> That's interesting.
> So, why (or how) do users of higher end Verizon phones reports better
> reception.
> There is certainly more than subjective difference.
> Three years ago, I noticed a difference between my vx4500 and whatever
> phone was down the scale VX3200 or something.
>
>
"Reception" infers the signal coming out of the tower and INTO your
receiver. Towers have far more signal than Sellphones transmit. The
receivers are custom ICs, now.
The companies, including wonderful Verizon, are doing everything they can
to expand the number of calls made per square mile in populated areas,
where the money is. So, as you'll notice on the old AMPS towers, the
antennas are way down near the ground, now, and mini cells have been
erected with antennas only 100' high, instead of the old, powerful 500'
tall AMPS towers that covered a 10 mile circle, and still do out on the
boonies. To accomplish this increase in system load, they must reduce
the footprint of each tower, use lots of towers, then drop the power of
your handset so you don't light up too many of the low-profile, low
powered towers at once.
There's no reason to care about your own "range" or "reception".
A lot of the "reception" difference is more PERCEPTION....unless it has
an 800 Mhz pullup antenna you can extend to increase antenna efficiency
next to your head. New phones have no antenna but a piece of wire on the
circuit board....the best reason for the poor service from transmitter
and receiver.
"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88@comcast.net> wrote in
news:6tSdnQjhm_KSOMPVnZ2dnUVZ_g2dnZ2d@comcast.com:
> There are gadgets called "repeaters" that will increase your range.
> I've never seen one nor, knowingly, used one. Some are intended for use
> in vehicles, others are intended to be installed in, or on top of,
> buildings.
>
Next time you're in your local mall, you know, the one where the signal on
your cell sucks, go to the Verizon COMPANY store, not the little resellers
(not many have a repeater). As you approach the COMPANY store, keep an eye
on your receiver's meter, the bars display. If, as you approach the
Verizon store, you see your bars rise up peaking as you enter the store,
look closely at the ceiling for a square white box that protrudes down from
the ceiling for no apparent reason, usually over the cheap phones demo
kiosk. That's the inside antenna of what I call, because it makes ANY
phone work like there's a tower in the store, a "cheater repeater"....(c;
The AMPS fun days are but a memory, now. What I used to do was to carry
the 3W bagphone up near the store and make an AMPS call....completely
blocking the cheater repeater's outbound receiver....(c; It made all the
phones being demo'd look just awful...NO SERVICE...
On Jun 19, 8:24 pm, Redigoogle <redicl...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I live in a mountainous area in northern California....
> Recently, within the last three to five months,Verizonservice has changed noticeably even dramatically.
> So much so that some of my friends have changed providers.
> ...
Bingo. Dagnabbit. Anyone know specifically about this last
weekend, June 18-21 -- was anything especially bad?
I've been successfully using a Kyocera 6035 for years at a mountain
field work site in N. Ca. -- always connected fine.
All that time, people with newer phones without the pullout type
antenna have often found they couldn't work cellular where we could.
This trip, first of the summer, was different -- we have two identical
phones, same behavior. The phone shows three bars for about ten
seconds, then "searching" for about 30 seconds. Repeated same problem
all four days we were on the site.
I'd guessed what someone later in this thread describes -- Verizon
must have quit using their tall tower that was line of sight for us
and moved to smaller weaker cells, and we're beyond the fringe now.
Anyone have a recommendation for a Verizon phone known good at their
margin?
What "higher end" pricier phones do work?
Hoping to hear from someone who has experienced this loss of signal
and succeeded in finding hardware to get connection back?
Anyone have a recommendation for any cell phone model that will
reliably take an external antenna?
The old Kyocera would work with an external antenna ok, but the
adapter was a pressure-fit onto a very flimsy little diagnostic port.
Too easy to break right off the circuit board, I had to resolder mine
several times and have kept going only by swapping parts, til now.
If indeed there was a problem with no analog channels during this
period -- what time span? Will it be restored?
I appreciate your technical knowledge, Larry.
Very informative and helpful.
> "Reception" infers the signal coming out of the tower and INTO your
> receiver.
By "good reception" I mean "easy to hear caller", "no warbelling or
cutting out" usually means good "bars" indicated but not always, and
quality of incoming call does not vary with elevation of phone, or
indoors or outdoors. Anything less than all of those qualities all at
once is, in my opinion and experience, something less than "good"
reception. I don't experience "good reception" as a matter of
"perception". It either is or it isn't.
Whatever signal is available at any locations (and it certainly varies
in strength judging from the number of bars shown) I presume that
individual phone models vary in their ability to "amplify" the signal
that is "received" through induction. Am I on the right track?
By "good transmission" I mean, call connects right away and ringing
begins, caller can hear me easily with no warbling or cutting out and
transmission does not vary with elevation of phone or indoors or
outdoors (assuming they are getting "good reception").
I understand that one cannot expect to get "good reception" or "good
transmission" with any phone all the time or every where.
To re-emphasize the original direction of this thread. Good reception
and good transmission, for me and many of my Verizon user friends in
our area changed in the last couple of months. Customers of the local
competing provider that uses (or did) same protocol and as far as I
know the same towers do not report this change although the
complaining customer sample is small. I'm trying to determine what is
different.
>Towers have far more signal than Sellphones transmit. The
> receivers are custom ICs, now.
Could you elaborate on this. If what you mean is that Towers transmit
more powerful signals than a cell phone transmits, well that's clear.
What is an IC? Integrated Circuit?
>you'll notice on the old AMPS towers,
What is an AMPS tower?
> There's no reason to care about your own "range" or "reception".
Only in the terms above.
> mini cells have been erected with antennas only 100' high, instead of the old, powerful 500'
>tall AMPS towers that covered a 10 mile circle, and still do out on the boonies.
500 foot tower?
I am in the boonies.
There are some big towers on the mountain ridges.
On the other hand, Verizon reports cell locations in two nearby
"towns" and I don't think there is even a 100 foot tower in those
areas. Could the change you suggest be a factor in the problem I'm
reporting?
Hank Roberts wrote:
> On Jun 19, 8:24 pm, Redigoogle <redicl...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I live in a mountainous area in northern California....
>> Recently, within the last three to five months,Verizonservice has changed noticeably even dramatically.
>> So much so that some of my friends have changed providers.
>> ...
>
> Bingo. Dagnabbit. Anyone know specifically about this last
> weekend, June 18-21 -- was anything especially bad?
>
> I've been successfully using a Kyocera 6035 for years at a mountain
> field work site in N. Ca. -- always connected fine.
> All that time, people with newer phones without the pullout type
> antenna have often found they couldn't work cellular where we could.
<snip>
> If indeed there was a problem with no analog channels during this
> period -- what time span? Will it be restored?
Not sure where you are talking about exactly, but rural and mountain
coverage for Verizon took a big hit when AMPS was shut down. Lots of
places that used to have coverage now have no coverage.
There was still AMPS in central California's gold country (Golden State
Cellular) in March, and in far northern California and southern Oregon
(U.S. Cellular) last week (my own experience). Someone reported Verizon
AMPS out in Death Valley recently. In Silicon Valley, AMPS is completely
gone, even though in the surrounding greenbelt there is often no digital
at all, either GSM or CDMA.
You're probably S.O.L. with Verizon if you need AMPS. Switch carriers,
if there is one to switch to that's any better.
> By "good reception" I mean "easy to hear caller", "no warbelling or
> cutting out" usually means good "bars" indicated but not always, and
> quality of incoming call does not vary with elevation of phone, or
> indoors or outdoors. Anything less than all of those qualities all at
> once is, in my opinion and experience, something less than "good"
> reception. I don't experience "good reception" as a matter of
> "perception". It either is or it isn't.
>
I'm sorry but they've turned off that system to increase profits. It was
called AMPS and used analog FM radio technology, the same technology as
your car radio's clear, ungarbled music stations...(except rap).
Digital cellphones are never going to sound great. The sample rates are
only 8 or 11 Khz to increase the number of users they can jam on a single
channel in whatever digital scheme the company uses. The lovers will
piss on me for talking AMPS, but just listen to any music on hold on a
digital phone and it sounds like someone pissing in a paint can. Music
on hold on an AMPS phone sounded just like it does on your wired
landline...
The warbelling and cutting out are caused by the codec crashing on bad
data as multipath interference caused by your UHF signal bounces off
buildings and other metal objects, even that jet landing overhead,
sending the error correction scheme of the technology into overrun. On
the old AMPS phone, it sounded like the signal faded when the reflected
signal cancelled the direct signal, you moved a few inches and the direct
signal to reflected signal ratio improved. On digital, it just
dies....dropping the call if it can't recover quickly.
Digital was never a good thing in marginal conditions. Wait until those
car TV viewers find out ATSC, their new digital TV scheme, DOESN'T
support a moving vehicle. It locks the picture as soon as you start
moving and it never comes back until you stop and it can resync the
data....even right by the megawatt transmitter tower!
Yes. There are now customer integrated circuits that are whole radio
transceivers....all in one chip with very few external parts, mostly
filters so it only hears one channel at a time. It's how they cram a
sellphone, Bluetooth, 700 Mhz digital TV receiver, GPS all into a tiny flat
PDA with a 3" screen....integration.
> 500 foot tower?
> I am in the boonies.
> There are some big towers on the mountain ridges.
> On the other hand, Verizon reports cell locations in two nearby
> "towns" and I don't think there is even a 100 foot tower in those
> areas. Could the change you suggest be a factor in the problem I'm
> reporting?
>
You're never going to have good sellphone service in the boonies.
1 - Verizon doesn't want to waste money on rural coverage when it's much
more profitable in the cities.
2 - In mountains, you'd need a cell or at least a repeater every time you
can't see the tower, directly, to overcome that nasty multipath problem
they don't ever want you to talk about.
3 - We've turned down the phone's power so far and eliminated all the
external antenna connections, making the antennas more and more
inefficient to make the glitzy girls happy until, even in flat country,
the phones won't radiate a signal bigger than the noise from the sun more
than a mile or two. In the mountains, you're lucky if it works 2 miles
from the tower, ESPECIALLY on 1900 Mhz....where propagation and
attenuation is MUCH worse. (Notice how much better VHF TV signals on low
frequencies work in the mountains than UHF TV signals with so many ghosts
caused by multipath interference you can hardly make out the analog
picture.)
Out in the boonies, what you need is a MOUNTED, POWERFUL AMPS carphone
with a high gain rooftop antenna (the old ones with the spring-looking
phasing section). Those work in the boonies....to the big towers on the
mountaintops.
But, alas, they've all gone, in the name of city profits.
> Whatever signal is available at any locations (and it certainly varies
> in strength judging from the number of bars shown) I presume that
> individual phone models vary in their ability to "amplify" the signal
> that is "received" through induction. Am I on the right track?
>
>
As you move and see the bars changing, even though the phones are designed
with a LOT of lag to keep you from seeing it, you are seeing the effects of
multipath, signals coming from many directions to your phone. When the
signals coming at you in different paths are in phase, the signal gets much
stronger. When they are out of phase, they cancel each other. The direct
signal is usually stronger so it doesn't cancel completely (unless there is
no direct signal), so you see the bars go from full to 2 to 3 to full to 1
moving only a few feet SLOWLY. If you move fast, the bar meter, purposely,
doesn't follow the fading. They don't want you to see too much, especially
if the news is bad....(c;
On Jun 19, 9:24 pm, Redigoogle <redicl...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I live in a mountainous area in northern California.
....
> Recently, within the last three to five months,
> Verizon service has changed noticeably even dramatically.
> So much so that some of my friends have changed providers.
This could be to a change in roaming agreements; your phone may have
been receiving service from a different carrier, even though it didn't
show roam.
Changing to a different phone might help, as would an external
antenna, such as those made by Wilson Electronics.
As far as different phones, both of my Motos do very well in fringe
areas. Unfortunately, both have been discontinued, but still might be
found on eBay. One is a 325i, the other an 815. The 815 easily has be
best reception of any digital-only phone I've used.
Change in service quality.
Linear Mode
