Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
A couple of reports surfaced this week handing out pats-on-the-backs to some wireless operators, and notes of shame to others. Those reports were great in that they named and ranked carriers according to what the surveys founds, which then led to even greater things when those that did or did not like their ranking went all crazy in trying to spin the message. Result? Hilarity.
First came a network report card from the folks over at RootMetrics, which claimed to show the extent and quality of each nationwide operator’s nationwide network. The gist of the findings were that Verizon Wireless had the best overall wireless network based on 4.6 million data points touching 50 states. RootMetrics noted that Verizon Wireless scored highest across its reliability, call, data and text categories and just behind AT&T Mobility in speed.
At the other end of the ranking, T-Mobile US beat out Sprint for the lowest score in the test, only nipping ahead of its rival in the speed category.
Verizon Wireless was so excited about the RootMetrics findings that it scheduled a conference call with the media immediately following the release of the report just to make sure that those media members were reading the report correctly and that indeed Verizon Wireless won. It’s always good to make sure mom puts your latest test with that sparking “A” on the top on a prominent position on the refrigerator.
T-Mobile US for its part did not seem impressed with RootMetric methodology, with CEO John Legere took to his favorite medium – Twitter – to protest his company’s showing. Those barbs included claims that the RootMetrics data was out-dated and that the data was derived by people driving around in BMWs, not “speed tests done by actual customers on their devices.” Not sure why it matters which brand of car is being used in order to garner drive tests, but good on Legere for trying to make the RootMetrics peeps seem a bit snobbish by driving a premium German car brand. I mean, who wants to be linked to anything German?
Legere’s point about the sell-by date on the data is perhaps a bit more relevant as indeed the RootMetrics information came from testing conducted during the second-half of last year. Even the newest of that data is more than three-months-old, which is plenty of time to throw up a new tower or two.
However, to then claim that its own source of information showing superior network speeds coming from consumers using a downloadable application on their device should also be shown a bit of the “crick eye.” Not that the average Joe is not a trustworthy source in gathering network data or that a downloadable application is not as worthy as those tests conducted by Root Metrics, but I think we have all seen enough episodes of “Cops” to know just how much we want to trust the masses. Also, I am guessing that T-Mobile US filtered out any results from those “actual customers” who conducted tests while driving a BMW.
A final dagger thrown at the Root Metrics report by T-Mobile US’ CTO Neville Ray who, according to Fierce Wireless, said RootMetrics study is “funded pretty much by the wireless carriers,” thus how can it be trusted. I mean, those wireless carriers are a slimy lot.
All of this rabble-rousing came just a day before the esteemed award-presenters at J.D. Power and Associates came out with their own ranking of wireless network quality, this time getting their information straight from the people, as in a survey of more than 25,000 consumers.
Those findings found … make sure you are sitting down … that Verizon Wireless had the nation’s highest network quality. The carrier handily beat out its rivals across all six regions J.D. Power seemed happy to dissect the country into, based on “10 problem areas that impact the customer experience: dropped calls; calls not connected; audio issues; failed/late voicemails; lost calls; text transmission failures; late text message notifications; Web connection errors; slow downloads; and e-mail connection errors.”
The findings again brought out Verizon Wireless’ PR machine, which wanted to make sure everyone knew just how bad-ass they were. And who can blame them. If I got some award claiming I was the best in the country I would have my pal Shia Labeouf hook me up with a skywriter to tell everyone.
Not to single anyone out, but T-Mobile US managed to tie for second place in the West region, was ranked third or tied for third across the Northeast, Southeast, North Central and Southwest, and finished fourth in the Mid-Atlantic region. Of course, the J.D. Power survey also used data from the second half of last year, so should be taken with some 2013 vintage salts.
No fun words yet from T-Mobile US on the J.D. Power news, though perhaps that’s because there were no BMWs involved.
The network survey from J.D. Power came on the heels of a customer care report that had AT&T No. 1, Verizon Wireless No. 2, T-Mobile US at No. 3 and Sprint pulling up the rear.
All I know is that I can’t wait for all the network quality surveys to come out using data points from the first-half of this year as T-Mobile US has basically promised it will steam roll its rivals. Just not with a BMW.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–Yet another tough week for Sprint as it looks like long-time network SVP Bob Azzi was on his way out, while president of network operations Steve Elfman was also set to exit the premises. Sure, Sprint’s network has been a sore point for the carrier for some time now. But, when you are going out and replacing basically all of the equipment on that network, you are bound to run into some issues. And, with these issues coming at a time of increased competitiveness across the space, well … something had to be done to placate the fans (shareholders).
Recent Sprint recruits John Saw (previously at Clearwire) and Stephen Bye (previously at Cox Communications) now appear to be in greater control of Sprint’s network operations, and with its recently announced Spark program, I suspect Sprint will continue to be a good source for interesting network news.
–Finally, just in case you did not feel old enough:
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