It’s the signal, stupid

The Washington Post’s Tech Columnist, Rob Pegoraro has a nice round up of the wireless choices in the Washington, DC area. His column concurs with the Consumer Reports surveys and my own experience as a customer over the past eight years: Verizon Wireless has the best coverage in the area.

Verizon Wireless has long been the only carrier that works in the Metro Rail tunnels, but his column clarifies that Sprint now can “roam” on that network.

In my view, Verizon Wireless sucks in few ways, though. Let’s quantify the suckiness:

• Verizon Wireless will not sell the iPhone.
• Verizon Wireless offers a poorer selection of phones than AT&T/Cingular and T-Mobile and even disables useful features on some models. If they did support the iPhone, they probably would find a reason to disable the iPod functions.
• There are few real stores in the DC area and everytime I have to visit one, the wait is long, and the service poor.
• They are generally the most expensive — or among the most expensive — for minute charges, for data access plans, for text plans and for pretty much every other way they can think to gouge you. A friend told me today that he had been paying the $4/month for their insurance plan which offers a phone replacement if the phone is lost or damaged. After paying several hundred of dollars in premiums over the years, he had a reason to use the insurance when his wife’s phone ended up in the toilet. The catch: A $50 deductable.

And yet I stick with them because I have great coverage practically everywhere I go in this area.

Rob offers a few additional observations that didn’t make it into his column.