The 411 on choosing cellular service

Selecting a mobile phone plan is not easy. It's hard enough to choose a plan for yourself, and it becomes even more complicated when you have to make a decision for an entire agency. It seems as if cellular phone carriers make it needlessly complicated to compare one company's plan with another. That probably partially explains why wireless companies constituted the second lowest-ranked industry in a University of Michigan customer satisfaction index report (only cable television companies are disliked more).

Another reason for this complexity is that cellular phone networks in the United States still lack consistent quality and coverage, because of the country's size and a lack of investment by mobile phone companies. In the United States, per capita mobile phone use is about the same as in Jamaica, a much poorer country (57% of Americans use cell phones versus 54% of Jamaicans), but we have a lot more territory to connect. Because the major U.S. metropolitan areas already are covered, adding a small number of users in large, sparsely populated areas doesn't make the investment in expanding service cost-effective.

Ironically, the fact that infrastructure for traditional land-based phone service is so good in the United States means that our cellular service often lags behind that of poorer countries. For example, in Mexico City it can take two years to get a landline installed versus one day to obtain a cellular phone. When it comes to providing phone service, many Third-World countries have opted to skip a generation of technology and go straight to cellular.

Behavioral healthcare providers have a stake in cell phone pricing. Outpatient facilities that provide transportation services need a way to connect with drivers when emergencies or appointment cancellations force route changes. Staff providing home care might use mobile phones to stay in touch with in-office personnel, and they might use cellular technology to connect their remote laptops or PDAs with agency computer systems. And some agencies might even offer a work-related cell phone as an employee benefit. Needless to say, our world is becoming more and more dependent on quick, efficient, and mobile communication, and behavioral healthcare providers are having to choose cell phone plans with little guidance available. I hope this article can provide you with some insight.

Choosing Phones

First, let me comment on phones, since plans are often included with or somehow tied up in their purchase. Two main types of cellular technology are available: CDMA, a technology used by Sprint and Verizon, and GSM, a technology used by all the other U.S. carriers, as well as most of those in other countries. Cingular also offers TDMA, a technology similar to CDMA that it inherited when it took over AT&T, but it is being phased out. Verizon offers GSM technology in addition to CDMA.

The type of cellular technology a carrier uses relates to the types of phones available. The only other country that uses CDMA is South Korea. As a result, Sprint and Verizon offer many phones from the South Korean companies Samsung and LG. All the other carriers offer phones from a variety of manufacturers, including Motorola and Nokia, the two largest companies that make GSM phones.

Many varieties of phones are available, such as “clamshells,” which fold shut; “candy bars,” which are longer and narrower but have no protection for the screen; and PDA/phone hybrids, such as the Treo, which features a Palm organizer and cellular phone in one device. Which one you choose depends mostly on personal preference. With a clamshell you don't have to worry about scratching the screen. With a candy-bar style, you don't have to fiddle with opening it to answer a call or worry about broken hinges.

What's really important to know is that all the major mobile phone companies sell phones that are locked to work only on their own network. They do this so that you can't change carriers without buying a new phone, which they hope will discourage you from switching. However, if your service uses GSM, you can buy unlocked phones. These are phones that are not tied to any one carrier and are sold by third parties. The advantage of this approach is that if users switch from one GSM carrier to another, they need only to replace the SIM chip. It's that easy to use an existing phone with a new carrier and phone number.

Another advantage of not buying from cellular carriers is that they sometimes disable features phone manufacturers have provided. In fact, Verizon is being sued for doing this. Customers who bought the Motorola V710 from Verizon found they had to pay extra to get features, such as the ability to download photos, that were originally built into the phone.

There are other advantages to this approach, too. Having a phone locked to one carrier means you pay expensive roaming fees when traveling outside the United States. With an unlocked phone, you can buy temporary service on a foreign carrier and save a significant amount of money. For example, on a recent trip to Italy, I bought 300 minutes of service from Telecom Italia for $69. The equivalent number of minutes on T-Mobile's network would have cost $450. Enabling this service was as easy as popping in a new chip.

This year manufacturers will begin selling mobile phones that use a cellular network when you are away from the office but use a Wi-Fi connection to place calls over your Internet connection when you're in the office. Wi-Fi is technology that connects computers and phones to an Internet connection using a wireless signal. Since you would already be paying for a Wi-Fi connection, this means free phone calls on your mobile phone when you're in the office, with better call quality to boot. In the next few years organizations may want to consider replacing some employees’ traditional phones altogether. One company that has already begun to offer these dual-usage phones is YFonGlobal (www.yfonglobal.com). Keep in mind that it is a start-up company, but start-ups are where these innovations begin; larger companies rapidly adopt the technology once it has proven itself.

A note about privacy, all too important in this era of HIPAA regulation: All the cellular phones and plans sold today use some form of digital technology. Although no technology is completely secure, a digital cellular phone is as secure as a regular land-based phone line. In some ways, it's even more so: It's relatively easy for someone to tap your landline phone at the box where it enters your house. Older cellular phones, and certain CDMA phones when in rural areas, however, use analog networks. Be aware that when you use a mobile phone in a rural area, your signal might roam onto an analog network. With the right equipment, it is as easy to eavesdrop on these calls as it is to pick up an FM radio signal, so analog roaming should not be considered secure.

Choosing Plans

When selecting a plan, there are three main considerations: the quality of the carrier's network, the types of phone equipment offered, and the pricing. Begin by asking friends and associates in your area about their experiences. Although all mobile phone carriers claim to offer better coverage and voice quality than their competitors, it is difficult to really know the difference until you've tried each carrier for yourself. If the quality of a particular carrier's network isn't good in your area, then the pricing and phone equipment offered won't matter.

TABLE. Variations in cell phone plan pricing

I have tried phones from all the major vendors in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Las Vegas, and Boise. Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint were all consistently good, but AT&T Wireless (now part of Cingular) was generally not. The February 2005 issue of Consumer Reports rates cellular carriers, and AT&T was last in 15 out of 16 markets. Verizon and T-Mobile were usually rated first and second, respectively. Now that Cingular has acquired AT&T, presumably the quality will improve. Cingular has embarked on a large-scale plan to build additional cellular towers to improve coverage. In fact, Cingular just built one on top of our office building!

Once you find one or two carriers that, based on recommendations and perhaps your own experience, provide good coverage in your area, the next challenge is making sense of cell phone plans. Most carriers offer consumer and business plans. The business plans are designed for large groups and usually include the ability to pool minutes among users, as well as discounts for volume purchases. Most carriers offer a discount for 10 or more phone lines but don't offer the next price break until you reach 100 or more users, which might catch your agency in the middle.

For the sake of simplicity I researched pricing for a plan with 10 phone lines that includes long distance; provides at least 300 minutes per user, per month; and includes an option to add a data plan for sending e-mail and browsing the Web from a mobile handset. I found that Verizon and Sprint had the simplest pricing, although Verizon's sales reps didn't know how to handle East Coast and West Coast users on the same plan. This is probably not an issue for regionally based behavioral healthcare agencies, but how cell phone carriers define their service regions isn't always clear-cut, so it's worth asking. The other carriers had a fee for a certain number of users and different fees for extra users.

The table shows a greatly simplified version of my results when I called each of the carrier's business sales departments. (Of course, it takes some math to get it as simple as the table portrays.) As you can see, the results vary widely. One would expect Verizon to cost a bit more because it is the largest mobile carrier and consistently ranked highest for quality. Sprint and Verizon are about the same when you add in a data plan, and they both offer high-speed data access. Which one you choose depends on where you live, so check their Web sites to see if they offer high-speed service in your area.

When I originally conducted this research, AT&T was still a separate company. They not only had the most confusing pricing, surprisingly they had the highest overall prices, yet were consistently ranked worst for customer satisfaction. Let's just say it's a good thing Cingular took over.

Choosing a cellular phone plan is clearly not simple. There is no single right choice. What it boils down to is your organization's criteria. For example, if security is paramount, avoid carriers that use CDMA technology since those phones are often equipped to roam on analog networks. Conversely, if staff will use their phones as portable modems, CDMA offers the highest speeds currently, so Sprint or Verizon is your best choice. If you want staff to have quick access to e-mail, T-Mobile offers the popular BlackBerry e-mail/phone device. Browse each vendor's selection of phone equipment and, ideally, visit stores to try the devices for yourself. Finally, check other sources. CNET.com is a great place for technical reviews, and Consumer Reports is an objective place to find side-by-side comparisons.

In the past few months both Sprint and Verizon have rolled out high-speed data networks. These services use cellular modems to provide Internet access wherever you are at speeds comparable with DSL service. Unlike Wi-Fi technology, which provides wireless Internet access on a small-scale basis (such as in Starbucks and McDonald's), cellular modems can be used anywhere you can get a signal. However, with high-speed services the coverage area is smaller than the areas in which companies offer cellular phone service. When you are outside the high-speed areas, the data rates drop significantly.

Matt DeBeer is CEO of Exym, Inc., a provider of clinical management systems. He has been writing on topics in technology since the late 1980s. For more information, call (714) 657-3500 or visit www.exym.com