Subject: [NEXTEL-1] The Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday News - 25-Nov-02 - View Article

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Date: Mon, 25 Nov 2002 14:15:19 -0500

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News - November 24, 2002

All wireless, all the time:
Cell phones replacing residential phones

By JEANNE MORRIS

Sunday News Staff

After Melanie Bailey of Nashua did the math, the 26-year-old computer systems administrator decided to get rid of her home phone and go totally wireless.

“It’s great. I highly suggest this to anybody; if you have a problem you can always go back to your landline,” she said.

Increasingly, people are abandoning their conventional phones for cell phones. Verizon attributes much of its 4 percent drop in residential lines during this year’s first quarter to people going wireless.

Verizon spokeswoman Lisa Thorn said the reason is simple: “Packages offered by wireless companies are very, very attractive.”

Cost-cutting is usually the number one reason cited by those going wireless.

Bailey said landline companies can’t beat the 1,000 anytime minutes, free calls on nights and weekends, and 500 same carrier minutes she gets each month for just $49.99.

“I love it,” she said.

Nextel senior sales executive Pauline Frisina in North Hampton said anyone paying $50 or more a month for a landline is a good candidate for a wireless telephone, especially if he makes a lot of long distance calls.

Although it may be cheaper, experts warn that you should calculate more than the dollars before going entirely wireless.

Issues such as safety, dead zones, directory services, and equipment failure should all be considered.

Safety factor

Emergency Communication Center executive director Bruce Cheney said people should know that cell phones are significantly different when it comes to emergency 911 coverage.

Cellular service does not provide the caller’s location like a land line telephone does.

“If you don’t know where you are, we can’t find you,” Cheney said of someone using a cell phone to call 911. “Obviously, if you have a landline, we know where you are, whether you can speak or not.”

“The largest problem for us is tourists, who have no clue where they are. They don’t know if they’re on I-93 or I-95. It’s a problem for us right now,” he said.

Wireless companies are working on installing equipment that will offer precise location information to emergency workers. It’s slated to arrive by the year 2005.

“Today we can only locate the tower that your call is coming from and the face of the tower — north, east, south, west,” Cheney said. And that can sometimes cover a few miles.

Cheney said US Cellular is the only cellular phone company in New Hampshire that doesn’t provide tower and call-back telephone numbers to emergency workers.

It’s a personal decision, and Cheney said he doesn’t intend to get rid of his home phone until cellular phones are able to give a precise location to emergency workers.

“I have both,” he said. “Personally, I wouldn’t consider releasing my landline at this time. I want to be sure if I call, they’ll know where I’m calling from. In 2005, when I see cellular phones are accurate (at location information) I would consider it,” he said.

The safety improvement for cellular service slated to happen in the year 2005 will give emergency workers longitude and latitude coordinates of an emergency caller within 60 meters of his location, Cheney said.

“In New Hampshire, 60 meters is not bad, but in New York City it would be a horror. But in New Hampshire, we could probably locate people within 60 meters,” Cheney said.

No listings

There are a few other differences between cellular and landline services.

Your cellular telephone number won’t be listed in the telephone book or available through directory service, Frisina said. That means someone trying to look up your telephone number probably won’t be able to find it.

Bailey said a system failure is also possible. At one point, the cellular tower in her area stopped working for about three hours. “I didn’t have a landline to back me up,” she said.

Bailey was also tempted by the landline high-speed DSL Internet connection.

“The only reason I’ve considered it (going back to a landline) was to get DSL and have a package that way, because they had some pretty good specials going. In the long term, I think I’m better off staying with my cable modem and cell phone,” she said.

Frisina, of Nextel, said one obvious advantage of a cell phone is you can take it with you when you leave the house.

And, for anyone who makes a lot of long distance calls, cell phones can save them money, she said.

“Most of our rate plans offer free long distance nationwide calling,” she said.

She also said going wireless can simplify life. Instead of having multiple numbers for a pager, home phone and work, people can be reached at one cellular number

Another side benefit, for some, is that telemarketers have yet to zero in on cellphones, although special needs education consultant Pat Schaffer of Plymouth said this month a magazine telemarketer called her cellular telephone to make a sales pitch.

Coverage issues

Of course, none of the cost savings or benefits matter much if you can’t get the cell phone to work inside your home.

Frisina advised against just looking at a cell phone company’s map of coverage. All cell phone companies have dead spots in their coverage area. A consumer needs test the cell phone throughout all the rooms in his house to ensure total coverage.

Sometimes a homeowner will find areas in the house that are dead zones, where the cell phone won’t work.

“Make sure it works everywhere in your house. If it doesn’t, don’t get rid of your landline,” she said.

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