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Washington DC market seemed to take two steps back...


chappo2000

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I swear, this is NOT a "my market coverage is inadequate" post. Just an observation. We just had a storm event Friday that resulted in the largest non hurricane power outage our region has ever seen. Sprint's service region wide has definitely taken a hit ie 2 bars where I usually get full bars.

 

I can't help but wonder if it's strictly a power issue or if sites suffered physical damage. Even landlines in the area are suffering from a similar outage.

 

This is the last thing Sprint needed...

 

Any thoughts?

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My guess, damaged sectors antennas and sites that ran out of backup power. Most sites don't have more than say X hours of backup power. Probably most carries are having similar problems.

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I can tell you that based on my experiences, when you have what you are describing, the culprit is usually power outtages. The reason why you may have two bars is the site closest to you that you usually experience the strong signal from is down. So you are now getting a weaker signal from a more distant site.

 

The site closer may have had its UPS back up fail or already be completely exhausted. Or its possible the closer site has sustained wind damage.

 

We had an issue with sustained power outtages a few years ago. Initially we had one or two sites down, but over 36 hours, we would lose another one every few hours until we were down to one serving the whole area. Then the power came back on and they all went live in approximately 30 minutes.

 

So either you are having a similiar issue with power outtages, or some sites sustained damage. Neither would be unusual given the circumstances DC has endured recently.

 

Robert via Kindle Fire using Forum Runner

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My brother lives in Baltimore and he said they got hit by a rare thunderstorm called a "Derecho". I have never heard of it and the same for him. He was without power the last time I talked to him and said something like 100,000+ were without power. From this news report, the thunderstorm in some areas was traveling 80mph. With winds like that, I am sure it wrecked havoc on the cell towers in that region. Here is the news story, http://www.wtop.com/41/2925683/Science-behind-rare-derecho-storm-that-hit-Friday

 

I wouldn't be surprised if NV was set back quite a bit with the amount of damage this storm caused.

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No doubt this will reallocate resources. We were the northern most part of the storm and didn't get the 80 mph winds but 45-60 mph gusts were pretty much the norm at our house. I even got a national emergency alert on my phone. Granted it was for flash flooding but that was a first. I suspect you can add on 3 more weeks to the Balt/Wash LTE NV rollout.

Mother Nature wins

 

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk 2

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This is not just Sprint. My work uses all AT&T phones and very few were getting calls over the weekend. I have also been talking to people with Verizon and they are also having pockets of outages too.

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I was in a movie theater watching Ted when the storm hit. When I came out, it looked as if a hurricane hit. I was without power for 2 days (hot weekend).

 

The sprint network took a major hit. I got my GS3 yesterday and it took a few hours to activate the damn thing. Sadly I haven't gotten to fully enjoy my new phone.

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Wow! I was on a usual loop for me this morning. Frederick md - Washington Dc - Leesburg VA. The service in the area has taken a huge hit. Unusual roaming. Speed tests very poor. High (over 1000) pings, error messages connecting to my work server. More roaming than I have seen in years. Slow speeds around the beltway. I'm not encouraged that Sprint will be able to rebound quickly from this storm. Not mention the field guys have to endure just down right hot work conditions.

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Wow! I was on a usual loop for me this morning. Frederick md - Washington Dc - Leesburg VA. The service in the area has taken a huge hit. Unusual roaming. Speed tests very poor. High (over 1000) pings, error messages connecting to my work server. More roaming than I have seen in years. Slow speeds around the beltway. I'm not encouraged that Sprint will be able to rebound quickly from this storm. Not mention the field guys have to endure just down right hot work conditions.

 

Is clean up still occurring from that monster storm?

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With CDMA voice (I suspect CDMA data is the same) the weakest signal will lose bars and get bumped off as more users with better reception connect to the same tower. I suspect a lot more users than usual were overloading the CDMA towers watching vids and downloading to kill otherwise useless time.

 

 

I live in Maryland inside the beltway, and my power didn't get restored until Independence day around noon. Unsurprisingly my cell phone battery ran out after the one or two days of limited use (android) and I really couldn't charge my phone in the car at length (thanks to Honda's forward thinking about auxillary charging sockets not being always on). But I was able to check every 6 hours (after recharging or turning on phone briefly) my outage report with pepco's android app, Although 3G sometimes took a minute to work, I think I got thru each time, suspect pepco was the issue the times I got an error message, and the few text messages I sent and received got thru OK.

 

 

 

Since 911, I think all important communications systems were fitted with backup power systems such as generators. On the morning of July 4th, I believe I overheard a neighbor of mine complaining to the police that Comcast left a loud generator running overnight plugged into a utility box mounted on a telephone pole outside his house. It's a wonder why Verizon is trying to force people to switch to FIOS telephone (they won't let you activate a new telephone line or dsl anymore to supposedly save you taxes probably so they can sell you more of something you don't need over POTS) knowing FIOS customers will only have digital phone service at best for 8 hours after the power goes out.

Edited by Erb69
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Also not wanting to complain, just curious if anyone has any info...

 

I talked to sprint around the 20th of last month when I went from 3+ bars at my house (Dale City, Va area) to roaming inside and 1/roaming outside. They said there was an outage and it would be up by the 23rd. I talked to them on the 24th, they said they were still having issues and it would be the 28th. It's July 8th and service still seems to be suffering badly here. I have family visiting (also with sprint) and they are all experiencing the same. As well as family living in Montclair/Dumfries area, also experiencing the same. With family in the area/visiting there are 10+ phones and 6 personal/business accounts all experiencing the same loss of service.

 

I believe there is/was a tower in this area when I last looked at the tower/coverage maps. Looking last night the closest I saw was Lorton and Manassas, north and west of here. Anyone know of tower issues? Possibly connected to LTE rollout in the area? Possibility of problems made worse by the storm recently?

 

Anyone else in the area experiencing the same? It seems to be a problem with everyone I have talked to locally.

 

Edit: Dale City/sourthern areas of Woodbridge + Montclair

http://www.cellrecep...ge&state_abr=va (click sprint, big gap around Dale City/Montclair) Possibility of service loss from spectrum shift for LTE, less power for signal further from towers?

Edited by Repconsul
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Also not wanting to complain, just curious if anyone has any info...

 

I talked to sprint around the 20th of last month when I went from 3+ bars at my house (Dale City, Va area) to roaming inside and 1/roaming outside. They said there was an outage and it would be up by the 23rd. I talked to them on the 24th, they said they were still having issues and it would be the 28th. It's July 8th and service still seems to be suffering badly here. I have family visiting (also with sprint) and they are all experiencing the same. As well as family living in Montclair/Dumfries area, also experiencing the same. With family in the area/visiting there are 10+ phones and 6 personal/business accounts all experiencing the same loss of service.

 

I believe there is/was a tower in this area when I last looked at the tower/coverage maps. Looking last night the closest I saw was Lorton and Manassas, north and west of here. Anyone know of tower issues? Possibly connected to LTE rollout in the area? Possibility of problems made worse by the storm recently?

 

Anyone else in the area experiencing the same? It seems to be a problem with everyone I have talked to locally.

 

Edit: Dale City/sourthern areas of Woodbridge + Montclair

http://www.cellrecep...ge&state_abr=va (click sprint, big gap around Dale City/Montclair) Possibility of service loss from spectrum shift for LTE, less power for signal further from towers?

 

The whole market is an active Network Vision/LTE deployment area. It could be related.

 

Robert

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Also not wanting to complain, just curious if anyone has any info...

 

I talked to sprint around the 20th of last month when I went from 3+ bars at my house (Dale City, Va area) to roaming inside and 1/roaming outside. They said there was an outage and it would be up by the 23rd. I talked to them on the 24th, they said they were still having issues and it would be the 28th. It's July 8th and service still seems to be suffering badly here. I have family visiting (also with sprint) and they are all experiencing the same. As well as family living in Montclair/Dumfries area, also experiencing the same. With family in the area/visiting there are 10+ phones and 6 personal/business accounts all experiencing the same loss of service.

 

I believe there is/was a tower in this area when I last looked at the tower/coverage maps. Looking last night the closest I saw was Lorton and Manassas, north and west of here. Anyone know of tower issues? Possibly connected to LTE rollout in the area? Possibility of problems made worse by the storm recently?

 

Anyone else in the area experiencing the same? It seems to be a problem with everyone I have talked to locally.

 

Edit: Dale City/sourthern areas of Woodbridge + Montclair

http://www.cellrecep...ge&state_abr=va (click sprint, big gap around Dale City/Montclair) Possibility of service loss from spectrum shift for LTE, less power for signal further from towers?

 

I'm in Arlington Virginia and can confirm network issues as you discribed.

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I'm in Arlington Virginia and can confirm network issues as you discribed.

Yup driving from Arlington on I66 from the exit to rt. 29 to past the Rosilyn Tunnel I dropped 5 calls with signal varying from full bars to no signal very quickly and it happened to be a very important client I was trying to get a hold of. :(

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I'm in Arlington Virginia and can confirm network issues as you discribed.

This afternoon things returned to normal, hopefully anyway. Helping family in Montclair, service jumped to full, all bars showing. Dale City now back to normal 3-5 bars, 2-3 inside. Glad to see things working again.

 

Hopefully you experienced the same or will soon, in Arlington.

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This afternoon things returned to normal, hopefully anyway. Helping family in Montclair, service jumped to full, all bars showing. Dale City now back to normal 3-5 bars, 2-3 inside. Glad to see things working again.

 

Hopefully you experienced the same or will soon, in Arlington.

 

My coverage in western Prince William County has returned to what it was pre-storm.

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Also not wanting to complain, just curious if anyone has any info...

 

I talked to sprint around the 20th of last month when I went from 3+ bars at my house (Dale City, Va area) to roaming inside and 1/roaming outside. They said there was an outage and it would be up by the 23rd. I talked to them on the 24th, they said they were still having issues and it would be the 28th. It's July 8th and service still seems to be suffering badly here. I have family visiting (also with sprint) and they are all experiencing the same. As well as family living in Montclair/Dumfries area, also experiencing the same. With family in the area/visiting there are 10+ phones and 6 personal/business accounts all experiencing the same loss of service.

 

I believe there is/was a tower in this area when I last looked at the tower/coverage maps. Looking last night the closest I saw was Lorton and Manassas, north and west of here. Anyone know of tower issues? Possibly connected to LTE rollout in the area? Possibility of problems made worse by the storm recently?

 

Anyone else in the area experiencing the same? It seems to be a problem with everyone I have talked to locally.

 

Edit: Dale City/sourthern areas of Woodbridge + Montclair

http://www.cellrecep...ge&state_abr=va (click sprint, big gap around Dale City/Montclair) Possibility of service loss from spectrum shift for LTE, less power for signal further from towers?

 

I was just in Dale city this past weekend and the coverage in that area is horrible. I could not get anything. Sprint really needs to improve service in that area

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My tower right by the White House (15th and New York Ave NW) has been having intermittent issues all week. Either my SIII is acting up or they are finally putting a band aid on this often over worked tower. I normally pull down 30kbps, if I am lucky.

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A couple of questions :

Are the LTE installation guys the same as the network maintainence guys?

Robert have you heard anything on the Baltimore / Washington market since May?

Is there a new Goal date?

The newest S3 prl 25005 has opened up some new roaming areas

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