Cellphone service ’seems to stubbornly resist improvement,’ said ...

service, it said. Mandatory contract extensions for account changes and high service cost were the top complaints, it said. Most respondents who switched service the past three years said the reason was poor service, it said. Alltel and Verizon got “high marks for connectivity, while T-Mobile had “relatively high satisfaction scores.” Meanwhile, AT&T subscribers cited “gaps in service and static” and Sprint users noted “dropped calls,” the article said. Respondents gave Alltel, T-Mobile and Verizon top rankings for customer service. But only about 40 percent of their customers said the carriers were “very helpful,” it said. The survey is “at odds” with AT&T testing and research, said an AT&T spokesman. The market deals with consumer complaints, a CTIA spokesman told us. The industry is “one that has always changed and evolved in direction of what consumers want and need,” he said. The market will bring “quicker, more efficient” changes than any government mandate could, he added, citing Verizon’s announcement that it would open its network, as well as other carrier announcements to pro-rate early termination fees and kill contract extensions for consumers who make account changes. There’s little difference in service between AT&T and other carriers in most major markets, an AT&T spokesman said, citing data from Telephia, an independent testing firm that works with AT&T. But AT&T “continues to build out” its network and improve coverage, he said. A better indicator of service quality is turnover, he added, saying AT&T had 1.3 percent churn third quarter. Sprint has made “substantial” customer experience improvements over the past few months, and the company continues to do so, a Sprint spokeswoman said, noting announcements that Sprint would in 2008 prorate its termination fees and no longer require contract extensions on rate plans. “While disappointed with the results, we do feel we are addressing some of the wireless customers’ biggest concerns as expressed by the survey.” The Consumer Reports call-quality ratings are “based on customer perceptions, which can be influenced by a lot of things,” she added. “Our own internal measures show that we've made significant improvements regarding the incidence of dropped calls or blocked calls and that the CDMA network is performing at its best-ever level… Since the merger with Nextel in 2005, we've invested billions of dollars to enhance our networks, increase coverage and capacity.” Sprint added almost 3,500 new cell sites across its CDMA and iDEN networks in the first three quarters of this year, she added. Alltel, T-Mobile and Verizon didn’t return requests for comment right away.