Re: Cell Service/Tower/Reception/Repeaters/etc.

Posted by Victoria Hughes on Dec 22, 2011; 5:44am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Cell-Service-Tower-Reception-Repeaters-etc-tp6870615p7117644.html

Verizon = Horror> is it relatively simple to say why? 

Not wanting to instigate anything, since I am still calming down from my Tmo=Horror experience, 

but curious if it can be summed up. 

Guess I'll go read the thread, too. 

When was the last time any of us really liked the phones/carriers we had? 

Tory

Tory Hughes

unusual objects and unique adornments 

for women and men

www.toryhughes.com

On Dec 21, 2011, at 9:42 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

And folks thought I was obsessive in my cell phone Odyssey!  Buying a cell phone is the most difficult purchase you can make.  You have three opposing entities:

- The Carrier: Tmo, Vzn, ATT, Sprint ...

- The OS: iOS, Android, .. and the others

- The Handset mfgr: Samsung, Apple, Moto, ...

The mix is awful.  What finally moved me to iPhone w/ Vzn (shudder) was that I couldn't stand the way the the handset mfgrs pissed all over android to "make it better".  This wasn't just me.  Tests showed that adding onto vanilla Android lowered battery life noticeably.  If you can get vanilla Android, do that.

All the info I got from that long but useful conversation (thank you all) was enough defense so that when I entered the arena against the horror (Vzn) I could smack down all their lies and get a reasonably good plan+phone.  I also found out that us old folks can get a deal.  Vzn has a 65+ plan that saves you a bunch.  Still way more than Tmo, but OK given the better coverage.

One warning: if you do get an iPhone, you will find that Apple will distort/improve (you choose) your experience because they are trying to make the iPhone experience the same across the carriers so they force the carriers into doing things they do not want to do.  For example, you may find them shipping the phone directly to you, rather than walking out of the store with the iPhone.

I have to admit that getting good coverage w/ Vzn in Santa Fe is nice.  It'll cost you more in those sneaky "fees and taxes" however, 'cause Santa Fe charges them extra for the extra towers .. and you foot the bill.

BTW: One reason iPhone does not have 4G, 5G, LTE, Gamaray Telco w/ radiation burns .. is that they discovered that all these super high bandwidth systems:

1-Only work in NY and LA (and a few other huge cities)

2-Suck battery like crazy

3-Are lies anyway

.. so they decided to go w/ standard 3G (which of course Tmo does NOT use) which is good enough if you get real 3G.  If you really do love watching videos on your phone, maybe you should consider the trade-offs.  BTW YouTube works fine w/ 3G.

I can go on forever, but better stop here,

   -- Owen

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 8:58 PM, Victoria Hughes <[hidden email]> wrote:

FYI re TMOBILE:

I have just had the latest in a round of totally unsuccessful interactions with T-Mobile. 

I have a Galaxy S2. 

I have only had phone service with them for three months: 

however I've had to deal with constant lousy coverage and unexplained gaps in service,

I've replaced the original new phone that turned out to be defective, 

with another 'new' phone 

which today suddenly lost all signal so after almost two hours on live chat with a representative, I had to erase all data and re-set everything to the factory settings 

This all started right before I had a phone meeting with a client. 

T-Mobile's only comment was 'well, unfortunately things just happen every so often. We apologize for the inconvenience'

I could NEVER get away with that attitude as a business person. Never. 

I am now happily going to pay the $200 to break my contract with them so I can sign up with Verizon. 

Why did Americans end up with such total scam phone service?

When  did we blink? How did this get legislated?

Tory

On Dec 21, 2011, at 7:34 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

Just to follow up on this thread for those who care:

I finally got around to ordering (and then got around to installing) a Wilson Electronics DB Pro with a directional (Yagi) outdoor receiving antenna and an omnidirectional indoor antenna.  It is a dual band "transciever", essentially taking in whatever signal it finds in those bands from the Yagi and retransmitting them (after amplification) on the omni (to be placed at least 20 feet away and not in "front" of the Yagi).

I'm testing against T-Mobile on an iPhone4 (not 4s).  My wife is still on ATT with her iPhone 2g (soon to be replaced with a 4s), I'll do some testing there as well.   For those of you who followed the earlier thread, my location near Otowi bridge on NM 502 at the Rio Grande has almost zero effective cell coverage.   We are down low and all the known towers (espanola, pojoaque, white rock, pajarito mountain) nearby are either marginally line of site  or completely blocked by intermediate topography.   My goal is to get good enough coverage to delete my wired landline service (which we hardly use even with cell phones not working)... I expect to use my wireless (900Mhz from Tewacom) with Skype to provide a backup alternative to the Cell coverage.   I'm testing Google Voice to integrate it all (hah!).

Using the aforementioned "field test mode" on my iPhone4 I was able to verify that I was getting a modestly better signal...  using the RSSI (received signal strength indicator) measure in the field test mode, I was able to roughly map the net strength of signal to my phone with and without the repeater turned on.

The Yagi is about 15 feet above the ground (a permanent installation will b ecloser to 20) facing roughly due East which is both my best guess as to where the tower I'm most likely to use is, and corroborated by some ad-hoc direction testing with the RSSI.     The Omni is roughly in the center of my 30'x30'x20'(tall) stucco-mesh-frame faraday cage of a house.

At the location of the Yagi, my signal strength is roughly the same whether the system is on or not (not surprising as one step in the installation is to reduce the retransmit strength until there is no detected interference).   At the opposite end of the house, the signal is similar with the system on and virtually zero without it (far end of my faraday cage of a house)...   at ground level, I normally see from 0 to 1.5 bars which means I get the occasional incoming call that i can't answer and can rarely call out (to the point of never trying).   With the system on I get a very usable signal equal to 3 bars...   As I wander away from the house outside, the rebroadcast signal drops off fairly quickly but it appears I might get useable signal on most of my 1.5 acre property where previously I had a few hot spots where I might get enough to catch an incoming call for a few seconds.

I am testing with data as we speak and so far, so bad... in fact, the whole signal dropped out in the middle of my attempt to get to my favorite speed-test site (speakeasy.net) and of course, when I got there, I am told that my favorite method requires Flash 7, apparently not on my Safari/iPhone4 (not surprising).  So I'll have to find a better solution for testing...  meanwhile anecdotally, Google Maps loads at least as slow as I'm used to *anywhere* without wifi.   Well, fortunately I don't care so much about Data, or at all at home where I have WiFi.

Overall I'd say the Wilson system works well, mostly as expected and seems to meet my needs/desires.  Internet research suggests that Wilson is the best system with only a few spurious compliants while all the other options have many complaints (though many of those sound spurious as well?!).

FWIW, it is also worth noticing that Wilson Electronics is a small-town company out of St. George Utah... the quality of their engineering, packaging, documentation, online support rivals that of any large scale consumer product supplier I know of.  That said, there may be little going on in St George beyond shipping... the parts and primary packaging may come directly from China and there may be nothing more than a small warehouse in St. George, but indications  are that the engineering and support may becoming from there as well.   A business article linked from their website suggests that they sell 200,000 units per year and hired 50 new employees in the last quarter...  clearly a big deal for a small town like St. George.

Let me know if you are interested in more specifics.

- STeve

Gil -

Thanks!  Very Interesting!

My iPhone does have a "field test mode" (*3001#12345#*) which does expose the alternate towers that it sees (and might use).  I see no indication anywhere that I could influence it's choice, nor have I been able to find a concise description of the algorithm/heuristics likely used to decide.   The most obvious of course, would seem to be signal strength, but that ignores issues such as congestion.

Since GSM is a Frequency Division Multiplex hybridized with Time Division Multiplex, it seems like there would be almost immediate feedback to the mobile device as it tries to connect as to whether there even *was* an available time/frequency slot to use... the heuristic could be as simple as "try the strongest signal you see, if it is full, try the next, repeat".

Along with a dB indication of (useable?) signal there is something called RSSI (received signal strength indicator) which seems useful for recognizing how much interference in the band there might be.   It tops out at about 50 underneath a tower but is as low as 5 when still useable.  Multiple towers competing and/or possibly other sources of interference run this number up without running up the "useable" signal.

There are two very cryptic numbers, C1 and C2 which from the mumbo jumbo I've found, might relate to the heuristic which I was seeking above... but I don't know yet... this is subtle and complicated stuff and it appears that short of finding a professional training course, there isn't much information laying around for the motivated layman.

See what we have become in this Internet/Google/Wikipedia age?  We DO expect a LOT!

Depending on the phone there might be a # code to get it to search for

more frequencies. Might take a bit of diging though. My oold Cinguluar

phone for instance used #689# that let it borrow other towers in

range. I'll check for the potenial andriod # codes to see if there's

something simillar.

On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 12:45 PM, Steve Smith<[hidden email]>  wrote:

I'm hoping *someone* out there knows more about this than I do, though none

of the earlier discussion seemed to bring any of that out.

I took up Gary Nelson's question about Cell Towers/Coverage, my own

frustrations, and the other resulting conversations to do a little research

and see if I could learn more and maybe even fix up some of my own

problems/challenges.

I'm testing iPhone 2, 3G, 4 against ATT and T-Mobile SIMS right now.  Mostly

at my house (very marginal signal if any) but will be doing other places.

 I'm looking at Cell Repeaters (primarily for my home, but maybe also

mobile).   I'm therefore *mostly* sorting out GSM related issues, but there

is a lot of overlap in general RF issues, repeaters, tower locations, etc.

I started trying to write up what I know (so far) and discovered that (as

often is the case) the more I know, the more I know I don't know.   My 3rd

Class Radiotelephony license  from 1974 and a BS in Physics provides just

enough background to get me in trouble.  I wrote a long, rambly overview of

what I know (dominated by what that made me realize I *didn't* know) and

decided most of you don't care.

So, if there are others trying to make actionable sense (or merely slake

your curiosity) about the issues of Cell Reception and the potential use of

Repeaters, ping me and we can discuss offline.  Maybe once we learn enough,

one or more of us can write up a (more) concise "lessons learned".

My long-winded ramble was useful (to me) already, as trying to explain it to

the larger crowd caused me to dig just a little deeper than I was for more

"practical" reasons.   Now to get my nose back on the practical grindstone.

- Steve

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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org