Don't Believe Carrier Ads On Cell Phone Quality, Customers SayDon't Believe Carrier Ads On Cell Phone Quality, Customers Say

There is a major disconnect between the claims of cell phone service providers and subscribers, many of whom complain about the service they receive, according to Consumer Reports' annual survey of cell phone service performance.

While Cingular Wireless and Sprint have been bragging about the quality of their service, many customers criticized their service. Each company has acquired another service provider -- Cingular picked up AT&T Wireless and Sprint acquired Nextel -- and there are indications that the acquisitions negatively impacted service for the new parents.

Verizon Wireless once again topped CR's customer satisfaction survey. Rounding out the four largest companies was T-Mobile, which also fared well in the survey. Nearly 43,000 CR subscribers participated in the nationwide survey.

"Call quality stands out in the survey," says Greg Daugherty, CR's editor-at-large, who worked on the survey, which was carried out by the magazine's National Research Center. "When people drop their service, it's more often due to call quality problems than to price."

While Cingular, which has the largest number of U.S. subscribers, trumpets its service as having "the fewest dropped calls according to the leading independent research company," Cingular respondents in the CR survey rated the service provider as only "average" in dropped calls. Cingular's users also put the company close to the bottom in overall satisfaction.

One of the oddities of the survey was the difference in ratings for Verizon and Sprint, which both use similar infrastructure technology: CDMA2000 EV-DO, which is supplied by Qualcomm.

"There's something going on with Verizon that it comes out so well," says Daughtery. CR noted that Verizon has consistently been a top performer in its recent surveys; the company, which is jointly owned by Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group, also ranks high in responsiveness to customer questions and complaints.

Sprint has been racked in recent months by its falling stock price, its struggles to integrated Nextel into its business, and management upheaval. The company has ambitious plans to deploy advanced networks, including WiMax, a faster version of Wi-Fi that covers greater distances. That could put Sprint in the vanguard of mobile phone service, but it will likely be years before the deployment can be completed. Sprint got a much later start than Verizon in deploying CDMA2000.

The survey produced a big surprise: Little Alltel was ranked as a top performer in all three of the metro areas where it has a sizable deployment. "Alltel just popped up in the survey," says Daugherty. "We don't know why exactly, but it's giving Verizon a run for its money."

T-Mobile showed up as "a solid performer" among its users, although it suffered from a lack of service in some areas.

Both T-Mobile and Cingular had an advantage not available for Verizon and Sprint users: their GSM-based phones can usually be used in many non-U.S. countries, CR observed.

The survey also picked up some important new trends in cell phone service:

*The use of text messaging has been surging to the point that more than 45% of survey respondents reported using the text service.

*Digital cameras, although included in many mobile handsets, aren't particularly popular, as only 22% of respondents said they had sent or received photos with their phones.

*Most new cell phones have GPS-based location services, but to date are easily accessed only on CDMA-based phones.