Wireless Carriers Leave Many Callers in Dead Zone

Fancy Digital Handsets Come With Coverage Gaps In Busy Cities, Rural Areas

U.S. cellular carriers are aggressively promoting a new generation of phones that have everything from built-in cameras to Web surfing. But there's another, less-welcome wrinkle to the latest phones: Many are missing their old analog gear, and that can make it harder to place and receive calls in many areas.

As wireless carriers make the transition from analog to digital networks, many consumers are discovering that their fancier digital phones simply can't complete a call in a lot of places where their old phones worked just fine. Problems with blocked calls and dead zones are afflicting callers in big cities, including New York and Los Angeles, but they are especially pronounced in rural areas.

It's an unforeseen drawback of the telecommunication industry's big investment in so-called next-generation equipment. As a group, U.S. cellular providers have spent more than $146 billion to upgrade their networks from analog to more-efficient digital technology, according to the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association.

Analog cellphone service relies on a continuously variable radio signal to transmit a call, similar to the way vinyl LP records produce music. Digital calls are transmitted via a series of electrical pulses, which is similar to the technology in music CDs and far more efficient than analog.

Digital cellular technology clearly is an improvement over analog. Digital networks can handle significantly more calls -- up to 10 times as many, depending on the type of technology, some executives estimate -- which allow more users to dial at the same time and conserves precious radio-wave spectrum. Digital technology also allows the phone manufacturers to make their handsets slimmer, conserve battery life and offer an array of revenue-generating, high-tech services like wireless Internet browsing. Many callers say coverage has improved with all-digital phones.

At the same time, many of the big carriers, like Verizon Wireless, Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless Services Inc., still rely on older analog networks for "roaming" arrangements in small towns not covered by the digital infrastructure -- and for backup capacity in big cities where the digital networks can get overloaded.

The catch is that a lot of today's best-selling phones aren't built to work on the analog networks. In an effort to get phones and the latest technology to market more quickly, a number of carriers have pared back their selection of phones with the component that allows users to pick up an analog signal.

All five of the top-selling phones from Cingular and AT&T Wireless -- including Motorola's popular V400 clamshell phone with a built-in camera -- lack an analog component. (Cingular is expected to complete its acquisition of AT&T Wireless later this year, which probably will make it the country's biggest cellular carrier.) One of Verizon Wireless's best-selling phones, the color-screen VX6000 camera phone by LG Electronics Inc., has no analog component.

While the digital networks cover a large portion of the country, there are still enormous gaps. Wide swaths of the rural U.S., including much of Montana, Nevada, Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri, Kentucky, Vermont and New Hampshire, are still analog only, according to the Federal Communications Commission. That means myriad dead spots for users of many of the newer phones.

The problems with the analog-to-digital transition are expected to recede as digital coverage continues to spread, but they could still last several years. Other areas of the world have made the transition to digital much more quickly. In Western Europe, tighter geographic concentration and quicker construction of digital networks has meant that users are less likely to spend hours driving through sparsely populated areas that have only analog coverage.

Other parts of the world have also run into trouble. Three years ago, Japanese cellular users experienced similar frustrations when leading operator NTT DoCoMo Inc. rolled out slick new "3G" phones before the new network covered as much ground as its older network.

In the U.S., AT&T Wireless and Cingular have a big incentive for not selling phones with analog service: The two carriers are each already operating two different digital network technologies, called TDMA and GSM. Encouraging customers to use a third, vastly less-efficient analog technology puts the squeeze on the operators' scarce radio-wave spectrum. None of their GSM phones have analog, except for a few hard-to-find models that combine TDMA and GSM.

AT&T Wireless spokesman Mark Siegel says the demand for analog is "light, and as such, we only need to allocate minimal spectrum in each market to handle the traffic."

Plus, calling over analog networks often means the carrier is paying expensive, per-minute roaming fees to a smaller operator of an analog network. Eliminating the analog function eliminates those expenses.

"They want more and more for their customers to be completely on their network," said Charles Golvin, a principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc., a technology research and consulting firm based in Cambridge, Mass.

New York City resident Raymond Green, a 23-year-old associate with the Winged Keel Group, which sells disability and life insurance, has noticed the problem and switched phones three times in the past year. All of the models had Internet access and color screens, cost at least $150 and left him unhappy. Mr. Green says the phones he owned a couple of years ago had fewer "dropped calls and better reception."

Not all cellular operators are willing to ditch the analog in their phones. Alltel Corp., the country's seventh-biggest wireless operator, with 8.3 million customers, says it includes analog backup in every phone it sells.

"The cost benefit of offering a digital-only phone for us hasn't outweighed the impact it could have on our ability to provide the customer with adequate coverage outside of our networks," said Kevin Beebe, Alltel's group president of operations. The carrier still operates small parts of its network solely over analog.

Another big problem with the phasing out of analog service: a higher likelihood of not being able to make an emergency phone call. In a survey of its subscribers, Consumer Reports found that about 15% of the 1,880 who tried to call 911 using their cellphone had trouble getting through. The phasing out of analog is a problem because the major U.S. cellular carriers use four incompatible digital technologies. A caller using, say, a Cingular GSM-only phone in an area where the only digital signal available is a CDMA signal from Verizon Wireless would not be able to complete the call. But the caller could if the phone had an analog component.

The FCC requires that carriers continue to operate analog networks until Feb. 18, 2008 -- but it doesn't require phone manufacturers to include the analog component in every handset.

"Even at the time the rules were made, the [FCC] noted the growth of digital phones was going to be a problem," said David Heim, an editor for Consumer Reports. "The importance of analog is it's a common language for calls."

Industry officials track figures on attempted calls that don't go through but decline to release them. The cellphone companies say they aren't aware of more complaints related to network quality. "The quality of calls has done nothing but improve," says Mr. Siegel, the AT&T Wireless spokesman.

But the lack of analog can leave consumers in the lurch. While working last year in Mountaineer, a small city in West Virginia, Steve Michaels, a musical director, learned just how important having an analog component in his phone can be. He was in the process of switching to Verizon Wireless from Sprint and had both providers' cellphones with him. But only the Verizon Wireless phone, which had analog capabilities, worked.

Robert Walker, a software writer who lives in Bellevue, Wash., last year had to call 911 during a hiking expedition to report another hiker's injury. He says his Verizon Wireless phone was only able to find a signal from an AT&T Wireless tower because they shared analog capabilities. "I certainly hope that ... when carriers are no longer required to maintain analog that they continue to do so," he says. "You get outside of the major metropolitan areas here and you're pretty much toast if you don't have analog."

It can be tough to figure out whether a phone is rigged for analog by looking at carrier Web sites. Verizon Wireless's site, for example, lists its phones that include analog backup as "tri-mode" -- but the word "analog" can be hard to find. Verizon Wireless, however, does have detailed maps revealing what parts of its network are covered solely by analog.

Cellphone bulletin boards on the Internet, such as howardchui.com and phonescoop.com offer information about capabilities of different phones, including what parts of the country have no digital coverage.