Monday, May 19, 2008

Coverage: Is 10% More Worth It?

We were on a short road trip this past week (700 miles total) and I had the usual collection of phones beeping away on the dashboard. On this trip, I was paying special attention to one phone, one that I would consider using as my main phone some day. I remember telling my passengers, "this phone doesn't have coverage along the entire route." their response was, "So, what's the difference?" My answer would be, "I want coverage" The reply was, "How much less would you have?" The answer was, "about 10%." "Is that a lot?" hmmm

To me that seems like lot of no coverage area. But it was only on this trip, and another route may have resulted in less than 1% difference. So just how important is continuous coverage? How much of a problem is missing that one phone call? I often think long and hard about this very question and came to the conclusion that indeed, if I was waiting on a very important call, I would probably take roads with better coverage. However, over the years I have had the phone with better coverage, and have still missed calls in an area of poor coverage. That's just the way luck is.

I'm fairly certain that if a new carrier serves our needs on a daily basis and travel away from home is infrequent, what is the difference? I've been telling people for years not every carrier has coverage everywhere...make the best choice based on your acceptable trade-offs. Is it time to actually heed my own advice? hmmm

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