Wireless Carriers Give In On Coverage Maps
from the just-a-bit... dept
Politicians have been threatening to put a "Cell Phone Bill of Rights" in place for years. The idea would be to force wireless carriers to open up their coverage maps and allow early termination for those whose homes or offices have coverage gaps. Now, it appears that threats from various state AGs has done the trick. Verizon, Cingular and Sprint have now agreed to reveal the coverage maps and let people cancel within two weeks of signing up for service... but only in 32 states, which sucks if you're in the other 18 (or if you use a different carrier). Also, it's unclear exactly which coverage maps will be revealed. The carriers have been adamant that the detailed coverage maps they have are trade secrets, so it still seems unlikely that they'll reveal them. The one thing this might do, however, is really force them to be much better about coverage gaps -- something that's been lacking (despit commercial advertisements to the contrary). Of course, none of this helps if you happen to move into a new home that is in a gap, but I guess there's only so much consumer friendliness you can force on carriers at a time.
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Irony
I don't see why telling you whether or not cellular service is available or not is such a big secret.
At my house, I get a fairly weak signal indoors and occassionaly miss calls, but outdoors it shows maximum signal, so I don't think a map would do me much good.
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