chamb

You sure do not want the PRL that is used on the Note. Right now, it is a downgrade.

This "nameless bug" will cause your Note II to stop working on calls and texting when it gets on the 800 network. If you want to have that situation, just change the PRL to allow your Note to access the 800. I guarantee you that you will want to go back to the currently provided PRL.

Bingo Digiblur. How many people do not even know how to turn their phone off?? I sat beside one leaving San Antonio two weeks ago on a Southwest flight. The flight attendant told him how to do it and he still could not do it. Eventually I offered to do it for him so I could get the plane in the air. He was about 25 years old and as dumb as a box of rocks. They are everywhere.

I think it was pulled off of Google play to fix an issue that was plaguing a particular phone type. I thought it was back after being updated but maybe not. The paid version is only $1.99 if I remember correctly and it is superior to the free version. If the free version is not there, keep looking as it will be back.

Yes. Very good app. There is a FREE one. However, the Pro version is much better if you really want to get into watching things. Well worth the price.

To go just a little further with this, I have a Galaxy S3. Even though it has the latest PRL, with 800 meg being the first thing searched for in a scan of the PRL, you may not see any 800 meg unless the phone is made to search for it. Turning the phone off and rebooting or toggling airplane mode will not make the phone find 800 meg. If the phone has been using 1900 meg, it will continue to use 1900 meg until you somehow lose 1900 meg. Then it will search and find 800 meg if it is available. The only way to make it manually search for 800 meg is to do a PRL update. You probably will not get a new PRL, but the phone may indicate that it did. Then after you acknowledge that the PRL update completed, the phone will search for the 800 meg and give it to you if it is available. You will stay on 800 meg if you stay in a service area that is 800 meg active. If you leave the 800 meg coverage area, your phone could possibly find 1900 meg and you will again stay on 1900 meg. This issue seems to be improving as time goes on. I think it may be possible that the phone can remember where you were previously connected to and return to the 800 meg sometimes, but I am not positive about that. I seem to find that the phone tends to find 800 meg on its own sometimes recently where it would not in the past. Things may be getting better. Each person will probably have a different experience with this. It will depend on how complete your 800 meg coverage is or is not. I have a whole bunch of 800 active in my area. It is a big big big improvement in 1X coverage area. When you get multiple 800 meg sites active, one site will fill in a coverage hole that exists with another sites coverage pattern. When you have a building being hit with 800 meg from about 3 directions, somehow the 800 meg will find its way into the building. I am seeing a -85 level in several buildings where the 1900 from the same sites was non-existent previously. 800 meg does not solve every issue, but it is a very big step forward in voice coverage.

Everybody lost something in this Softbank, Sprint, Dish struggle. Softbank paid more to complete the deal than they wanted. It cost more to get control of Clearwire too. But Charlie is the big loser. He needed a lot of bandwidth and a partner of some type. Sprint had and still does have the bandwidth along with people that can set it all up for Charlie. But Charlie threw so much poison around that nobody wants to touch him. It would be hard to imagine any T-Mobile people wanting to snuggle with him. Also, T-Mobile is not as well positioned to set up a network for Charlie. Softbank/Sprint is still his best option but I see no way for him to be friends with anybody at Softbank/Sprint. The one and only way to deal with Charlie is to require full payment up front for any work done for Charlie. He has to pay for all unique equipment up front because his risk of failure and default is so high. Sprint needs to add a very high financial premium for the risk and aggravation sure to follow. Sprint needs to protect itself to the extreme if they even think of dealing with Charlie. And YES, I said about the same thing above in about three different ways. That was intentional. The warnings are appropriate and need to be followed with no exceptions. This is not a time to kiss and make-up with Charlie without having a big bodyguard with a big club.

And, you can find some Sprint employees on S4GRU although it is not always apparent who they are.

Are you really sure you have GPS totally turned on and do not have it restricted somehow?? Sounds to me like your location may be determined by using cell tower triangulation. Look at all options and make sure you are allowing the app(Sensorly) to access GPS info.

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Cell-Phone-Tower-on-Fire-in-Bucks-County-212489511.html

If this drags on and Clearwire does go into bankruptcy, who owns the spectrum?? I would think that the EBS would revert to the educational institutions since Clearwire would not be paying the leasing bills. Sprint did contribute much of the BRS spectrum to the Clearwire "partnership". Who owns it when bankruptcy occurs??

POSSIBLE ISSUE with 800 Looking for comments on this. I am in an area that is heavily completed on the 800 upgrade. I can use 800 almost everywhere in my area. (Shentel) However, I have had several dropped calls if I venture out of the area that is 800 upgraded and venture into a legacy area that is only 1900. As I travel away from the 800 served area, I see the signal level go lower and lower but instead of the call eventually transferring to the nearby legacy 1900 site with a strong signal, the call just drops. Is anybody else seeing the call drop issue when traveling form a 800 area into a legacy 1900 area? I realize this is not going to happen after all sites are upgraded with 800 capability. But for the next 6 months or so, people will find themselves trying to hand-off from 800 to 1900 in some situations. Is the calls going to drop all of the time or most of the time? When I am in a legacy 1900 area and make a call, the call will stay on 1900 even though I go back into a 800 served area. I am also curious about what happens to people with I-phones or other phones that are normally on 1900 because of the PRL. What happens to them when they are on a 1900 call and suddenly find the signal going bad. Will the call transfer to 800 or drop??

Not entirely correct. There currently is NO AT&T site around me that uses AT&T Fiber for backhaul. They probably use AT&T for backhaul when it happens to be available, but that is not as common as you may think. AT&T, nor anybody else, has fiber running into every city, town or village.

Would they be combining 800 voice and 800 LTE into one antenna??

Here are photos of a stealth Flagpole being upgraded at Hagerstown Fairgrounds, in Hagerstown, Md. Shentel area install, Lucent equipment. EDIT - Looks like the photos posted in reverse order. Photo 6 is the first one and the last one is Photo 1. Photo 1 - 3 800 meg radios with RF Combiners Photo 2 - 3 1900 Radios Photo 3 - 3 more 1900 radios Photo 4 - Vertical photo of all radios Photo 5 - Side view of 800 radios Photo 6 - Stealth Flagpole with 3 standard antennas with 800 and 1900. The radios are much to big to hide on a flagpole so they are Ground mounted with approximately 75 feet of 1 1/2 coax cable headed to the antennas. Six wires on each antenna. Earlier Shentel installs had 1900 radios that looked different. The base station is inside another shelter and not available for a photo. Fiber optics from the base station to the radios of about 50 feet. The existing solid fence around the flagpole is about 6 Feet tall. The radio equipment is 12 foot tall, so it looks like a 12 foot fence will be needed for camouflage. Another carrier (NTELOS) will be installing antennas below the Sprint antennas. Not going to be an easy job for sure. And YES, you can talk to these guys without getting shot or going to jail. They were very nice guys and enjoyed talking about their work. This site is very unique according to them. Other sites are somewhat standard and easier to do. And YES, the 800 meg is turned on all over Hagerstown at the other sites and it is fantastic. Go Shentel. They get it done correctly and serve us well.

Nothing wrong with PRL 25015 for me. I am in Shentel territory with a Galaxy S-3. It stays on 800 and works fine for voice and text. I am using multiple Shentel sites but not the same ones you are using. It might be possible that the Note II may have issues with 800. My S3 is fine with 800 and Shentel sites. Maybe your individual Note 2 is bad on 800 or maybe they all are. If they all are bad, maybe Sprint issued a new PRL to do an emergency fix and keep the Note 2 off 800. My S3 has not received any PRL update and if I have anything to say about it, it will stay at 25015.

800 CDMA voice service DOES have a 5 digit SID beginning with 22.

I would surely think that you will see 800 go active for CDMA voice very soon after June 30 and maybe earlier. Shentel has activated 800 meg on many many sites about a week ago. I know they were trying to get the Nextel subs off the old Nextel network. Apparently they made it happen. I have 800 meg almost everywhere and it works very very good. If you have a "full Build" site, I would expect to see it go 800 active. A ground mounted site will probably not go active until they eventually place the antennas and RRU's on top. I even have a site that is 800 meg active but does not have active 1900 LTE. I am guessing that there is a backhaul issue at that location. It is located in a nastly location where backhaul might be difficult.

Digiblur, I am out traveling around today. Going south on I-81from Southern Pennsylvania to Maryland and Virginia. (Shentel Territory) Have 800 CDMA 1X almost everywhere. It is very active in Shentel territory. Coverage is fantastic. Levels are very good. I surely would not leave Sprint because of a coverage problem in this area. Hopefully your area will soon catch up. When you see active 800 in your area, you will smile. Looks very very good here. I have been able to drive by some sites that are not upgraded to NV yet while holding onto the 800 signal and ignoring the old 1900 coming from the old legacy sites. Had good levels while doing this too. I have not been testing this out very long, but I see lots of good things.

I think you may be correct in assuming that PRL 25015 gave you 800 meg. I have really been messing with this today. With PRL 25014, I COULD get some 800 meg if I worked at getting into spot where the 1900 would drop.I could keep the 800 meg if I stayed in an area with 800 meg. If I ventured out of 800 coverage, I would eventually find 1900 by default and had trouble getting 800 back. It seemed like 1900 was "preferred" and you only got 800 if necessary, but once you had 800, you could keep it. After reading your comment about installing PRL 25015 and then getting 800 meg, I decided I just had to try it. I installed 25015 and after testing for a short time, it looks like the 800 meg is much more easy to use. It may actually be the "default" and the preferred frequency. I will try to prove it in the next day or too. My 800 signal level is about 10-12 DB better than my 1900 signal at a distance of 3 miles from the cell site.

Found More Active Shentel 800 Location Waynesboro, Pa City Water Tank on N Broad St. 800 is active but I could not access it UNTIL I took my Galaxy S3 into the deepest corner of my basement, placed the phone in a fireproof safe and closed the lid. When I opened the lid, I had 800 meg. The upgraded sites made my 1900 very good and it is almost impossible to deliberately lose the 1900. Using standard PRL 25014 Now the STRANGE part --- Somebody explain this issue below --- I can toggle "airplane mode" and the 800 comes up with no issues every time. I can even totally power down the Galaxy S3, then turn it on and have 800 meg. Anybody have any idea if the phone or account might have to shake hands with the 800 meg and get registered somehow before the 800 seems to be easily accessible? I SUSPECT there might be quite a few sites nearby that I was not able to access but might work for me now. I just have to check them out. Screen-shot attached

Great app you have, Mike. I started out with the FREE version. After about a week, I upgraded to your paid version. It was worth every last penny. Anybody that has any interest in how a PCS system works should buy your app. I was really surprised at how often a CDMA 1x call switches between sectors or different sites. I was well aware that it was happening, but it does this more than I ever realized. I happen to live in an area that is difficult to service and therefore it has quite a few sites around. Just a lot of obstructions that make it difficult to receive a signal and hold on. I can sometimes see about 4 different sectors or sites within a few seconds when I go through a questionable spot. I would have expected to see a transfer, but not that many. Really interesting stuff. I like the chimes telling about the available LTE. My area is well covered with LTE but you can lose it occasionally. Nice to hear those chimes when you move and get LTE service again. I have not heard the "800 sound" yet but I have a bunch of "full build" sites in a "800 wait mode". Hope the wait mode soon changes to a active mode.

I have a "Stock" GS3. I see this "locating" thing quite often, but in my case I think it is normal. Where I live, as I drive around, I am bouncing between several cell sites. I have a bunch of hills, obstructions, mountains, dips & valleys. I am constantly losing the connection to one cell site but picking up another one from another direction. In some places I will see a bounce between 3 or 4 cell sites and sometimes it only connects to one for less than a second. When I am home, or when I stop moving elsewhere, it generally goes steady on one cell site. When it goes into locating mode, I SUSPECT that it has grabbed co-ordinates from the cell site and might be using Google to look-up a street location for those co-ordinates. Sometimes this takes awhile and I suspect it might be because I switch between cell sites or sectors very quickly and hit more than one within a second or two. I even have a cell site that says one sector is in China. I also have one cell site that tells me one sector is 50 miles away. Apparently somebody has not programmed the correct co-ordinates into the site data.