The most memorable line in the 1970 hit movie, Love Story, was when Ali McGraw said to Ryan O’Neal “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
Sometimes, a dropped call leads my wife and I to twist that phrase into “Using a mobile phone means never getting to say goodbye.”
I remember when carriers promoted “crystal clear, pin-drop connections.” We have gone through a period of sacrificing quality for mobility, and perhaps taking advantage of the flakiness of some areas with bad mobile coverage as an excuse for dropping a call [“no dear, I would never hang up on you!”].
I sometimes miss the battle to differentiate on quality.
Yes, there are certainly areas of Canada that need increased coverage, but generally, our urban and suburban communities have consistently good signals. That is not the case everywhere. With family in various parts of the world, we have found there is sometimes a price to be paid for lower cost service. It is quite common for people to need to rely on residential WiFi to effectively pay for extending their mobile carrier’s coverage inside the home.
Last week, a report from Speedtest showed that in the first half of 2018, Canada’s mobile networks tested at an average download speed of nearly 47Mbps, with upload speeds of 11.85Mbps, nearly 75% faster than their US counterparts.
I frequently have trouble getting calls to connect at all to mobile devices inside suburban homes in some major American cities. Sometimes, using a mobile phone can mean never even getting a chance to say hello.