Did Sprint leave a tower on by accident?

[CircuitSwitched]

I'm outside of Chatanooga, TN and I forgot to turn my SouthernLINC phone off and low and behold I have 4 bars of "Ready" showing up. This is a Motorola i686 iDEN device so the only thing it's capable of picking up is some type of iDEN technology, this is what it would show when I would leave the SouthernLINC coverage area in the past when I did not enable nationwide roaming on my account.

I am not near an airport or any facility that would be using a smaller iDEN harmony network. When I go to GPS in trace mode, the coordinates take me to a Sprint tower.

[i0wnj00]

Has the Sprint cell site been upgraded to NV 2.0 / Next Gen standards by Ericsson / Nokia?

If not, the cell site was likely purposely left on as other Nextel cell sites in the same region / time zone were disabled and turned off. As I remember the process according to the WSJ as the clock hit midnight in each time zone. Sprint remotely sent commands to the iDEN network locally to prevent anymore new calls from being processed. If the cell site has been upgraded by Ericsson / Nokia then its still possible to run iDEN. The upgraded Sprint network can utilize any air interface as they see fit.

[brad15]

Has the Sprint cell site been upgraded to NV 2.0 / Next Gen standards by Ericsson / Nokia?

If not, the cell site was likely purposely left on as other Nextel cell sites in the same region / time zone were disabled and turned off. As I remember the process according to the WSJ as the clock hit midnight in each time zone. Sprint remotely sent commands to the iDEN network locally to prevent anymore new calls from being processed. If the cell site has been upgraded by Ericsson / Nokia then its still possible to run iDEN. The upgraded Sprint network can utilize any air interface as they see fit.

But considering it's been 2yrs since the shut off, why would this one site still be blasting out iDen?

[Mackdad]

I'm outside of Chatanooga, TN and I forgot to turn my SouthernLINC phone off and low and behold I have 4 bars of "Ready" showing up. This is a Motorola i686 iDEN device so the only thing it's capable of picking up is some type of iDEN technology, this is what it would show when I would leave the SouthernLINC coverage area in the past when I did not enable nationwide roaming on my account.

I am not near an airport or any facility that would be using a smaller iDEN harmony network. When I go to GPS in trace mode, the coordinates take me to a Sprint tower.

Could be SpaceData. They have small networks spread around the USA.
http://www.spacedata.net/commercial_coverage.html

[brad15]

Could be SpaceData. They have small networks spread around the USA.
http://www.spacedata.net/commercial_coverage.html

Humm it shows coverage around PHX. I wonder what band they are using here?

[CircuitSwitched]

Could be SpaceData. They have small networks spread around the USA.
http://www.spacedata.net/commercial_coverage.html

Hmm. It doesn't look like the rural part I was in was covered but it may be new?

[CircuitSwitched]

Has the Sprint cell site been upgraded to NV 2.0 / Next Gen standards by Ericsson / Nokia?

If not, the cell site was likely purposely left on as other Nextel cell sites in the same region / time zone were disabled and turned off. As I remember the process according to the WSJ as the clock hit midnight in each time zone. Sprint remotely sent commands to the iDEN network locally to prevent anymore new calls from being processed. If the cell site has been upgraded by Ericsson / Nokia then its still possible to run iDEN. The upgraded Sprint network can utilize any air interface as they see fit.

I know it's an Ericsson area, my Sprint phone had the same signal strength as my LINC phone but oddly enough it was B26 LTE so I am really confused now. It still jumps right back to "Ready" when I turn it back on right now, normally it will say "No Service" with a red x if it couldn't pick up an iDEN signal.

[CircuitSwitched]

Humm it shows coverage around PHX. I wonder what band they are using here?

Their slideshow indicates it's 1.7 MHz in the 901-940 MHz band.

[i0wnj00]

But considering it's been 2yrs since the shut off, why would this one site still be blasting out iDen?

As mentioned.
That could be that Sprint purposely left that site on and left the Nortel equipment there, which isn't likely since that would incur additional costs and space of keeping legacy Nortel and Next Gen equipment at the same spot. It's more likely that, at least this particular site that Sprint decided keep iDEN on for some reason and simply asked Ericsson to keep it running utilizing the RBS 6000.

[i0wnj00]

I know it's an Ericsson area, my Sprint phone had the same signal strength as my LINC phone but oddly enough it was B26 LTE so I am really confused now. It still jumps right back to "Ready" when I turn it back on right now, normally it will say "No Service" with a red x if it couldn't pick up an iDEN signal.

Ericsson is no longer a vendor for Sprint.
All areas which was formerly under the responsibility of Ericsson are now under the responsibility of Nokia.