| John Navas 2005-10-20, 11:48 pm |
| Q: Does ENS make for better coverage and/or connections?
A: Post-merger Cingular still has two separate networks, the old ATTWS
(blue) network and the old Cingular (orange) network. While both ATTWS
and Cingular customers can now freely roam on the other network, thus
given all subscribers the same coverage, frequency band issues aside,
the difference is that such roaming can only happen when there is no
"usable" home network signal, and a "usable" signal can actually be
pretty crappy.
In other words, ATTWS (blue) handsets will only roam on the Cingular
(orange) network if there is no "usable" ATTWS (blue) network signal,
and vice versa, even with ENS. Thus in any given location a blue
handset may get much better service (on the blue network) than an orange
handset (given a "usable" orange signal), and vice versa.
The new Cingular ENS handsets and Cingular (orange) 64K SIMs (if you
have both) make it possible for Cingular to manually change your "home"
network (to blue or orange) OTA (over the air), thus giving subscribers
the better of the two networks until the two networks are actually
integrated. However, even with ENS, the handset still *isn't* able to
automatically select the better network signal -- GSM roaming rules
still apply.
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