ThomasM

Hi, Mike!

For some reason, the logging feature does not work for me.  It only creates zero byte data files.  Unfortunately, I jumped ship awhile back and am now on Verizon which as we know does not transmit location info.  But it would be nice to have a log of BSID's or at least something...

I did notice that the app now updates regularly without getting "stuck" like it did in the past.

Hey Mike I have a traiterous question since it doesn't involve Sprint...

A friend of mine is planning on getting one of those new Tracfone android phones which supposedly operate on Verizon's CDMA system.  He spotted SignalCheck on my Sprint phone and wondered if it would work.  I've heard Verizon doesn't transmit site coordinates so that probably won't work but will the rest of the app work?  The phone he is looking at uses android 4.0. 

Really?? You're getting 1x800 around 27th and Oklahoma?

It's probably that huge overloaded tower on 21st and Morgan he's picking up.  It looks like every cellular carrier in the world has an antenna on it!!  Now, if Nextel was still around he'd have a SUPER signal at St. Luke's hospital-it was a Nextel cell site and they had a boatload of phones for use in-house.

That would be the one!

I went looking for the second one a few months back but didn't have a sprint phone so I couldn't track the signal at all. I looked for a good half hour for antennae around the area and found none so I gave up and went home.

Here's another one that drove me crazy....

South 27th Street north of College.  I wondered why on earth they had a site here since it is only a short distance from their site on that ugly water tower just about in the Menard's parking lot between College and Rawson.

Turns out it's an IN BUILDING site at some sort of medical facility!!  In their parking lot I got a -50dB signal (a real WOW) but as soon as I pulled out on to 27th street it disappeared quickly.  No antennas visible on the building.  I was half tempted to go inside and ask them if Sprint had a cell site in their building but they might have rolled over a gurney and put ME on it!  

I'm new here but honestly, it feel like Sprint just keeps tickling peoples nuts about going live in the Milwaukee area. I have to work downtown Milwaukee on occassion and I swear there is a force field down there that prevents me from getting over 1 or 2 bars regardless of tower locale and LoS. Sprint just plain sucks there no?

Downtown Milwaukee is really difficult to cover.  When I worked at Nextel that was an area everyone complained about even though we had about 4 sites there-on 800MHz no less!!

After looking at the map of Sprint sites in downtown Milwaukee, I'd have to agree with you that it probably is "zero to one bar land".  

Took em long enough to complete em fully. I believe it was 2-3 months ago that we got lte from that tower as well as others in the Oak Creek area. The last one to be complete is the tower near the power plant and everything South of the airport is NV complete.

You must mean Oakwood Road-the cell tower right next to that 500' TV tower which is almost in Lake Michigan!

That one has had a new base ID for some time.  I wonder if it is now NV complete...

I also wonder if they are going to upgrade their in-building site (which is listed as a full-power site) located at the South Shore Water Treatment Plant along Lake Michigan?  That one was fun to find when I first started visiting Sprint sites.  The phone said I had a super signal but there was no tower in sight!  And the super signal had a very non-super coverage area.

13th and Ryan road... progress!

For a little poop of a tower that Sheppard Avenue tower (just north of Ryan) has a HUGE signal since the NV antennas went online.  Sometimes, my phone locks on it when I am at home and I am 2 miles SOUTH of the Milwaukee County line in Racine County!  Another little poopy tower on 29th and Elm Road (just NW of I-94 and the Milw-Racine county line) has experienced a HUGE increase in signal also in the past two weeks so the NV antennas/RRU's must be online!

As has been pointed out before in this thread, legacy/pre-NV sites in the Milwaukee market show 3 offset 1X locations for each tower, due to obsolete emergency-response requirements. NV-compliant sites in the market, at least those with 1X800, appear to broadcast their true locations. 

So, that "phony" location broadcast by the tower was due to some obsolete emergency response requirement, eh?  I did not know that.  Interestingly enough, Nextel never broadcast "phony" cell site locations but the actual tower coordinates on all three sectors.  Perhaps they implemented the emergency response service after the rules changed but Sprint just left things as is.

Meanwhile, I've noticed that a boatload of Milwaukee sites changed their ID's in the last week of November.  So far from what I've discovered the NEW ID's are all 4 digits and broadcast the EXACT location of the tower on all sectors.  In addition, my LG phone in it's built-in engineering program displays a FIVE digit base ID.  The first four digits agree with SignalCheck and the fifth digit seems to identify the sector.  Some are 1,2, and 3.  Some are 5, 6, and 7.  You never know because there seems to be no rhyme or reason for that fifth digit!

Hey Mike, when you are tired of pulling your hair out trying to get all these phones and SIM's figured out, why not go back into the code and program in logging so I can keep all that valuable SignalCheck info around to peruse over and over?  

The other day I was visiting a friend of mine and we were doing some work in his basement where the Sprint signal is non-existant so my phone went into roam mode.  I still had Signal Check loaded from my drive there where I was watching it and it said Carrier: US Cellular.  How does Signal Check KNOW the NAME of the roaming carrier?  Does it go to the internet and look it up in some database using the SID returned from the site?

PS: After seeing the warning in the new version I finally gave in and enabled network/WI-FI location and now the site addresses update every time-although I got a chuckle out of one that said "unknown street address" followed by the city name!

If you are connected to 800, signal check will show that.

 

Connecting to a site 6 miles away is not unreasonable, even on PCS 1x. That's a perfectly normal range for that frequency.

I don't know about CDMA but when I worked at Nextel I had all kinds of fun editing the equivalent of a PRL only in this case it was a frequency list the phone used to scan for a signal when it was turned on.

I could regularly "fool" the phone and connect to sites 15-20 miles away and even make calls on them!!  This, of course, was iDEN 800 and Nextel had much higher (and better) sites than Sprint seems to.....

After the last update I noticed that the street address data was missing when I went into an area not visited before.  Addresses that were already in the database on the phone appeared.  Instead, it said "click for map".  Has anyone else noticed this?

I deleted the apps data and then reset all of my preferences and the street address began appearing again.  Very strange!

 ive always had great sprint service here, full bars with whatever phone, and now im on virgin mobile and still have the same signal, 

That's probably because Sprint OWNS Virgin Mobile....  

I had two DSL modem/routers in three years fail. Windstream would not handle the OEM warranty for me. The only thing they were willing to do is sell me another one, or lease me a replacement. And it sounds like you were leasing yours from Comcast.

 

If you leased your phone from Sprint, I could see them handling it for you like Comcast. Because they would actually be the Owner of the device.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

A good example of this is DirecTV.

When they started out, the customer had to buy everything themselves-the box, the dish, everything.  If it broke down, the customer could buy a new one or return it to the manufacturer for their warranty service.

But then DirecTV decided this irritated customers too much so they went to a leasing model where ALL the boxes were leased and, of course, had to be returned if the service was canceled.  For a $20 S & H fee, they replace a failed box which is MUCH CHEAPER than having to buy a new one or with today's shipping costs send it to a manufacturer.

Of course, a satellite (or cable) box isn't like a cellphone.  You don't often hear of a satellite box being dropped in a toilet! 

I believe it is because 1X and EV-DO both use the same CDMA radio. 

 

-Mike

No they don't.  They use the same TRANSMITTER (which is why you can't blab on the phone and exchange 3G data at the same time) but they use two different receivers.  I have an app on my phone known as Juice Defender that SHUTS OFF the EV-DO receiver most of the time and then turns it on once an hour for 5 minutes to let the assorted apps sync up.  This saves a LOAD of battery juice just like the name of the app alludes.

PS:  When Juice Defender shuts off the EV-DO receiver your app says no EV-DO!  

Interesting that I have the same NID all the way over here in grafton

The towers in Racine County switched to NID 224 months ago.  But I noticed that a lot of towers are still using NID 84-including some that have been listed on S4GRU as "completely updated to NV" up in Milwaukee County!!  I wonder if Sprint is going to do what the phone company did-make Milwaukee County it's own unique NID (Milwaukee County is area code 414-everything surrounding it is 262).

It's unbelievable that someone at Sprint hasn't noticed that the LTE carrier is 30 dB POORER THAN 1X!!  If it is interference, it has to be one whopping signal since it covers all of Chicago!

PS: The company I used to work for years ago had it's local HQ on Woodfield Rd. across from the mall so I am VERY familiar with that area.  Do you remember Garfields?  Great snacks during happy hour!!

AHA!  So that's how it works.  Since my Sprint phone usually sits on channel 75 it means they are using PCS A BLOCK in my area.

Ok, Kenneth, you can go back to sleep again!  

I just finished reading the very informative 2 part article "What's the Frequency, Kenneth" regarding how to determine the exact frequency your phone is tuned to but I have a question.

Everything pertains to an OFFSET from the beginning frequency in the block.  Is there any way to determine which PCS FREQUENCY BLOCK your phone is using?

Like others have said, Sprint is rushing to get as many sites totally upgraded by winter.

It's too bad we have people running around blowing things up and shooting guns.  That is probably why the Samsung guy was suspicious of you asking questions.  Many years ago, I remember if you spotted someone working on something outside and you went and asked them questions they would bend over backwards to tell you all about what was going on.  Not any more.

I remember when I worked at Nextel, one day my group had a meeting at their main switch location in Elmhurst, IL.  There were 5 iDEN switches in the building which ran all of Chicago as well as Wisconsin and Indianapolis!!  The place was like a fortress!!  Even though at the time I was an employee, I had to wait while a security guard made phone calls to verify my identity and the purpose for my visit.  I'm sure things are even more secure now at Sprint switches and facilities.

As an interested bystander who has read this entire thread (and only lives 20 miles from the Chicago market) I am curious if this mysterious low SNR/terrible data speed issue only involves 4G.  Not having a 4g phone yet, can you disable 4g and force the phone to use 3g?  What about folks who have both a 4g and a 3g phone.  What's the data throughput on 3g?

Here in the Milwaukee market, prior to the Samsung equipment being installed, the 3g data speeds seemed to get slower and slower every week until they bottomed out at around 150kB!!!  Then, one day I almost flipped out.  They suddenly went to 900kB to almost 2Mb!!!

DId this mysterious interference/data issue appear just like my speed increase?  (overnight)  Or did the 4g speeds just get slower and slower and slower as well as the SNR getting worse and worse and worse??

So, living close to a tower gives you crappie service. Great. My home area is now listed as fair LTE service. In fact, I get NO LTE service and weak or no 3G service. If this is the case on all carriers, I'm screwed at home.

 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S3 using TapaTalk 4

The problem is probably not living close to the tower.  The problem is the OTHER signals from OTHER carriers emanating from the SAME tower interferring with Sprint's signal.

Or maybe the tower you live next to isn't a Sprint tower at all!!

In tests I've run, when right next to a Sprint tower I get full bars and a RX signal level in the -50 dBm range.  And voice and data quality is EXCELLENT.  BUT sometimes when I am driving past a cell tower that I know Sprint isn't using my signal level drops due to interference from that tower.

I really enjoy reading this thread!  Everyone extolling the virtues of 800MHz.  How do you think I feel being with Nextel for years which was ALL 800MHz and then ending up on 1900 CDMA in July 2012?  HA HA HA!

We'll see about NW Chicagoland as the "shopping trip" I mentioned in an earlier post is going to be to Gurnee Mills which is very much in NW Chicagoland.  It will be interesting to see what my non-LTE but 800-capable LG phone thinks of all this.  If it ignores the 800MHz signal, I will try upgrading the PRL.  I have to admit, I never thought of that before.  What if the PRL is already the current one?  Will just telling it to update it anyway make it rescan?

There is further progress on the Muskego (south) tower, the guys are there today to finish the wiring of the antennas that were installed earlier this month. Usual story though, they are from down South and don't know towers by name or location. The guy in charge said very little and told me they bounce tower to tower wherever they are told to go. I asked him about my home tower in Big Bend/Vernon that is on top of high power lines and he said it would be a slow process as they get a very short window of time by the power company to do the work and it could still be months away. No one on the ground really knows anything except what they are supposed to be doing. I am quite sure we will be dragging well through the winter months before anything more (substantial) in 4g becomes of this market.

That "home" tower of yours sure has lousy coverage (Cheri Avenue just south of ES/164).  A good friend of mine lives in a subdivision just west of Morningstar Golf Club on XX and that is the tower that serves it.  You have to do a circus act to find a signal from it that's good enough to use.  I sure was hoping that tower would get the new Samsung equipment before winter but the info you got from the tower crew isn't very good.

Interestingly enough, the two towers just south of me that are on power lines have all the new Samsung equipment installed!  But they are in Kenosha County and I think Sprint is pushing LTE in Kenosha & Racine Counties for the benefit of their Chicago customers who trek north of the state line...

I see there are several 800MHz sites online about 20 miles from where I live.  I've been thinking about taking a shopping trip to the area covered by one of these sites.  Will my phone automatically switch to the 800MHz band or just keep sitting on the 1900MHz band?  If it keeps sitting on 1900, will making a VOICE call cause it to switch to 800?

(Actually, I just want to hear the cute notification tone from Signalcheck)