The fewest dropped calls

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story about the advertising claims of Cingular Wireless in Sunday's Business section incorrectly identified the company acquired by Cingular in October 2004. It was AT&T Wireless, which was spun off from AT&T Corp. in 2001. Cingular at the time was jointly owned by SBC Communications and BellSouth. In 2005, AT&T Corp. was acquired by SBC, which changed its name to AT&T.)

Cingular Wireless is running ads everywhere saying it has the fewest dropped calls of any cellular phone carrier, but what's missing from the massive campaign is evidence to back up the claim.

In its print, TV, radio, and billboard ads, Cingular says ''the leading independent research company " concluded Cingular has the fewest dropped calls. In the fine print of its newspaper ads, Cingular says the claim is ''based on nationwide experience among national carriers."

A Cingular spokeswoman said the research company was Telephia Corp. of San Francisco, and referred questions about the study to a spokesman there. The Telephia spokesman declined to provide any information, saying Cingular shouldn't have even mentioned the company's name to a reporter.

Without the study, it's hard to know how significant the Cingular claim is. Did the company have the fewest dropped calls by a wide margin or a tiny margin? How did it fare on other yardsticks of network reliability, including calls that don't go through, static, echoes, voice distortion, and notification failures for voice and e-mails?

''It's ridiculous," said Edgar Dworsky, editor of Consumerworld.org and Mouseprint.org, a new website that checks the accuracy of ads. ''You're told some unknown, unnamed company has rated Cingular the best in terms of dropped calls, but you're not given any comparison data."

The advertising blitz by Cingular is further evidence that wireless carriers are shifting their marketing focus away from pricing toward network reliability, figuring that consumers are more concerned about calls going through than how much they cost.

Verizon Wireless led the way, first with its ''Can you hear me now?" campaign and now with its ''America's most reliable wireless" claim. Sprint has jumped into the fray more recently, contending, for example, that it has the most powerful network in Boston for services like music downloads, live TV, and other services.

Both Verizon and Sprint have their own credibility issues. Sprint doesn't offer any backup in its ads for its claim that it has the most powerful network in Boston. A spokesman said the claim refers to the wide variety of services Sprint can offer.

Verizon bases its reliability claims on its own testing, supposedly available at its website. But a detailed breakdown of the tests isn't provided, there's no information on Boston, and what little is available on four other markets dates to 2003.

In its ads, Cingular, a joint venture of AT&T and BellSouth Corp., boasts that it has the fewest dropped calls, a major frustration for wireless customers.

In select markets, including Portland, Maine, New York City, and northern New Jersey, Cingular is also claiming it has the best overall network. The claims are all based on Telephia surveys that aren't available for review.

''It's definitely a new direction for them," said Kirk Parsons, senior director of wireless services at J.D. Power and Associates, a California market research company.

Parsons noted that Cingular, the nation's largest wireless carrier by subscribers, hasn't fared well in consumer surveys on network reliability conducted by his company.

Kate MacKinnon, a Cingular spokeswoman, said the company's network will soon be getting much better, largely because the cellular sites gained when SBC Communications acquired AT&T in October 2004 (and then changed its name to AT&T) are finally being integrated into the overall Cingular network.

In Massachusetts, more than 700 AT&T cell sites will be integrated into the Cingular network by June, 360 in the Boston area. MacKinnon said the Boston additions will more than double the company's cell sites in the city.

MacKinnon said third-party testing indicates Cingular is currently tied for best overall network in Boston, which means it should pull well ahead after the AT&T integration is completed. ''This will produce a huge difference for our customers," she said.

Officials at Verizon dismissed Cingular's claims.

''We know it's not true in Boston, and we know it's not true in Portland. I'll let you draw your own conclusions," said spokesman Michael Murphy.

Peter Dobrow, a spokesman for T-Mobile, said he wouldn't comment on the advertising strategy of Cingular, but he pointed out that T-Mobile and Verizon are the leaders in call quality studies conducted by Consumer Reports magazine and J.D. Power.

''Any claims made otherwise are inconsistent with these findings," Dobrow said.

In January, Consumer Reports released a call-quality survey of 50,000 of its members that had Cingular ranking no better than third in any of the 18 cities included.

In Boston, Verizon was top-ranked, followed by T-Mobile, Sprint, Cingular, and Nextel. Cingular was ranked fourth overall in the survey, with ''middling to low levels of consumer satisfaction" and widespread static problems.

In March, J.D. Power released a similar report based on its own surveys of 23,000 wireless users. The report found that the number of problems per 100 calls was continuing to decline, falling from 26 in 2005 to 24 this year.

Overall, the report said, T-Mobile and Verizon had the fewest reported call problems, while Cingular failed to make it into the top tier in any region of the country.

In the Northeast, the J.D. Power report said T-Mobile and Verizon were ranked the highest by consumers.

J.D. Power released another report last week on overall wireless customer satisfaction, finding that T-Mobile ranked highest in the Southwest and tied with Verizon for the top spot in the five other regions.

In the north-central region, US Cellular also was rated highly. Cingular again failed to make it into the top tier in any region.

Telephia, the company cited by Cingular as the source for its ad claims, is one of a handful of independent companies that test wireless networks by driving around and making repeated calls. The company sells its testing research as well as customer survey results to wireless companies.

Last year, in response to a story entitled ''Why you still can't hear me now" in the Wall Street Journal, Telephia president Sidney S. Gorham wrote a letter to the editor complaining about the one-sided nature of the report.

Citing his company's own research, Gorham said 97 percent of wireless calls are connected and completed successfully. He also said dropped call rates had plummeted roughly 30 percent between 2003 and 2004 in the top 35 markets and the number of blocked calls had fallen 50 percent over the same time period.

Bruce Mohl can be reached at mohl@globe.com.