Verizon

After Japan’s mega-earthquake, the island of Maui in the State of Hawaii was under a Tsunami warning like most of the Pacific Rim during the evening of March 10 and early into the morning of March 11. Maui county emergency officials had standardized on AT&T Wireless service and iPhones for their work. That decision caused them a big problem as reported by KITV news.

Maui Mayor Says AT&T Failed During Emergency

AT&T Wireless service failed statewide the evening of March 10 soon after news of the earthquake and the possibility of a Tsunami was announced. AT&T told KITV that the call volume that evening was 5 to 6 times normal call volume. AT&T blamed their network failure on this increased call volume. It is interesting that Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon phones continued to work through the evening although officials asked everyone to not make calls except in emergencies.

AT&T said that the T-Mobile purchase will increase capacity by 30% as if that would help anything. Capacity will increase by zero because T-Mobile will presumably bring over much of their current customer base for which the network is configured. The more likely scenario is that AT&T’s already overtaxed networks will cause current T-Mobile customers to also lose service during an emergency.

That said, no mobile service provider is immune from network failures. As I write this, Verizon Wireless has been out of service for over 5 hours in my area. I called to confirm the outage. The courteous but otherwise uninformative customer service representative could not tell me:

- The cause of the outage
- How widespread the outage is
- When service would be restored (not even a ballpark figure)

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Yesterday I reported on AT&T and Verizon free text message and voice call service for their U.S. customers making calls to Japan to contact people affected by last week’s mega-earthquake and the devastating tsunami that followed it.

AT&T & Verizon Offer Free Calls & Texting to Japan: Verizon Makes it Easy. AT&T Makes it Hard. Why AT&T?

Let’s add information about calls to Japan on Sprint’s and T-Mobile’s network to complete the roundup of the big four U.S. national wireless carriers.

Sprint: Sprint Offers Fee Waivers and Credits for Wireless Calls and Texts To and From Japan

Sprint is waiving and/or crediting calls to Japan retroactively to March 11 and will continue to provide free calling and texting until April 10. They also provide some good advice in stating: During times of emergency, it has been shown that text messages may go through when calling capabilities aren’t available and may help free up networks for critical communication between first responders, other emergency personnel and aid workers.

T-Mobile: T-Mobile USA Waives Call Charges to Japan and Wi-Fi Calling and Text Messaging Charges to and From Japan

T-Mobile is also waiving fees for post-paid customeres retroactively to March 11. Their free calling period ends March 31. This applies to both voice calls and text messages.

To summarize: Sprint’s and Verizon’s free calling and texting period to Japan is March 11 throught April 10. AT&T and T-Mobile’s free calling and texting period is from March 11 to March 31. Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon are simply waiving charges. AT&T requires you to call to ask for a wavier after you receive your bill.

It is good to see that all of the big four mobile carriers are trying to do the right thing. It would be nice if AT&T joined the other three in simply waiving the charges instead of making customers who may be under great stress to remember to call them for the waiver.

AT&T had 100% of the U.S. iPhone market share (not counting the stray jailbroken and unlocked units on T-Mobile) until last month. The speculation for years preceding Verizon’s iPhone availability had been one of mass defection from AT&T to Verizon. Based on the information from Chitika (an analytics firm) as reported by MacRumors.com, this was not the case.

Approximately 1/8th of U.S. iPhones in Use Now on Verizon

Initial reports of Verizon’s 12% marketshare just one one month after it began selling the iPhone is very impressive. However, as MacRumor noted Chitika’s metrics seems highly variable with recent updates placing the percentage at around 10%. Moreover, a water cooler sampling indicates that most Verizon iPhone purchases were not defecting from AT&T. This is good news for Apple since it means overall iPhone sales growth instead of a zero-sum game between AT&T and Verizon.

The two biggest wireless carriers in the U.S. are offering free calls to Japan for a limited time period. AT&T uses business-speak and calls it “billing relief”. Verizon, thanksfully, writes in simple english and calls it “free calls”.

AT&T Offers Wireless, Wireline Billing Relief for Consumers Calling and Texting Family, Friends in Japan

AT&T Wireless is providing free calls for up to 60 minutes between the dates of March 11 (the day of the Tsunami) and March 31. AT&T wireline customers need to call AT&T to get the 60 minutes of adjust billing (“billing relief”). Text messages can also be sent for free up to March 31.

Verizon Offers Free Calls to Japan From March 11 to April 10

Verizon is providing a much longer free calling period to Japan. Their free calling period also started on March 11 (like AT&T) but is free until April 10 (10 additional days). This is true for both wireless and wireline calls. There does not appear to be a need to contact Verizon for these free calls (unlike AT&T). Text messages are not mentioned in the press release body. Howver, the releases subtitle states: Verizon Wireless Customers Can Text to Japan for Free.

Note to AT&T: You are dealing with customers trying to make contact with collegues, friends and loved ones during on ongoing disaster of epic proportions. They really don’t need to worry about calling you to get “billing relief”. Please take a look at how Verizon is handling the situation and emulate them.

The Associated Press summarized Metrico Wireless’ iPhone 4 testing on the AT&T and Verizon networks.

Testing firm: Verizon iPhone loads Web pages fine (AP)

Metrico Wireless Sets the Record Straight On AT&T iPhone vs. Verizon iPhone Performance (Metrico)

The full report is $4,950. So, forgive me for not springing for the entire report. However, Metrico’s own summary provides a couple of interesting items.

- AT&T mean download time was twice as fast as Verizon’s on their respective iPhone 4 models. However, th load time for a web page was about the same.

- iPhone 4 devices on AT&T’s devices completed 10% more download sessions than an iPhone 4 on Verizon’s network

- The AT&T iPhone 4 Bluetooth speech quality was not as good as devices like the BlackBerry Torch & Curve.

- THe AT&T iPhone 4 did not do as well in call performance compared to the Samsung Captivate and HTC Aria.

- The Verizon iPhone 4 was near the top in noise cancellation performance ranking about the same as the Motorola Droid X and LG Ally.

- The Verizon iPhone 4 is not only slower in data download speed than the AT&T iPhone 4, it is also slower than other Verizon smartphones such as the HTC Incredible.

When Verizon Wireless launched the CDMA iPhone 4 on their network last month, they provided an unlimited 3G wireless data service option for $30 per month. It was reasonably clear from the start, however, that this unlimited monthly service was an introductory and temporary one. This is in contrast to AT&T which provided a $30 per month unlimited 3G data plan for the iPad when it launched on their network in May 2010. However, the plan was pulled back a month later to be replaced by a 2GB plan which cost $25 per month. Customers who had started with the unlimited plan were grandfathered for that plan as long as they continued to pay the no-contract $30 per fee each month.

Buesines Week reports that Verizon Wireless will stop offering the $30 per month unlimited 3G plan for their iPhone 4 customers sometime this summer.

Verizon Wireless Will End Unlimited Data Plans for IPhone

The impending change should not cause customer outrage since it was known from the start that the unlimited plan was an introductory offer.

Winrumors says that the first Windows Phone 7 device on Verizon Wireless’ network should be available in about a month (end of March). It may even be announced sometime today (Feb. 28).

Verizon to launch Windows Phone 7 device in late March

A quick review of the phone’s specs doesn’t show anything unusual or unique. It looks like a conventional touch screen (no physical keyboard) smartphone.

HTC 7 Trophy specifications

- 3.8-inch display
- 480×800 pixel resolution
- 1 GHz processor
- 8GB internal storage. 512MB ROM. 576MB RAM.
- 5 megapixel camera (no front facing camera)
- 720p HD video recording
- 3G (no LTE)

FYI: Samsung’s Galaxy Tab is no longer to cool Android tablet. That title has shifted to the first Honeycomb (Android OS 3.0) tablet: The Motorola Xoom. Here’s what iFixit found when they took it part.

Motorola Xoom Teardown

- The Xoom works with Verizon’s 3G wireless data network. Verizon’s CDMA voice network does not use a SIM card as GSM networks do (AT&T & T-Mobile in the U.S.). However, the XOOM has a dummy SIM card ready to be replaced when Verizon provides its 4G (LTE) upgrade.

- There is no need for a special prying tool to take the tablet apart.

- The Xoom’s front and rear cables connect to the motherboard by separate cables. This should make replacing a failed camera a single component replacement.

- The Xoom’s antennas are wrapped along the outer edge of the case.

- Repairing the Xoom involves taking out a lot of screws (there are a total of 57). However, iFixit still gives it an 8 (out of 10) rating for repairability.

Video courtesy of Consumer Reports

The CDMA iPhone 4 sold by Verizon Wireless has a lot going for it. However, Consumer Reports notes that covering the side “gap” on the CDMA iPhone 4 results in a wireless reception problem similar to the GSM iPhone 4 sold by AT&T Wireless.

Verizon iPhone 4: Mind the gap, our tests show

As with the GSM iPhone 4, using a case resolves most if not all of the reception issues. Consumer Reports also tested the Samsung Fascinate; Motorola Droid 2 Global; HTC Droid Incredible; LG Ally; and Motorola Droid X and did not find similar wireless reception issues due to hand/finger contact.

A friend of mine send me email a couple of days ago noting that there is a problem in sending emoji from a Verizon iPhone to an AT&T iPhone. “Emoji” is a japanese term for graphical picture characters sent in text messages. The word literally means “picture letter.” U.S. iPhones do not natively support its extended character format. However, there are apps to allow its use.

This discussion thread in Apple’s discussions area for the CDMA (Verizon) iPhone 4 sheds light on the issue.

Topic : Couple things I’ve noticed so far!

Verizon [.] does not transmit UTF8 characters (extended/foreign characters and emoji) outside the Verizon network. AT&T, however, does pass UTF8 characters to other networks. So…

AT&T iPhones can send emoji to AT&T iPhones and Verizon iPhones.
Verizon iPhones can send emoji only to other Verizon iPhones.