WiWavelength

Tony, you are already a sponsor. If you made another donation because of my quip, I will be more than happy personally to contribute that amount back into your PayPal account. I was only joking in my previous post. I do not charge for my info and have never, to my knowledge, made a dime off of the wireless industry. AJ

Electrical downtilt, as I understand it, is a fairly standard feature. Panels include multiple antennas; by remotely adjusting the power output and phasing among the antennas, the vertical polar response can be changed. AJ

That is antenna downtilt. AJ

Absolutely. I think that you can rest easy that USCC will buy VZW's Lower 700 MHz A block 12 MHz license. One, while DTV channel 51 is still active in the Chicago market, the adjacent channel interference issue has not scared off USCC in other markets. Two, AT&T wants to have nothing to do with the A block -- even if it is only to save face because of the (A block excluded) "boutique" band 12 that it created. The biggest obstacle is that VZW already has a pending transaction with Leap Wireless (Cricket) for the A block in Chicago. But I am not sure that Cricket really wants to get into yet another band/band class. If USCC does not get the A block, then USCC will likely go head to head with AT&T over the B block, which VZW also holds in Chicago. No problem. We can put you on a monthly payment plan. Or I could just be kidding, alluding to those professional wireless analysts who publish white papers at several grand a pop. It is a lucrative business. If S4GRU sticks around a while, maybe we can get into it. AJ

Nah, I think that we are hanging on to those post for possible future "collateral." AJ

Before you call USCC's Mississippi Valley AWS E block 10 MHz license "useless," take into account a few considerations. USCC does not have a great many major markets, but it does have several within its core territories. In the Mississippi Valley REA, USCC has current major markets St. Louis (PCS) and Knoxville (Cellular). Plus, potential major markets Kansas City, Memphis, and Nashville are proximate to its current footprint. Also, USCC does not hold the Mississippi Valley AWS E block 10 MHz license directly. Rather, Barat Wireless, a designated entity, actually controls the license. USCC has only authorization from Barat to use the license for USCC deployment. USCC is in the process of acquiring full interest in Barat, but the FCC has not yet approved the transaction. See the application linked below: http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/ApplicationSearch/applMain.jsp?applID=6837973 So, if USCC does swap any AWS spectrum to VZW, it will not likely dump its entire Mississippi Valley license. But it might partition and trade off AWS in some Mississippi Valley BEAs outside of its current/potential core markets. That is my expert analysis. And that will be $2000. You can cut Robert a check. AJ

If you wish to sponsor another member, we greatly appreciate your generosity, and you can do so anonymously. The only way that anyone will know is that your avatar will temporarily change to an image of Sally Struthers (the South Park version). AJ

Rest assured, I know. In fact, circumstantial evidence suggests that you are even a couple of years younger than me. But that is part of what makes it funny. AJ

No, *18 is an old IS-95 cdmaOne trick. Heck, it may even be an IS-41AMPS/TDMA/CDMA trick. As I recall, it just forces a new registration with the VLR. Basically, it ensures that a subscriber's MSC knows the VLR where the sub is currently located. Before automatic roaming, a sub had to dial *18 to manually update location whenever the sub crossed over into a new SID. For further info, do a Google query on "follow me roaming." AJ

I hope he does not go by the nickname "Charlie." Scott might have flashbacks. AJ

I doubt that SVDO capability is related because even non SVDO handsets track CDMA1X and EV-DO PNs separately. While idle, non SVDO handsets just alternate back and forth between monitoring CDMA1X and EV-DO. Does the idle EV-DO delay in switching PNs happen with every site all the time? If so, then you may have a defective handset. But if it happens with only some sites some of the time, then I would put my money on the EV-DO channel hashing lag that I detailed in the article. AJ

bmoses could be experiencing the EV-DO hashing issue that I describe in this paragraph of my recent article on The Wall: http://s4gru.com/index.php?/blog/1/entry-318-can-toggling-airplane-mode-actually-improve-your-3g-data-speeds/ AJ

You had GPS active all day while at a Disney theme park??? What happened to "It's a small world after all"? AJ

None of this objective fact. But this conjecture is fairly well supported and has been posted numerous times on S4GRU. The iPhone did not help, but Clearwire -- its failure to roll out WiMAX fully and harmonize it with Sprint's existing footprint -- is what brought the Sprint EV-DO network to its knees. A year or more before Sprint started selling the iPhone, Sprint sold countless phones in the HTC EVO and Samsung Epic series and expected much of their data usage to be offloaded to the Clearwire WiMAX network. But Clearwire hit the skids and botched the deployment, so much of the data burden fell back on the Sprint EV-DO network, which was not prepared for the unexpected onslaught. AJ

Check your PN offsets. You sound like you may be idling on different CDMA1X and EV-DO sites. AJ

If in an active data session, LTE is designed to hand down to eHRPD. In fact, that is reason that eHRPD exists as a mod to EV-DO. However, I am uncertain that an active eHRPD session will hand back up to LTE. That may be a 3GPP limitation, as I seem to recall that an active W-CDMA session will not hand back up to LTE until the session goes dormant again. AJ

In typical American fashion, I had my first LTE experience in the front seat of a car. AJ

No, I highly doubt that you have the research to back up the assertion that "most" Sprint subscribers would leave. As for you, where would you go? If you think VZW or AT&T, I cannot help but laugh. Both carriers have the insidious motive and oligopolistic means to foist even more consumer unfriendly policies on you, and they are already doing so. Thus, I would hope that you have another viable carrier in mind other than VZW or AT&T. Leaving Sprint for the Twin Bells would, long term, be cutting off your nose to spite your face. AJ

That seems very reasonable. I have seen a 3-6 dB figure quoted as typical loss each way from sending modulated RF via coax up/down the physical tower. If Sprint can reduce or eliminate that loss by using RRUs and sending unmodulated digital data via coax or fiber up/down the physical tower, a 3 dB gain on each half of the link budget seems tenable. AJ

Where are you located in Minnesota? All other factors equal, if VZW is primarily Cellular 850 MHz in your market, Sprint could have an advantage with PCS 1900 MHz, which can more readily leak through small openings in your home's construction. AJ

You are Sue? AJ

Yes and no. CDMA2000 base stations already have the ability to redirect a mobile from one CDMA1X carrier channel to another (or, seemingly more rarely, one EV-DO carrier channel to another). To illustrate, your handset may hash to PCS 0025, so it idles on that CDMA1X carrier channel. Your handset cannot choose to move to another CDMA1X carrier channel simply because PCS 0025 is heavily loaded. However, when a base station sets up a traffic channel for your handset, the base station can determine to set up the traffic channel on PCS 0050 and redirect your handset to that carrier because PCS 0025 is already heavily loaded. This is a CDMA2000 network management capability that is rather old. In fact, it predates CDMA2000 and goes back to cdmaOne. But its implementation may certainly be vendor and/or network dependent. Now, you might wonder why mobiles do not simply search for the best carrier channel on their own. This is for several reasons. Mobiles already have their hands full continually searching for the best cell site sector. Adding carrier channel search would slow the process and degrade battery life. Furthermore, both the BTS and MSC expect the mobile to hash to a specific carrier channel, so all paging and traffic are directed to the mobile on only that channel. If the mobile were constantly, unpredictably switching carrier channels, the network overhead required to keep track of the mobile would increase significantly. Lastly, consider the tragedy of the commons. If every mobile of its own volition were actively to seek out the best carrier channel, then numerous mobiles would quickly converge on that best channel, likely rendering it no longer the best channel, as loading had just greatly increased. So, mobiles would then swarm like locust to the carrier channel that had become the new best carrier channel. And the process would oscillate out of control. Instead, the hashing algorithm averages out mobiles across available carrier channels and prevents this problem. AJ

So, in the New Orleans market (or, at least, in Baton Rouge), EV-DO F2 is PCS 0100, correct? What is EV-DO F1? PCS 0075? Regardless, removing or negating an EV-DO carrier channel assignment in the PRL should not have much, if any effect. As long as you keep the local EV-DO F1 carrier channel assignment in the PRL, then your handset will locate EV-DO. Once it does, it will still see the multiple EV-DO carrier channels in the channel list message, so will still invoke the hashing algorithm. As such, you still have about a 50/50 chance of ending up on EV-DO F2. Basically, the PRL controls only system acquisition. But once a native system is acquired, the PRL is set aside and the hashing algorithm determines the carrier channel on which the mobile will idle. AJ

Try the Barry White setting. It is definitely superior to the Fran Drescher setting. AJ

Hey, if someone else is your dealer, you can probably get hashish. But if S4GRU is your addiction, we can definitely supply you with the lowdown on the hash. AJ