Hockey dad in Gloucester, ON...

[gmd]

I have two sons who play house-league hockey. Our local arena has good HSPA coverage (and CDMA coverage, since about 4 years ago).

When we have away games, my Android phone goes to 1 or no signal bars, or out of service. These arenas are in smaller neighborhoods in Ottawa. If you force your phone to 850 Mhz, nothing changes; if you set it to 1900 Mhz, phone goes out-of-service right away. Pretty annoying, when you know people on Rogers get good coverage (full signal in one where mine goes in and out of service).

I know of at least 4 arenas where this happens.

Maybe it's time to switch...

-gmd

[reveries3]

You gotta do what you gotta do.

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[RightThere]

You are inside of a concrete building. It has more to do with the signal repeaters set up in the building (which is not carrier dependant).

Rogers phones have fall-back signal, whereas Bell and Telus do not.

[awebber]

If you just want voice coverage, I'd also look at an old-fashioned prepaid phone with Rogers or someone you know has coverage where you want to be. Maybe forward your Android to it on days you know it's important, or give the number to the critical people you want to reach you?

=aw

[droidacolyte]

You are inside of a concrete building. It has more to do with the signal repeaters set up in the building (which is not carrier dependant).

Rogers phones have fall-back signal, whereas Bell and Telus do not.

I don't think Rogers' EDGE network is any better in concrete areas though. I've had similar problems with Rogers' EDGE network when I was with Petro-Canada Mobility. When my WIND Mobile signal would cut off at the stairway where I work (lots of concrete there), I thought it was a AWS issue at the time. But when I tried Koodo (TELUS) there, same problem. This is a universal issue. But I find that Bell/Telus HSPA and Rogers picks up a weak signal better than WIND does. For eg. I can get reliable Bell/Telus reception in my basement. But not with WIND.

[gmd]

I have a WIND stick, and I have seen the difference with weak signals.

Forcing a phone to 1900 Mhz will yield similar results to what WIND gets.

It has more to do with the signal repeaters set up in the building

You know a provider that puts repeaters in arenas? (and I'm not talking NHL here).

-gmd

[RightThere]

You know a provider that puts repeaters in arenas? (and I'm not talking NHL here).

-gmd

Lots do. In BC it's actually in the building code.

[DennyCrane]

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry Bold 9900: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9900; en) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.190 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

You know a provider that puts repeaters in arenas? (and I'm not talking NHL here).

-gmd

Lots do. In BC it's actually in the building code.

Really? Interesting...learn something new everyday!

[gmd]

Wi-fi, I'd understand, but cellular? Wow!

But being in the code makes it mandatory for newer rinks; what about old ones? We have 89 arenas in and around Ottawa, just on the Ontario side. That means that Bell and/or Telus, Rogers, Videotron, Wind and Mobilicity would be busy for a while (Mobilicity's coverage would benefit as they only have 32 sites in Ottawa).

-gmd

[bubble.tea]

^ LOL..approach your ward councillor., or MPP or whatever, and make this your afterschool special project? Get enough people involved and I'm sure they'll do something about it.

Heck, you could approach your provider yourself, and with good PR, sway them to proactively installing the repeaters . Or you could fall ***-backwards into a million bucks and do it yourself? (Seinfeld snippet anyone?) hehe.