Ah, AT&T you magnificent bastards

[dvandom]

AT&T's response to Verizon's "map" ad campaign is delightfully deceptive. For those blissfully unfamiliar with the campaign, Verizon is touting that their 3G coverage is much wider than AT&T's, showing a mostly-filled-in Verizon coverage map and a pretty threadbare AT&T map (which is pretty deceptive in itself, as most of the empty spots on AT&T's map are also very low population density). AT&T's response ads never say "3G", instead touting what must be their overall wireless coverage map. Let's hear it for skating on the very edge of actionable advertising! (FWIW, when I got my first cellphone I initially went with Verizon because their map colored all of Kansas red...and it turned out that they really only covered metro KCK, Wichita, Lawrence and Topeka. The rest of the state was "roaming" access.)

Comments

[grant-p.livejournal.com]

It's worse out of the country. In Costa Rica, they make great claims for their national cell phone service (with good reason, as the land makes running lines a pain in the potukies) but they leave out the fact that their national system is a national monopoly, so while your phone may get a signal, unless you buy their access, they will block your number from functioning anywhere in the country.

Then again, this was the country where I lost ten pounds due to an inability to eat properly, got a whopping ear infection from a volcanic hot spring, killed a great many things that came crawling out of a napkin dispenser, and nearly knifed a monkey that took objection to me crossing a bridge before he decided to leave me alone, so the cell phone thing was probably not all that important...

Bermuda's not bad, though. They claim that your phone from the US should work anywhere on the Islands without a hitch, and they were right, though the charges were crazy.