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<sasm...@swcp.com>
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
============================================================
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
============================================================
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
============================================================
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
