I reviewed my experience with the phone yesterday and want to talk about the service in today’s post. I came up to the lake last night after a quick run, some customer work, a visit to the post office to ship out two of our old phones to lucky eBay winners and a walk through the farmers market to get some roasted red pepper hummus for the weekend.
On the way to the lake I made a call to my friend Dave who is a dive instructor in Pompano Beach Florida. He runs a business called Aqua Safari Adventures where he teaches diving, does dive guiding and certification training. I took both my kids down to have them get certified with Dave as there was no one I would trust more in the open water.
I was on the call for about 45 minutes, from Downers Grove all the way to about Fox Lake and the call was clear all the way. At one point I had the handset on the dashboard on speaker (I have one of those little tacky non slip pads that you can lay things on so they stay in place) and was able to have a nice two way conversation with no issues.
When I arrived at the lake 2 hours and 15 minutes later (Memorial Day weekend traffic was brutal) I was anxious to test my Verizon service. I walked out the back of the house down by the lake and Holy Cow, Full bars!! In the house, full bars. On the pier, full bars. In the 27 years we have been here I have never been able to make an extended call anywhere but up the hill by the road. I tested the call quality by calling my son and then my daughter to tell them I had arrived safely. Both calls went through first time and were very clear. I can now call from anywhere on the property with crystal clear reception. I understand that ATT (Cingular and whatever else they were called back then) cannot have towers everywhere, but with the concentration of Illinois residents that come up here every weekend you would think they could do a little better.
We went into town tonight to grab some dinner before the hawks game. That gave me a chance to test the reception of the phone and especially the email and browsing capabilities. Charlie O’s where we had dinner, has a policy of not allowing phone conversations in their restaurant, so I was unable to make a test call even though we were sitting outside. I must say, I like the no phone policy since one of the reasons I come up here is to get away from reality for a little while and being tethered to a phone does not promote the illusion. As soon as I performed three data tests, one SMS, one Google maps search and one web browsing session, I put it away for the evening. All three tests were fast, connected instantly and lefty me feeling very positive about the data capabilities at least in Southern Wisconsin.
So far I am feeling very good about my choice to switch to Verizon and yes I know you CAN hear me now.