N.E. Nevada Converts Nov. 21st

**sprke81** · 11-18-2010, 08:09 AM

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That isn't good at all. I hope there not just putting 7.2 equipment in and not upgrading the backhaul..

**deltadog03** · 11-18-2010, 10:11 AM

honestly Mark, its prolly a soft turn on to begin with. I know when I was in central GA they turned on 3g and for a couple of weeks the best speed I got was 1mb/sec. Then they turned it up full blast and was getting 3mb/s down. (that was 18 months ago as well).

**Jordan T** · 11-18-2010, 12:20 PM

Hope you're right deltadog! Well, those numbers certainly suggest what sprke fears, that the backhaul hasn't been upgraded... BUT, everything we heard in advance was that AT&T was doing massive backhaul upgrades... so, I'm not too worried until I hear more reports like that.

**shango6** · 11-18-2010, 01:47 PM

I know for a fact they added backhaul out here.
The others should be here today or tomorrow. The BB has a memory card the htc is still sealed so I dont know.

**kilovolt** · 11-18-2010, 02:17 PM

Interesting. I wonder if they are adding any additional towers along US50. I drove it from Carson City to Provo last summer and coverage was just about nonexistent on AT&T from outside Fallon to Austin...not sure how many towers really exist out there in the salt flats.

Interestingly in west Utah from about GBNP to Delta in the sagebrush flats, I would get 4 bars of GSM to show up on my phone, but couldn't make a call because I was outside of the ~30 mile GSM distance limit.

I wonder if this is going to change with WCDMA out there? Hope so - its pretty sparse out there.

**shango6** · 11-18-2010, 02:33 PM

The gsm hard limit is 22 miles, most of the rural cdma tower were 30 miles some up to 75.
I'm hoping that if they do apply range limits to umts they copy the current cdma settings.
I would be great if umts had no distance limit and no option in the software for them to apply one.
Its a bit pointless anyway because none of these phones have direct ports for external antennas so you are kinda limited by the phone rf performance.

**uli2000** · 11-18-2010, 04:02 PM

Grrr, Im a little mad right now. I'm at work and I am only getting the old Alltel GRPS. I usually connected to the tower near the airport while at work. At home, it was 3g, but that usually picks up the tower on the mountain above town. Hopefully this changes as I get almost no coverage outside at work and absolutly none inside.

**sprke81** · 11-18-2010, 04:58 PM

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Originally Posted by uli2000

Grrr, Im a little mad right now. I'm at work and I am only getting the old Alltel GRPS. I usually connected to the tower near the airport while at work. At home, it was 3g, but that usually picks up the tower on the mountain above town. Hopefully this changes as I get almost no coverage outside at work and absolutly none inside.

So your coverage at work is less then it was on cdma?

**uli2000** · 11-18-2010, 05:38 PM

OK, its 3g at work now. Dont know if it was maintenence or just turned on.

edit: back to gprs @2000

**Jordan T** · 11-19-2010, 12:52 AM

Shongo, no matter how many times you make the claim you make about most rural sites having 30+ mile cell radius, it's just not true. Remember the limit is cell radius, not cell spacing. 30 mile cell radius would be sites spaced 60 miles apart. That's almost unheard of. I live in a very rural area and the furthest cell radius I know of is right about 18 miles... well within the hard limits of GSM, and it doesn't work very well with CDMA.

In perfectly flat terrain with tall sites, cell radiuses in excess of 35km/22mi are possible; but extremely rare in the real world due to capacity issues. I've NEVER heard of a 75 mile cell radius. Possibly spacing between sites. I have heard of a 70km cell radius (GSM Extended Range) used in the Australian outback. And I suppose under just perfect conditions, 75 miles with an amplifier is maybe possible in CDMA. But you present this as a common situation, it's just not. Anything over 22 miles applies only to an extremely small minority of cell sites in the most rural AND flat areas. Not "most rural sites"

Additionally, these hard limits simply don't apply to UMTS.

Uli, sounds like they're having growing pains. No surprise. Every CDMA to GSM conversion and CDMA to UMTS conversion I've heard of has had such problems. Even Telstra's Next-G in rural Australia... one of the most-hyped, most large scale (and early!) CDMA to UMTS deployments attempted. Still had new coverage holes not fixed for months. It was better in many places too, but that doesn't get the media attention

For the vast majority of people who are not already in a very fringe area, this should be an improvement though. In fringe areas it may be a major improvement - or a major problem.

**Jordan T** · 11-19-2010, 02:01 AM

P.S. to those interested in the eventual outcomes, CDMA to GSM/UMTS conversions, while they always seem to have their growing pains, are always very successful it would seem. Most major ex-CDMA carriers have done this conversion, the notable exceptions being Sprint and Verizon. Sprint doesn't mind being the odd man out on tech (Mobile WiMax, iDEN). But it really surprises me that Vodafone hasn't got Verizon to switch...

**shango6** · 11-19-2010, 10:06 AM

In west Nevada some of the towers are spaced over 60 miles apart. They are on mountain peaks that are 3-5k feet above the users. Most of them, both what is now Verizon and Commnet are running extended range which is 70 miles +. Commnet is even running some extended range gsm, 70km. Trust me on this...I know the local engineers. If you live in the South you would have no clue how the rural West is built out. Its totally different.

I hope the rest of my new phones get here today.

**Jordan T** · 11-19-2010, 11:40 AM

Hey guys, just to clarify, shongo and I have no beef, my post was prolly a little harsh. I got a PM from him with some cool info... and he's totally right that such setups exist... I just disagree with him on the idea that it's going to affect a substantial number of people. Because I do live in the rural west

Just not as rural or the same terrain.

Shongo's concern is very real - for the tiny number of people it affects. And I do feel for them, many of them will lose the only phone service they ever had access to; or at least will require a large amount of money to maintain service. But in terms of raw numbers, it's a tiny tiny minority of the people.

**stormin7** · 11-22-2010, 04:16 PM

My phone came today via Fed Ex. It is up and running. Took all of five minutes to port the number. Call quality and signal are great so far. Download speeds so far are 2.8 M download and 380 K upload. The AT&T website is still not available for this area even though we officially converted yesterday. AT&T signs went up last week at all the stores. I guess this is it. Hope it goes well for the rest of you.

**sprke81** · 11-22-2010, 08:16 PM

Originally Posted by stormin7

My phone came today via Fed Ex. It is up and running. Took all of five minutes to port the number. Call quality and signal are great so far. Download speeds so far are 2.8 M download and 380 K upload. The AT&T website is still not available for this area even though we officially converted yesterday. AT&T signs went up last week at all the stores. I guess this is it. Hope it goes well for the rest of you.

The download speeds sound promising..I'm hoping to hear of 3 and 4MB down then I'll be happy