I’m over in New York for a while visting with my parents for the holidays. They live in Huntington, which is about half way out onto Long Island. It’s the suburbs of New York City pretty much. Very heavily populated area, outlier to the most major metropolitan area in the US. And my cell coverage sucks. I have service through T-Mobile currently. At the time I last switched my service they were the ones most consistently willing to give me a flat fee unlimited data plan. But this is just insane. I was sitting talking to my father and my phone beeped with an SMS, I had a voicemail message. What the hell? I hadn’t moved in an hour or so, and my phone definitely didn’t ring. It was a message that Elle had left a half hour earlier. That means an SMS must have been sitting queued for half an hour. I looked at the signal strength meter on my phone to see if my parents are in a dead area. Not that being in a “dead area” would really be an excuse, that still means T-Mobile has crappy coverage. And as I was looking the meter is bouncing all over the place. Strong signal to disconnected, GPRS indicator flashing on and off.

How disappointing. I’m one of the strongest proponents of mobility I know, and I can’t even keep myself minimally connected when I travel to other major metropolitan areas? How ridiculous. Fix the freakin’ networks already! There’s been more than enough time. I’m even considering upgrading to something that supports Edge and switching off T-Mobile. But issues like this really make me pause and reconsider. If the basic service doesn’t work well, how much more pain am I going to experience in trying to service more of my need with a less proven technology?