Some Things Do Get Better

Early in September I bought a Palm Treo 700p from Verizon Wireless to test as wireless (1x/EV-DO)/wireless (BlueTooth) modem with my laptop while commuting to work every day. Verizon Wireless gives 15 days to return all equipment for a full refund, so I planned to test for two weeks before making a decision. After the first day or two I had a pretty good picture of where along my commute I was likely to loose signal, and, although the coverage was not perfect, I concluded that it was enough better than with my Sprint PCS AirCard that I should switch.

Late last week I noticed that in the worst blackout area, between the Pentagon Station and National Aiport on the Metro Yellow line, I was now seeing a signal. Last night on my commute home I boarded the Yellow line train at Eisenhower Avenue and connected my laptop to Verizon's network. That signal stayed with me all the way to Rockville. There were some points where it was weak enough to severaly hamper network activity, but it did not disconnect.

At the end of my 15 day testing period I was dealing with a very heavy work-load, so letting my grace period run out was not only what I wanted to do, but also the path of least resistance. However, I did not take time to port our numbers from Sprint PCS until last Sunday evening. Of course, VZW refused to even try to work with Vicki's Sprint PCS phone, so we wound up paying net $30 for a Samsung model, the chief drawbacks being that it doesn't have a penguin or a cute little mouse, as did her older Sanyo MM-7400, and there's still too much red on the screen, thanks I assume to Verizon's customization. But, nonetheless, we are now customers of Verizon Wireless, and bid a fond farewell to Sprint PCS.

I did not want to switch: I have a fairly strong prejudice against Verizon's business policies, and I was quite happy with Sprint. However, the coverage along my commute, and in particular in the Metro tunnels, was a strong enough deciding factor.