chefdementia

Moved on to the "Big Red Evil Empire" (Verizon) last weekend, so far it's pretty good.  Got 55 down and 22 up the other day at Home Depot.  I'll keep an eye on Sprint to see what happens with their network.  With Sprint and where we're working at, in Hotchkiss, right now, I can make calls, but not receive them although texts and voicemail notifications are fine.

Well this is going to be a good bye, for this site and sprint. I'm not going to keep a service that has almost unusable data in grand junction, and it's not want better in Hotchkiss.

Not that I know of. 

Maybe Comcast is moving into GJ and I can ditch Charter. Better cable and 4g in the same quarter maybe, where the hell is my magic eight ball.

Comcast does provide backhaul in some locations...

Well it's odd because we don't have Comcast here.

Got excited today on the way home, saw a crew laying fine today the general direction of the Sprint tower near my house. Then saw that it said Comcast on the side of the truck, slightly less excited now.

It's been pretty warm and dry here on the western slope, can't wait to see the sensorly maps turn purple over here.

Any updates on the Grand Junction network?

Did anyone else get this message today?

 

SprintFreeMsg: Over the next month, the new network will be largely completed in your area. See new phone offer at http://sprint.us/upgrade1 Reply S to stop.

 

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk

My wife got that text too, we're in Grand Junction if it matters (I suspect it doesn't).

Yes, but not in this case. A COW is usually used for coverage in the event of a site down long term or an event in a strange location. There are 8 sites within range of the stadium, some have been upgraded to NV, some not. 

 

Those poor legacy sites near the stadium didn't stand a chance.

Ummmmmmm yeah I may have been one of those guys trying to start a funeral pyre with those towers, sorry.

Not sure what is going on. There are no more legacy sites out there. My guess is that have to wait for extensive backhaul. Most of the sites are microwave bounce sites. Probably going to be an "all at once" type switch over to fiber once the most remote sites are complete. 

 

Other than the sites in the small towns all other sites are mountaintop pain-in-the-GSM sites to reach. 

 

Combine that with clay soil that turns to mashed-potatoes-mixed-with-glue when wet and crews not wanting to venture into the wild and it looks like late spring, early summer for you.

Right now it's going to suck for any crew that has to do any digging. I've been working up in Hotchkiss the last couple days, and we had to do some digging.  The top two feet of soil was frozen solid, and this is a spot that gets sun all day.

Also Merlin did some farmer in the Hotchkiss/Cederedge area really topple a couple towers?

Follow up.

1) Your "good" test is literally in the morning shadow of a site. No competition there.

2) The Mesa mall is a deathzone and is very hard to work with. It is directly in between sites and there is (most likely) a sprint store/kiosk repeater inside. Those things are fantastic and hellish at the same time particularly due to signal noise that they generate just outside of their usable range. I have been in that mall several times with multiple carriers and there really isn't much that can be done for any of them. FYI, when I was in there with Verizon I couldn't even send texts in some places.

 

My advice would be to move to a part of the state with running water and indoor toilets.

 

 

 

And no I like my outhouses, nothing like a badger trying to bite your "dangley bits" off in the morning to make you wake up

Didn't realize i posted the mall one, Yes I realize that place sucks. It's not any better from my house, here is one from like 10 minutes ago.

Only reason I'm ever at the mall is for Cabelas and Sears, past that it's a suck hole.

 

In the morning my 3g service looks like the first picture, but give it a couple hours and it will look like the second picture. Really can't wait for 4g, that and a new phone HTC has really let updates slip on some of their phones.

What I meant was that you are running on the VN equipment. If you experienced the speeds like you did it means either 1) you were the only person connected and pulling data on that site but the site is still running garbage T1s, or 2) the site has its fiber connection and was either being tested or wasn't being used very much by anyone else but you. Also, the switch side speeds are being throttled down until the full network is ready, this id to prevent some serious issues with the network as they move from the old switches to the new ones.

 

Have no fear, Grand Junction is going live very soon. But know that you really only have one tech out on the entire western slope taking care of business, so they try not to kill him by bringing all the sites up to speed at the same damn time.

Well, so far it seems that I may be damn near the only person on that tower before 7am, the rest of the day it slows down. I know plenty of people that have left Sprint for Verizon or AT&T, at this rate I may be the only person left on the network. Moar bandwidth for me!?!?!

The GJ area does not have any legacy sites remaining. You are full NV 3g.

False alarm/hopes speeds are back to their usual garbage all across town. 20-50Kbps up and down, sad face.

Not sure if this is a good sign, or just lucky early morning tests.  But I did a couple speed tests this morning, and 3g was getting me 2.2Mbps down and 2.6Mbps up.

According to Merlin, you've got good news coming soon:

Happy Dance time ?

Starting to get weary of a smart phone that is useless anywhere with out wifi.  Any news on anything in the Grand Junction area? We've been getting 20kbps for a couple months now, sometimes 100kbps.