Even with more than 100 million customers across numerous carriers and a handful of technology choices, wireless subscribers in the United States hold and complete a conversation of acceptable audio quality more than 95 percent of the time, according to a report by wireless market intelligence firm Telephia Inc. and the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association.
“Even with greater and greater demand on their systems, this study shows that wireless carriers are providing world-class service to their customers,” said Tom Wheeler, president and chief executive officer of CTIA.
Telephia conducted the network performance survey between November 1999 and April of this year in seven markets covering about 15 percent of the U.S. population. Each market was driven twice during that period, with about 700,000 measurements taken throughout the day in different suburban and core areas using the company’s field measurement equipment interfacing directly to a handset. Each call lasted approximately 2 minutes, slightly below the 2.36 minutes CTIA said was the average length of a cellular call, and covered both PCS and cellular carriers using AMPS, CDMA, TDMA, GSM and iDEN technology.
The results of the measurements showed 95.8 percent of calls in core network areas were completed with acceptable audio quality, and 95.7 percent in suburban areas. Dropped calls accounted for 2.4 percent in core areas, and 4.2 percent in suburban areas, with blocked calls accounting for 1.4 percent in core areas and 2.4 percent in suburban areas.
“This study represents a rigorous analysis of wireless network performance across diverse U.S. markets,” said John Oyler, president of Telephia. “We took about 700,000 individual readings to test the quality of wireless networks where people live and work, in order to emulate the actual mobile user experience. In the end, we found wireless customers in cities across the country receive a consistently high level of service.”
CTIA noted the results were even more remarkable considering during the same time frame U.S. wireless subscribers increased from 86 million to more than 110 million and minutes of use jumped from 147 billion in 1999 to 259 billion last year.
“The wireless industry has put its money where its mouth is on providing quality service, spending more than $18 billion last year to improve and upgrade its networks,” Wheeler said. “Competition always benefits consumers, and this study shows that wireless technology is more accessible, more reliable and more effective than ever before.”
