jonathanm1978

I foresee them(SoLinc) handing out new phones overnight since they don't mind handing out free phones to employees and paying the entire bill for those employees. My wife just got a brand new i 576 last week, and never left the plant when they handed it to her. They activated, setup and gave her the phone right there at the steam plant. I don't see them having a problem finding a solution rather quickly...they tend to throw money at a problem until it goes away (they don't have many problems). Last year after the April 27 tornado outbreak, this company had money left from the disaster area funding that FEMA gave them because they restored power so quickly, so with the extra money what did they do? They sent every employee a check for $1500. No warning, just a check came in the mail saying thanks to all and "here is some extra money for the hard work". Sounds like I'm bragging on them but they are really a good place and they won't think twice if they need to sink a million or 5 into securing a new method of two-way communication. Operating expense.

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I think they'll merge, but just as it is now, SouthernLinc can't two-way with Nextel customers and vice-versa. I know they use(d) the same tech for quite a while simultaneously, but you couldn't crosstalk with southernlinc+nextel customers. Phone set-ups are the same though, I looked at my wife's SoLinc and it has the same 3-digit number for PTT separated by *s.

My point was that with the amount of money that Southern Comp throws around, they have no qualms about building their own, but would likely go in with Sprint as they've done previously. But they will keep their current two-way options and try to port the current customer-base over to the newer tech if this is the case..they won't just shut-down their iDEN and not have the PTT phones...simply put, they'd have close to 26,000 people without a way to communicate. During storms (which are rampant in the southeast), they are lifelines for Southern Comp and there's not a plant in Southern Company that doesn't have those mini-towers mounted on the smokestack for it to provide it's employees with service inside the plant premises...but for them to just ditch it and go with a 2-way radio standalone ....it's just not how they would operate.

I mentioned them buying everything that there is that could possibly cause them any downtime...for example, they bought the train company and coal mines so they could regulate their own supply of coal. They own everything that supplies them (and currently they are doing away with even contractor-based workers and going solely with so-comp employees only for things they used to contract out)...

Considering they bought trains and railway rights, and coal mines...something as minor as communications would be nothing for them to buy. Wife's plant just went with VOIP solution instead of AT&T's hardlined copper phone...boy was AT&T mad!! million-dollar contracts with APCO just went up in smoke because AT&T is letting the home broadband and copper side go to hell quickly, and too worried about pouring money into the cell side...

I foresee AT&T residential having some major problems before long with being outdated. Done decided if we get 4G here before AT&T offers us U-Verse, we'll drop AT&T all together and go with a tethering plan on Sprint 4G for all our data, home and away.

We still pipe in sunlight, but where I live has towns named by Indians. In fact the only gambling allowed in Alabama is on the reservations. One happens to be south of Weogufka, in a town called Wetumpka...

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Robert, the map you posted of Sylacauga....if you noticed the Merkel Field almost in the center, where I live would be a couple inches above those letters. (well, above, slightly left). So if they did something on the eastern side of that city, I probably won't notice anything at all where I am. I know the tower that's listed on Hwy 280 (just before county road 102) is the one I mentioned being on Merkel Moutain, and it's a 3G Sprint tower. Always have great service right there around it..but if you come to my house (about 6 miles away from that tower in a straight line) you barely get anything. Hence why I got the AIrave...now I have no clue what's around here because the Airave is always on. I do know verizon arranged a roaming agreement with AT&T for the AT&T tower I said was 1 mile from my driveway..because one day I had to take my DSL down for a few, and I noticed my cell phone had full strength, but roaming full strength. I can't be too sure where there's a Nextel tower here, but I know there used to be one in this area, I want to say in Coosa county around Weogufka but I can't be absolutely positive on that. I just know at ONE time Nextel worked great here, but since I think they have decommisioned that particular tower.

I'll ask around, does this mean the site is brought online and active or just being built / in the works? I assume by what you said that its been constructed, and already up and transmitting or its testing and will transmit within a few days. Maybe I should switch from CDMA to CDMA/LTE/EVDO on my GS3. I had the 4G turned off since the day I bought it...

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A new site was added in Sylacauga this week. I received notification of it in this week's Network Vision updates.

 

Robert

Any chance you could give me some juicy details on it, like coordinate and details on it?

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I live right next to the DSLAM hut that gives my area DSL internet, plus AT&T has a cell tower one mile from me, so I know there are two 24 pair fiber lines feeding this hut, but it's not a Sprint area. Would be great if it was, but I think my tower is going to be on Merkel mountain in Sylacauga, that's probably the closest to me unless someone knows another. This particular tower is 3g so will be upgraded, can't wait either.

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Is there a link somewhere to the 100 sites that can't get backhaul to do the upgrade? I'd like to make sure there aren't any central Alabama areas on the list, as it would likely affect me.

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I saw the responses, and to that I say they would upgrade before selling. Like I mentioned, a company that pays for the cellular service that it also provides to its employees isn't going to just let that go away. Not sure hope many thousands have southern Linc but they are available to non southern company employees, they just have some very stringent credit requirements(worse than what Nextel used to be before acquired by Sprint). I never heard of any other company that bought its own cellular towers so it could provide two-way radio operation to its employees. The cellular side isn't monitored either, they don't care what minutes their employees use on minutes used. They only own southern Linc because they didn't have a radio option that would fill their needs as a Nextel-type solution would, considering they have smokestacks that are a couple thousand feet tall to have their mini towers mounted at every plant.

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We aren't talking about a cash-strapped company here, they aren't going to make a deal like that, one that would uproot the communications of an electrical utility providing millions with power, after the depth that solinc has in the company. I guess you would have to know and see firsthand, but they don't care about money. Just the plant my wife is at employees over 400 folks at that location and they pay the bill for their employees. Southern company has over 26000 employees and they provide these solinc phones to everyone(mostly everyone), so imagine the cost and ask yourself if they wouldn't just make the employee pay 20 bucks a paycheck first before they would sell anything to make money. Considering start pay, entry level is $20/hour most people would not mind paying, but I think they will introduce new devices that do what I mentioned above, I guess we will see soon as it won't be long before she will get an email from the higher ups saying what will happen when iden is taken offline.

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speaking of the direct connect app, do you know if that app is chipset dependent, or not? Someone posted that they were told the app would only work with the Qualcomm MSM 8655 chip, but like in the galaxy s3, it has the MSM 8960 (I think I got those numbers right), I looked earlier but forgot the exact chip numbers.

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If you hear anything let me know, but I will say this, as big of a company as southern company is (also taking in southern nuclear), I know behind the scenes they already have something in motion. I mentioned this to my wife just now and she said not having southern Linc would seriously cause the entire plant to have major problems. I know they may not be moving on anything publicly, but they buy licenses for 10 and 20 year periods, nothing like roaming agreements that only go for a year out or sometimes two. Especially considering they have their own branded phones, tech support and even newer android phones available to employees, I don't see them letting themselves be bought, or allowing the service to degrade much, they will likely arrange something similar to the direct connect now app that has been put on the Google play store for transform ultra(but there is talk of the app being opened to other android devices,) but I could be wrong in that. I think they will likely go to a service that is parallel with the new direct connect, which is why this app can let smartphone customers connect with newer direct connect devices.

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I'm not sure they will sell it to Sprint because southern Linc is a collaboration of the companies within southern company: Alabama power, Georgia power, etc covering like, 5 states and they use this on the company premises instead of your standard Motorola two-way radios that you see lots of companies using. I say that u doubt it because southern company wanted to control their coal trains, so guess what.... they bought the train company. Anything they want that could cause them operational loss, they own. They want no other company to be able to cause them downtime on any level, especially power production.

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You have it flipped. Sprint has very little 900mhz, while having 14Mhz of 800SMR nationwide( well except in the southeast where they share some of it with SouthernLINC)

 

I live in a southern Linc area, and actually my wife has a southern Linc phone. She is an employee of southern company , they are the ones who license that tower usage for their cell phones which are basically Nextel phones with southern Linc name. I'm wondering how southern Linc will be affected by network vision and what will happen to southern Linc when iden is decommissioned? Anyone know?

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So, I live in central Alabama...I'm probably somewhere around half the distance between Birmingham, and Montgomery...two cities that I'm SURE will get 4G due to their size and population..but as for my area, I can't really say.

I live on the south end of the county, but twice a year the north end of the county becomes the 2nd largest population-wise due to the Nascar track...(for those still wondering, I live near Talladega Superspeedway, but this is still a good 20 miles from me on the opposite end of the county)...

I don't know if they'll light-up this county due to it's affiliation with Nascar or not, and if they do, then it probably STILL won't affect me because of my distance from the track (zip = 35150).

With 4G being more than likely destined to come to Bham and Mont...I guess we'll have to deal with 3G Advanced here??

Question is, what exactly is the 3G advanced..and does this advanced 3G mean that eventually 4G will be present?

I thought they said that every that was within a Sprint 3G area right now would be getting a 4G signal when they finish the roll-out/deployment...or am I wrong in that?

I'm already receiving a discount on mine, because of my wife working for Southern Company (You would think that a company that generates frigging electricity would get more than a 5% discount, especially when it's sometimes considered a government entity), but it won't let me modify my current discount without calling into Sprint...and I don't want to do that.

Says my discount is confirmed throught June 11, 2013 so no action is required on my account at this time when I tried to use my AIM.com address.

AOL.com doesn't work, as seen above, but AIM.com DOES work, and allows you to verify.

I'm sure shocked that my AIM account was still there, I haven't logged into it since 2008, so I was stunned that it let me even log-in

I used my AOL Instant Messenger (AIM.com) email account to get a 25% discount on service, which is cheaper than the Everything Plus. I pay $62.49 for the 450 minute plan, and that includes the Premium data. When it asks for Employer name when signing up for that discount, use AOL Corp.

So anyone can sign up for aim and use the email account to say they work for aol and get 25% off? That beats my wife's southern company/Alabama power discount by a long shot.

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