I am so tired of not being able to use my cell phone 40% of time.  I do not get a signal in my office and since I am there 10 hours a day, this is unacceptable.  Of the remaining 14 hours a day, I am in bed from six to eight hours a day.  I am paying for a 24 hour a day plan for four phones.  I have a second problem and that is my phone.  I have a Blackberry 8900 that goes to SOS mode when it does not get a signal.  Once the signal returns, it stays in SOS mode and does not search for a signal again.  This angers me because I cannot even depend on getting a signal once I get out of my office.    The SOS mode is when it does not get a signal on our provider but does get a signal on another company’s tower.  It will not allow  phone calls off the other company’s antennas but will allow emergency calls to 911.  This is why it says SOS for “Save our Souls”.  I am a T-Mobile customer and have been since 2000.  At that time T-Mobile was really Voicestream Wireless.

One of my character traits is that I am very loyal to someone until they do me wrong.  I am not saying that T-Mobile has done me wrong.  I am saying that despite the fact that I have not had a signal at work for 11 years I have stayed with them.  I would love to stay with them even now but I am reaching the end of my patience.  At the beginning I just had phone service.  Now I have phone service as well as data on my phone.  I am paying a premium price for the data and voice though I do not have a signal most of the day.  I am under a two year contract that expires in May 2011.  I have been entertaining the idea of changing service providers.  Since having no signal in my office is the main problem, I thought I should try other providers to see if any of them work.  I have found that most of the people that receive calls in my office are using AT&T.  I found one person that uses Verizon and gets one bar in my office.  Another person that uses Sprint that gets two bars.  When I ask them to follow me down to my wife’s office downstairs, the only one that still gets a signal is AT&T.

I often tell people outside of work that I may have no option but to switch to AT&T and they tell me NO!  They tell me what a huge mistake it would be to switch to AT&T.  I hear this from so many people.  They tell me how I will be having dropped calls.  My answer to that is currently I am not able to get calls at all.  What is worse?  No calls or dropped calls.  The reason that AT&T gets a signal when no one else does is because their antenna is on the water tower directly in front of the building I work in.  The closest T-Mobile tower is nearly two miles away.  You may know how I know this.  I have done extensive research through the FCC search and reading antenna registration numbers on towers.  I have searched and found tower sites for every cell phone antenna for 10 miles and have posted them on Google Earth.  As a ham radio operator, I have some experience in this area.  The point is that if T-Mobile would just put an antenna on that water tower, it would fix everything.  I have suggested this information to them but so far no response.  I spoke to a T-Mobile employee on Twitter, @TMobileUSA who gave me a contact email that I could submit my presentation to the company.  If it is not fixed by next May, I will have no choice but to choose another carrier.  I am very doubtful that they will fix it so that is why I am doing research with other providers.

My other problem with this sorry Blackberry 8900, there is no fix for it.  Once it goes into SOS mode, it stops searching for a signal.  Every time I leave my office, I have to turn the phone off and then turn it back on so that it will search for a signal.  Over the years I have paid thousands of dollars for service that I have not received.  A monthly service fee for service that I could not receive.  It is so frustrating to not even be able to receive a text message when I am at work.