes able to
obtain a useable line when the other two were showing no service. The aerial is
very directional though, and it sometimes involved holding the phone in some
rather uncomfortable positions, including on one occasion standing on a chair
with my head hanging out of an upstairs window of the holiday cottage...
COASTAL CONTACTS
Contact on and around the coast was markedly
better with the analogue networks and according to several knowledgeable locals
I spoke with, GSM coverage off-shore is still very patchy. Anyone setting out
to sea in that area would do well to take an analogue phone with them, if reliability
of contact is important. The two analogue networks were both superior in the surrounding
hilly areas. As far as sound quality was concerned stable GSM digital contacts
were normally a lot clearer, with less background noise, but on the move contact
could be lost quite suddenly, whereas analogue tended to get hissy, giving at
least some warning that the signal was liable to drop out.
Admittedly this kind of test isn’t terribly scientific,
and there are all kinds of variables, including the performance of the
individual phones, but it is possible to draw some simple conclusions from this
trip, and subsequent journeys I’ve made with the phones to other parts of the
country. Cellnet’s GSM coverage still has a way to go before it matches the
analogue networks, but where signal strength is good the quality of contact is usually
better. Analogue tends to be better than GSM on the move, when away from the
motorway corridors and if you use your cellphone in remote areas, or on a boat
you’d be well advised to stick with the analogue networks, especially if you
depend on it for safety. The final score, digital three, analogue four. Upcoming
fixtures include Cellnet GSM versus Vodaphone GSM, and the international results.
---end---
Ó R. Maybury 1996 2803
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