Who has the best cell coverage? It depends on where you are

Cingular Wireless is running ads saying it has ''the fewest dropped calls," and Verizon Wireless is running ads calling itself ''the nation's most reliable wireless network," but Mort Rosenthal says no one company has the best coverage everywhere.


Breaking News Alerts Rosenthal, the chief executive of IMO, a new breed of retailer that sells every major wireless brand, knows what he's talking about. The Waltham company has done its own road testing and, unlike the cellular companies, makes the test data available to customers so they can tell town by town, or block by block, which carrier has the strongest signal coverage.

''It's kind of silly what they're all doing," Rosenthal said of the sweeping ad campaigns by some wireless companies. ''Consumers only care if their calls get through. It all comes down to the personal patterns of the end user who has the best coverage."

IMO's signal strength data shows all the carriers have fairly strong signals in downtown Boston, but in outlying areas there are color-coded gaps in every carrier's coverage.

In Wellesley, for example, the Verizon map is nearly all green (for strong coverage) with a few tiny blotches of red indicating the weakest coverage. The Cingular map has a substantial amount of yellow (weaker coverage), Sprint has even more yellow, and Nextel the most.

On Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester, the IMO maps are all uniformly green except for Nextel's, which is sprinkled with yellow.

In Milton, along the expressway, the IMO maps indicate Cingular has the best coverage, followed by Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Nextel.

Rosenthal says it's impossible to say one carrier's signal is always superior to another, but that's what the wireless companies are doing with their advertising campaigns. As the Globe reported last week, the claims are often accompanied with little or no evidence to back them up.

Cingular cites an unnamed research firm for its claim that it has the fewest dropped calls. Verizon cites internal testing for its reliability claims, but the backup data it makes available on its website is sketchy and dated. Sprint claims it has the most powerful network but offers no support for that claim.

Many readers last week said the Cingular claim about fewest dropped calls didn't seem to encompass them.

Ray Harrold of Northborough said he has trouble making calls with his Cingular phone in the Interstate 495/Route 20 area. ''I don't have dropped calls because I can only make so few calls," he said.

IMO, shorthand for Independent Mobile, tries to help consumers such as Harrold steer clear of such situations. Unlike a store owned by an individual wireless company, IMO sells the plans and phones of every company, so it doesn't have any particular ax to grind. It attempts to sift through its extensive database to find what phone and service plan best matches each customer's needs.

''This is not an industry that's consumer focused," Rosenthal said. ''We're trying to address that."

The IMO store in Framingham at Shopper's World is bright and colorful, combining hands-on testing of phones and personal digital assistants with sophisticated computer analysis.

At a sleek service bar along one wall, customers can pull up a comfy stool and, with the help of a customer service person, review on a computer screen phones, service plans, and coverage for Cingular, Nextel, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

Pick the features you want and the screen displays the phones that have them. Pick the ZIP codes and, moving the map's focus point around, you can see how the different carriers compare on signal strength where you live, work, or along your commuting route.

Because prices and plans are changing constantly, IMO employs four people just to keep its database up to date.

IMO earlier this year also hired an independent firm to track the signal strength of the various carriers along 5,500 miles of roads in Boston and its surrounding suburbs, with a heavy focus on those areas west of the city.

Rosenthal said IMO will update the road testing every six months and expand it as more stores are added. IMO opened its first Boston-area store in February and plans to add six more in the next year. Ultimately, he said, IMO hopes to operate a national chain with 20 stores in Boston.

Sprint launches text to landline service

Sprint Nextel announced Text to Landline, a clever service that allows Sprint customers to SMS any landline phone in the US. The text message is converted into a voice message which gets played back for the reciepient. At that point they can reply with a preset text message or record a voice message.

Text to Landline automatically kicks in if the number an SMS is going to is not a mobile phone. Standard text message rates apply.

OUTLOOK - Lucent, AT&T, Sprint, Tellabs on telecom roll call

Investors on both sides of the Atlantic will keep a close tab on Lucent Technologies Inc. when the company reports first-quarter results Tuesday. The sluggish-growing U.S. network vendor recently agreed to merge with France''s Alcatel.
Lucent is one of several major telecommunications companies set to unveil quarterly results next week. Others include the Sprint Nextel Corp., the newly constituted AT&T Inc. and Tellabs Inc.
Earlier this year, Lucent cut its 2006 sales forecast, citing lower orders in the U.S. and China. The company has been under pressure to improve growth and its stock performance, and the merger with the financially stronger Alcatel of France is viewed by Lucent executives as a way to accomplish those goals. The merged company would become a global giant in the network-equipment market.
For the fiscal second quarter, Lucent is expected to post a profit, excluding onetime items, of 3 cents a share on revenue of $2.24 billion, down from $2.34 billion a year ago, according to the consensus of analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call.
Executives have said they expect growth to accelerate in the second half of the fiscal year, so investors will look for clues that the rebound is underway.
AT&T Inc. , meanwhile, is slated to report its first full quarter of results since SBC Communications acquired the old AT&T Corp. in November. SBC then took the famed AT&T name as its own.
Investors already know that AT&T''s wireless business performed well. Cingular Wireless, which is jointly owned by AT&T and BellSouth Corp. , has reported net income of $354 million on a 9% increase in revenue to $8.98 billion. The nation''s largest wireless carrier added 1.7 million net customers in the first quarter.
What less clear is how well the company''s wireline business performed, particularly the long-distance operations of the former Ma Bell. AT&T''s ability to integrate acquired assets and to halt the decline in the voice business is crucial to the company''s goal of quickly making the huge acquisition add to profits.
AT&T is projected to earn 48 cents a share, excluding onetime costs and benefits, on revenue of $21.53 billion, including results from the old Ma Bell. AT&T reports Tuesday morning.
The company has led the way in the phone industry in signing up high-speed Internet customers. Wall Street will look for additional gains in data and Internet subscribers as well as broadband revenue.
If the results of Cingular Wireless are any indication, Sprint Nextel is also likely to show solid growth. The company, whose wireless business accounts for the lion''s share of revenue, is expected to earn 37 cents a share on revenue of $11.4 billion, up from $10.59 billion a year ago.
Analyst Todd Rethemeier estimates Sprint will add 1.5 million net new wireless subscribers.
Sprint is still a company in transition. The carrier plans to spin off its local phone business in the current quarter and aims to expand its partnership with the cable industry under which big cable operators would use Sprint''s network to offer wireless-calling plans of their own. Analysts believe the company could announce other initiatives to restructure operations and cut costs.
Sprint reports results Wednesday morning.
Tellabs , a supplier of phone-networking gear to AT&T and others, caps off a busy week with its quarterly report Thursday morning.
The vendor is likely to show a profit of 13 cents a share on revenue of $494.7 million, according to the consensus of analysts surveyed by Thomson First Call. What investors want to know is whether the spate of mergers among phone carriers and the recent Lucent-Alcatel deal will hurt the company''s revenue growth.
Big phone companies have paused some spending while a combined Lucent-Alcatel could provide stiffer competition. Some analysts believe Tellabs could also become an acquisition target.

Sprint CEO says more firms to join cable pact

More cable television companies are expressing interest in joining Sprint Nextel's joint venture to combine cable TV and mobile phone services, Sprint CEO Gary Forsee said.

Quoted in Reuters report, the executive said "there are others in the cable industry ready to sign on."
Sprint earlier said it will form a cable venture which will begin selling its services in three pilot markets, including Raleigh, North Carolina, and Austin, Texas, in the second half of this year.
The Reuters report said four to five more markets are expected by the end of this year, according to Sprint executives.

Last November, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, and Advance/Newhouse Communications signed on to the venture, hoping it would help them better compete against regional telephone providers that are starting to sell TV services in some markets.

Initially, the venture plans to offer access to home email through wireless phones and integrated voicemail for subscribers who already pay for digital home phone service, the report said.
New subscribers will also be able to use their mobile phones to view TV shows that are owned by the cable operator in its region.