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Originally Posted by rflashman
That guy is blowing out of proportion the fact that his house has no Sprint coverage.
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Well, that's what we do. Doesn't the word "Consumerism" come from the Latin for "God-Given Right To Everything I Want".
Someone ask HarryT.
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Montana has 1xRTT Sprint coverage in all its major cities: Missoula, Great Falls, Helena, Butte, Billings, Bozeman. Maybe he lives in Kalispell, which has no coverage.
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The reason I happen to have seen this map is that I have a close friend in Missoula, and she had made comment that even if she wanted a Kindle (she doesn't, but we were talking about it amongst a group) she'd be wary of the coverage requirement, as even living in the middle of Missoula, in an area that indicated coverage, it had a tendency to being...I believe the technical term is "flaky" at best. That's why I thought I'd leave it up to you Americans to determine the accuracy or otherwise of the map.
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But from the Sprint coverage maps it is clear that the bulk of the population in Montana DOES have coverage. Sure there's no EVDO "high speed" network there, but a 1xRTT download should not be so slow as to be unusable.
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We experience similar here. If you looked at our maps for mobile phone coverage, you'd see how very little is covered by some of the networks. Of course, if you looked closely, you'd see it followed the major highways, a lot of the eastern seaboard, and clumped at cities (it sort of reminds me of a 2D version of those maps of galactic distribution in the universe). Saying that, well, my mum's in the middle of a coverage area, but unless you're okay with intermittency in your connection, you probably want to go out the front yard or at the very back of the back yard to get decent reception.
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That map is only of EVDO coverage, not of the wider 1xRTT data network that the Kindle supports too. A better map is here (be sure to select the DATA drop down at the right to show data networks):
http://coverage.sprintpcs.com/IMPACT.jsp
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That certainly looks better. I can't remember where I came across the first map, but I think it was somewhere like Gizmodo or Techdirt. I'll have to go try find it again, as someone is sure to have corrected it, as you have above, in the comments.
I think that part of the reason for "blowing out of proportion" this is that he bought the device and had it sent by Amazon to an address that didn't have coverage. That is, he believes they should have warned him that his delivery address wasn't covered (I believe they
do actually warn you to check your area for coverage, but, you know, us consumers like retailers to wipe our backsides on our way out.
It's possibly something Amazon could incorporate into their website - a checker of the delivery address for coverage - purely as a courtesy with no guarantees, but they probably quite rightly don't want to open that can of worms and the whole "You told me I had coverage!" reactions they'd inevitably get.
'Tis, as you suggest, pretty much a chaotic meteorological activity held within the confines of a porcelain vessel used for holding the leaf-infused liquid form of dihydrogen monoxide.
Cheers,
Marc