Official Cellular South thread

[DRNewcomb]

I wish they'd allow us 3G roaming in-market so everything north of Garden Street in Escambia County wouldn't be 1X.

Well, they seem to but only in areas where they don't provide any native service. C-Spire's Fla coverage seems to exist only for existing customers who are going to their beachview condos. For a long time they seemed to believe that no one ever ventured north of I-10. Coverage on the beach is great, nothing in the north. The fringe of the service area is all 1X. Now that they have in-market roaming, when your phone drops C-Spire's native coverage, it should drop onto Verizon's map.

[Ned the Nanite]

I just took a trip from one end of Mississippi to the other, including a day in Memphis, and I can say without any doubt that C Spire does NOT specifically hate the AL/FL coast. Their network is as bad in their home state as it is here. Lots of 1x areas, slow to dead 3G, even in the smallest of towns. Network coverage was surprisingly weak even along the I-55 corridor and I found a few places just off the highways where it was weak enough to cause my phone to bug out* and go crazy.

About the only city where it really seemed to work well was Hattiesburg, specifically around the mall on the outskirts of town. Even though every part of MS and Memphis I checked was EV-DO Rev A, this was the only town where the data was at all speedy. Certainly a lot faster than what we get in Alabama!

Overall though, it was so "not better" in the rest of Mississippi I felt compelled to come on here and complain. I really thought it was just the coast they hated, but that's apparently not true. Their network is crap pretty much everywhere. I'm so, so disappointed. Now that T-Mobile has HSPA+ in Mobile and Pensacola and Verizon has true 4G LTE in Mobile, Baldwin + Escambia Counties, C Spire's network is really starting to lag behind.

Beyond the carrier, I'm also getting tired of having to pull the battery in my phone 3x a week because Google Maps or some other supposedly competent program locks it up. I sure has worn the lustre off my love for Android.

Sorry for my rant, guys, but I had to get that off my chest. I feel better now. Thanks!

* - The Samsung Galaxy S series apparently has a bug where a weak 3G signal on the 800 MHz band causes RF interference in the chip that detects key presses on the soft keys, causing lots of false registers to occur. In my case, any time it was transferring data and I set the phone on my lap or leg while in the car, it would spontaneously start registering the back key as being held down, causing all kids of weird issues like not being able to load apps and rendering the power button useless because it was taking screenshots. As soon as I left rural Mississippi (but near I-55) or got on wifi, the problem went away. It only happens once in a blue moon in Baldwin County but happened dozens of times while I was in MS. Weird. I would have thought their MS network was much more robust.

[DRNewcomb]

We took a long road trip this summer and spent a lot of time roaming Verizon. I suppose it's network saturation or something but we had many cases roaming Verizon where our experience was no better than what you describe with C-Spire.

[Ned the Nanite]

We took a long road trip this summer and spent a lot of time roaming Verizon. I suppose it's network saturation or something but we had many cases roaming Verizon where our experience was no better than what you describe with C-Spire.

It has been discovered that Verizon is officially throttling roamers to varying degrees depending on network activity. I think it started this summer. Early this year I went to Birmingham and had about an equal experience as I do here on the home network; three months later it was completely unusable as soon as the little dreaded triangle popped up. I don't think I did an entire megabyte's data download in three days of travel use. I've also had the same experience in Panama City — it simply acted like the network was dead for hours at a time, data-wise.

I was in Birmingham more recently, though, and it was a little better. Not great, but 1x-like speeds beat 0.0 like I had last time.

I'd love to know if Verizon is doing this to other roamers like Sprint and Alltel or just us poor little old C-Spire'ers.

[Ned the Nanite]

As if I needed another thing to complain about regarding C Spire, today I had trouble loading a web page up in the Opera Mobile browser on my phone. It kept redirecting me to a mobile site where I couldn't access the content I wanted. So I switched the browser agent to "Desktop" and instead of getting the desktop site, I got a message from C Spire telling me if I wanted to tether, I could add a 1 GB package for "just" $30.

Seriously, they use browser agent sniffing to seek out tethering? That's not only a comically inefficient way to do things, but it hampers anyone like me trying to spoof a header to get a different web page. Not to mention that price is nothing short of outrageous. I wasn't using a computer, just my own little phone.

Is there a way around that stupid, infuriating message? I should be allowed to browse any site I want on my phone without their idiot message getting in the way. What REALLY makes it worse was I did the same thing in the stock browser, and didn't get the warning. They've just singled out third party browsers, which I use about 75% of the time.

God, December cannot come fast enough.

[Ned the Nanite]

I suppose relatively few will see this since the main Howard Forums page has been stolen away from its rightful owner, but anyone who's gotten in through other means can see this: it appears C Spire is upgrading all or part of the network in lower Baldwin County. I happened to flip on my wifi sniffing program today and it showed the network in Gulf Shores was now EV-DO Rev. A instead of Rev. 0. It's still 0 here in Foley, though.

I don't know if this is something new or related to some cell tower work I spotted on AL-59 the other day, but if it boosts speeds it'll be a welcome change. Today's service was almost non-existent despite good signal strength, so I hope they're working the bugs out.

[Frenchfry]

In the circle forum on C-Spires circle one of the mod's stated that the 1x area would get the hand me stuff. I guess that also is the 3G rev 0 areas also.

[reedacus25]

Anyone have any luck unlocking CSpire iPhone 4S's or 5's to accept a US SIM (ie AT&T, T-Mobile, etc.)

Tried popping my T-mobile Micro SIM in my friends 4S and it took me to the "Activation" screen where it said it couldn't activate.

[Ned the Nanite]

In the circle forum on C-Spires circle one of the mod's stated that the 1x area would get the hand me stuff. I guess that also is the 3G rev 0 areas also.

More evidence of that: while in Cordova Mall in Pensacola tonight, I had a sporadic but strong 3G connection inside the mall only. As soon as I stepped outside or deep into the Belk department store, 1x only. But when I walked to the mall entrance, 3G. Sorta. Maybe 1 in 5 connections was 3G (EV-DO Rev. 0) but when it did hook up, it was definitely faster than 1x!

I'm happy to see them making at least a token effort around the mall, but it's too little too late for me. Unless they magically light up all of Pensacola and the rest of Baldwin County in EV-DO of some flavor by the end of November, I'm gone. In P'Cola and Mobile, T-Mobile has HSPA+, AT&T has HSPA and Verizon has LTE. EV-DO just can't hang with those speeds. I ran a speed test on the SGSIII at the T-Mobile store on Bayou the other day and with barely 1 bar of "4G" I still managed nearly 5 Mbps down and around 1.5 up. Damn, just… damn.

[Ned the Nanite]

Wow, this is a dead thread, ain't it?

It's December, and I've left C Spire for Verizon. Originally wanted to go with AT&T for their better selection of phones but their recently-launched LTE doesn't reach central Baldwin County yet and the sales drone at our local store didn't have an ETA for enhanced backhaul. T-Mobile is still nowhere adding 4G HSPA+ here, either, so I decided to give big red a try.

I picked up an HTC Droid DNA and so far it's been a pretty good phone. Battery life is not spectacular but no worse than the Galaxy S Showcase it replaces. The star of the show is the LTE, of course, and it doesn't disappoint. Where I was getting 0.5 to 1.5 Mbps down on C Spire, I'm getting 30-40 Mbps down on Verizon. The consistency issues with C Spire simply don't exist here on Verizon. Even when I fell back to 3G the other day it didn't skip a beat and everything worked pretty flawlessly. It was really great going way out to Milton and west to rural West Mobile County and never losing LTE, too.

C Spire was great in some ways — in two years I never once dropped a call, and the customer service was great* — but not great in the ways I need. (* - figures, I only made about 30 calls in two years and never called 611 even once.)

[reedacus25]

Just curious if anyone with a CSpire iPhone 5 has updated to iOS 6.1 and if LTE is in fact active now? According to Apple's link it looks like the 6.1 update is the ticket to the LTE network for CSpire customers.

And I hate to see this thread go dead like this...

[Frenchfry]

Just curious if anyone with a CSpire iPhone 5 has updated to iOS 6.1 and if LTE is in fact active now? According to Apple's link it looks like the 6.1 update is the ticket to the LTE network for CSpire customers.

And I hate to see this thread go dead like this...

Yes, I update our two business phone to 6.1 and stop by the CSpire store to get two sim cards. One is up and going with LTE and will install other soon. The phone shows LTE at top instead of 3G.

From reading the circle they are not letting everybody walk into the store and just get one assigned to them. The store is leading some people to there website to order it. But go figure one option on the website is pickup at store.

[R_Z]

I've been seeing this thread continue through my emails. I don't have the iPhone 5. The reason is simple. When I questioned it, I was told that my grandfathered pricing structure would now become null and void. I'm pretty sure I was told my deal was my deal with no hitch. Now they're telling me if I upgrade a phone, not only do I get another two year stint, but my entire rate package changes and not in a good way. My wife and I will lose our unlimited everything deal, get less features for more money. Sounds like a good time to switch when my contract expires this year.

[reedacus25]

Well, for those of you hoping to see CSpire expand into the north Alabama, sorry to see this come across me... http://www.fcc.gov/document/att-cell...ccepted-filing

Sad to see Corr become AT&T fodder...

[Frenchfry]

Well, for those of you hoping to see CSpire expand into the north Alabama, sorry to see this come across me... http://www.fcc.gov/document/att-cell...ccepted-filing

Sad to see Corr become AT&T fodder...

Darn!
I have been follow them buying this spectrum and Corr since for some time. I always thought they would follow though with this. I just wonder if it was a investment move all along.

What a shame. My prediction is that C Spire will sell out some day. I think that US Cellular will buy them.