Cell companies hide dead zones

Cellphone carriers know where their service stinks and where it rocks. They just don’t want you to know. Cingular, Nextel, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon all collect detailed information on the performance of their networks. They are aware of dead zones and congestion within their coverage areas and the percentage of dropped calls and busy signals.

But just try to get your hands on that information when trying to decide on a carrier. The companies don’t share it with the public, and the Federal Communications Commission no longer forces them to do so. The FCC does require the carriers to turn it over to regulators, but the agency does not release it. Rather, since passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the FCC has fallen back on faith that a “competitive market will provide consumers with the level of call quality they desire.”

It’s not working. Cellphone reception problems affect millions of the estimated 140 million users, who collectively talk more than 50 billion minutes a month. In a 2004 survey by Consumer Reports, fewer than half of all respondents were highly satisfied with their service. The publication also reported that more than one-third of all cellphone users change their carriers each year. Poor network performance is a major issue driving the “churn” rate.

Consumers trying to make informed choices need detailed, accurate coverage maps. They need information about dropped calls, busy signals and other indicators. Arming consumers with information is the idea behind mandatory labeling, including electricity consumption for major appliances, crash-test ratings for new autos and truth-in-lending disclosures on loan agreements.

Wireless companies complain that reporting their own weaknesses would put them at a disadvantage with competitors. That’s true, just as it is true for makers of high-fat processed food that are forced to attach labels admitting nutritional content.

Not that labeling would be that easy for wireless companies, whose product is, in essence, a high-tech can of soup, the ingredients of which aren’t fixed but differ depending on where it’s eaten, the time of day and even the number of others eating soup at the same time.

Still, cellphone users need to know if a phone that works in Irvine also works in Newport Beach or Santa Ana, whether that stretch of Cesar Chavez they take to work every day is a dead zone. The best brand for a particular consumer depends on how, where and when that consumer will use the phone.

Consumer Reports and other third-party sources go only so far. “It’s next to impossible to find out how uniform any carrier’s coverage really is,” the magazine noted last year. So you make an educated guess and take the plunge, paying high fees to sign up and high penalties to exit the service before fulfilling the contract period -- usually a year or longer.

The solution? Legislating a maximum of 2% dropped calls is one idea. Mandating a longer “free trial period” might lower consumer switching costs. But what we really need are good maps, as required in the Cell Phone Users Bill of Rights proposed in 2003 by Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

The bill would also restore the role of the FCC in monitoring wireless service quality by “requiring semiannual reports by wireless telephone service providers on dropped calls, blocked calls, known coverage gaps ... or dead zones, [and] predicted street level signal strength.”

I say it’s well past time to resuscitate this idea. Can you hear me now?