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You need it, you love it, you wouldn't go anywhere without it. You can't imagine life without your mobile phone.
But your mobile phone service stinks, doesn't it?
It may get worse before it gets better. Wireless coverage in the United States is still full of holes, and analysts say incidents of dropped calls, busy circuits and weak signals will probably rise as mobile phones become more popular -- the result of a network that's already overloaded.
Already, about 30 percent of Americans use mobile phones. The industry expects that number to grow exponentially over the next several years until traditional land lines will be rendered obsolete.
"If you're experiencing poor service, you're not alone," said the CEO of a site that sells wireless products. "A lot of our customers are not happy with their carriers. We get a lot of complaints about poor coverage."
For their part, carriers say they're doing all they can to improve coverage and capacity in the existing network. At the same time, they point to a number of obstacles that stand in their way, including geographical limitations, FCC regulations and bureaucracy and local zoning boards.
Although topography, trees, buildings and other manmade structures interfere with radio transmissions, the quality of wireless service within any given network is largely a function of two factors: the ratio of cell towers to users and the capacity of each tower to handle traffic. When the number of users grows faster than the span and capacity of the network, simple logic says that interruptions in service will become more commonplace.
"You'd be right in thinking that wireless service on average has probably gotten worse," Jupiter analyst Seamus McAteer said.
While there is scant quantifiable evidence that service is getting worse -- and it's mostly anecdotal -- the biggest off-the-record comment made by industry insiders these days is that service providers are more concerned with expanding their customer base than they are with improving the coverage and capacity of the existing network.
"No carriers that I have found will compete on the basis of quality," said the CEO of another major wireless company, which provides services to telcos. "They're (more concerned about) optimizing revenues. All the competition in that industry is aimed at one kind of customer and that is the high-usage subscriber."
Another common viewpoint is that the costs of improving existing networks are prohibitive.
In order to expand their footprint, carriers invest in new technology required for next-generation networks, retail stores and costly marketing, among other things. On top of an already unwieldy overhead, the building of additional towers is an extra cost that doesn't immediately contribute to the bottom line.
"Honestly, that's still no excuse to serve the customers," said another anonymous wireless company CEO. "Some of the carriers have grown over 40 percent in number of customers in the last year or two, but in an ideal world you would have a reliable service."
Carriers insist that improving service is their No. 1 priority and point to the millions of dollars they've invested in network infrastructure. The U.S. wireless industry built 22,180 new cell towers last year -- increasing the number of towers nationwide by 25 percent -- according to Travis Larson, spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association.
Still, from coast to coast, the U.S. wireless network is spread thinner than that of any other nation. America's major cities are spread far apart, which means the network is unevenly distributed across a vast geography. Although the gap may be closing, the U.S. ranks lowest among Finland, Japan, Germany, and the U.K. in terms of cell-site density -- the number of cell sites per 100 square miles -- according to a report published by The Yankee Group in August 2000.
"As providers attempt to convince consumers to use wireless devices for Internet access and m-commerce applications, subscribers will demand a literal interpretation of the 'anytime, anywhere' mantra," the Yankee Group's Eugene Signorini wrote in the report. "All this begs the question of whether operators can get their act together or risk falling behind in the race to the new wireless world order."
But if you ask carriers about the sad state of coverage in the United States, they'll say their hands are tied. If the FCC would just grant them the spectrum they need and if consumers would stop whining about cell towers in their backyards, they argue, then coverage across the nation would be better.
"On one hand, consumers want better coverage. On the other hand, many communities are filing for moratoria on building towers," SprintPCS spokesman Dan Wilinsky said. "In order to extend coverage, we need to build more towers. Either we build more towers and improve coverage, or we don't. Something has to give, and it might be your service."
A tight limitation on spectrum in the U.S. is another factor carriers blame for poor coverage relative to other countries.
Spectrum refers to the range of electromagnetic frequencies at which everything from radio to TV to wireless service is broadcast. It is allocated by the FCC, which must ensure that frequencies are spaced far enough apart to prevent overlapping signals.
In the United States, each carrier in the largest markets can only have 45MHz of spectrum, while carriers in Japan and Germany can use as much as 90MHz. Carriers in the U.K. have no caps at all. "Removal of the spectrum caps would allow the industry to provide better service," said CTIA's Larsen.
The Bush administration recently called for a delay in the FCC's auction of available airwaves, which is slated to take place in September. The desired frequencies are currently claimed by TV broadcasters, who are not required to give them up until the end of 2006 at the earliest. That means that carriers will have to make do with the limited spectrum they currently have, even as the number of mobile phone users accessing their networks increases.
Finally, the holy grail of the wireless industry —- a unified and seamless national network -— may remain out of reach for Americans for some time to come. In the United States, the absence of industrywide standards has given rise to three distinct and incompatible technologies for transmitting and decoding calls in digital mode: time division multiple access (TDMA), code division multiple access (CDMA), and the global standard for mobile communication (GSM).
Unlike Europe, which is essentially one region under GSM where mobile phone users can roam freely, no one technology dominates in the United States.
For an idea of how fragmented the industry is, consider the major players: SprintPCS and Verizon Wireless use CDMA technology, AT&T Wireless uses TDMA, Voicestream Wireless uses GSM and Cingular Wireless uses both TDMA and GSM, depending on where you're located in their network. As long as a single standard eludes the U.S. industry, the extent of each user's coverage is only as wide as his or her carrier's network.
"Even I get annoyed when my coverage gets stopped," said Neerav Berry, VP of marketing for Cellmania, a comparison-shopping site. "The expectation is there that cell phones should be just like land lines. The reality is that we're not quite there yet. That hasn't stopped people from buying cell phones. People are willing to live with what's out there."
Berry's cell phone cut out before he could complete his thought.
