Repeated Call Failed with Full Bars of Service?

[kfigueroa]

Both my husband and I have had the same problem which started around 4 months ago and has gotten steadily worse. (We both have RAZR v3 phones)

We'll try to make a call and get "Call Failed: Retry?" over and over. It'll last for about 10 minutes and then we can place a call. Also, it effects incoming calls because I've had the phone right next to me and it never rings and then I suddenly get a voicemail notification. It usually goes on for 3 - 10 minutes at a time, sometimes several times in an hour. It usually happens when we're at home but sometimes happens elsewhere.

Tech support suggested getting a new SIM card, which we did and it didn't help. They suggested taking out the battery and SIM card to do a hard restart. Didn't help. At this point, they've totally written us off. They won't even let us out of our contract without fees and we've been loyal customers for years.

Anyone else having the same problem? Even better - has anyone had this problem and solved it?

[mframe]

Sounds like it might be a capacity issue on the nearby tower. Does this mainly happen in one location?

[kfigueroa]

Yes, it's mostly at my home or in the local area.

[clock3687]

Originally Posted by kfigueroa

Yes, it's mostly at my home or in the local area.

What area is that? The US is a big place. Have you called CS and asked them to put out a trouble ticket on that tower? Thatll at least get a tech out to check out the tower and hopefully resolve your issue.

[kfigueroa]

Originally Posted by clock3687

What area is that? The US is a big place. Have you called CS and asked them to put out a trouble ticket on that tower? Thatll at least get a tech out to check out the tower and hopefully resolve your issue.

I live near Los Angeles (area code 91750). I checked the personal coverage place and my address is almost directly in the middle of an area that has 5 bars. I've tried calling customer service many many times. They insist it's not the tower, it's not their problem. I think I'll call them, though and specifically request for a tech to come out around 6pm (one of the biggest problem times). Thanks

[Eric47]

how often do you restart your phone?

sometimes if you restart your phone you can cure problems like this..

[Andy]

Sounds like the cell site in your area is overloaded, especially since you say you are having the worst luck in getting calls out around 6 p.m, which is a busy time for wireless networks.
You can either hope for things to get better by the time your contract ends or switch to another carrier.

[TommyB]

Originally Posted by EricN4707

how often do you restart your phone?

sometimes if you restart your phone you can cure problems like this..

Try this (regularly). It worked for me with my old v3 - service with another carrier.

Seems like the useful life of the original RAZR v3 might be right around 2 yrs or so?

Best.
TB

Lovin' T-Mobile & the Moto W490 . . . .

[RadioRaiders]

I'll just echo what's allready been said, and say that it's most likley a network capacity issue if you have 5 bars and you have call attempt fails. The busiest times are normally weekdays around lunch time (11am-1pm) and right after work (4pm-6pm), altho if you live near a (for example) night-club or baseball field, you can get congestion in the evenings too (especially when the concert or game lets out).

Re-starting your phone shouldn't matter. It may be just a coincidence that during the minute or 2 it takes your phone to restart that meanwhile some capacity in the cell frees up and then you can then make a call. Or it could also be that when you re-start you phone it starts the cell selection process again, so maybe you will attach to a different cell that is further away but has free capacity. Altho the network should do that automatically without you having to re-start your phone. But I guess it can't hurt to re-start your phone and force a new cell selection process.

All networks have congestion problems from time to time. If you experience it alot, then T-Mob is also most likely aware of this and should (hopefully) upgrade the sites in you area to facilitate more capacity. Otherwise they are losing business and ticking off customers like you.

Originally Posted by kfigueroa

They insist it's not the tower, it's not their problem. I think I'll call them, though and specifically request for a tech to come out around 6pm (one of the biggest problem times). Thanks

Customer service people usually aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. If your phone displays the name of your cell, you can ask them to check the call block rate on that cell. The engineers at T-Mobile have a list with all the cells blocking rate, and can see which ones have a high amount of blocked calls. I don't know if customer service has access to this, but they might. You can ask.

[Eric47]

i dunno..ive just always noticed restarting a phone sometimes works...it rules out that possibility at least, also ive heard that sometimes it will reroute to another tower . maybe im wrong on this.

[RadioFoneGuy]

I think the first thing they teach CS about GSM is powercycle or remove battery and reset the SIM and send an OTA to the phone.

I see trouble tickets all the time that say that and they put handset ruled out please check tower. I will go to the customers house and park in their driveway so they can see me if their home then I will make dozens of Mobile to mobile and mobile to land line calls.

You are experiencing heavy blocked calls and more than likely Tmobile has known the whole time and there is a reason it hasnt been fixed and when it takes this long to fix a blocking problems it is probably a backhaul or a tower issue where equipment cant be added.

[SmArTeStChIlD421]

see the thing is on Motorola phones if the tower is congested itll see call failed: network busy.........not just call failed..........there has to be something else wrong with the tower

[Eric47]

Originally Posted by Cailiff04

the women who post this must be a Sprint customer...sprint NEVER blames their crappy network..but other people!!

they are talkin about TMOB, where did sprint come into this all the sudden?

[KA3SGM]

Been reading the mail here for a while, but this sounded familiar, so I signed up to comment.

It sounds like a T- Mobile Tower/BTS problem.

Had it happen to me twice in the past few years at several sites, you could park at right at the cell site, with receive signal strength in the -55 db range, but you couldn't complete a call.

Problem lasted for several days.

Tried several phones with different SIMS

I keep my handy Nokia 6190 in Net monitor mode, and was able to give the T-MO customer service rep specific site ID, Channel, Sector, ect.

They had no clue as to what I was talking about, and it took a few calls to get hold of someone in engineering that understood what I was talking about.

You could watch the phone cycle through the motions :

CCCH - Phone idle listening to control channel.
AGCH, SDCC - Requesting a traffic channel and time slot.

Followed by a long pause then the beep and call failed message.

If the tower was working properly, the phone should have displayed TEFR( indicating being on an EFR traffic channel), and the call gone through.

They dispatched a tech both times to check the sites.

Turned out both times to be a bad Control Channel Radio card at the tower site.

The Tower was transmitting a proper control channel, so the phone sees the site and displays the proper received signal strength, but it was unable to hear the response from the phone, and the phone simply timed out when you attempted to place a call .

Typical Ericsson RBS 2106 BTS Cabinet.

Maybe it's an odd coincidence, are you in a market built out with Ericsson equipment??

[RJB]

Originally Posted by EricN4707

they are talkin about TMOB, where did sprint come into this all the sudden?

LOL that is what I am thinking. Anyways things like this seem to be a capacity issue. I mean I can understand one phone but not two all of a sudden at the same time. See if others in your area that might have your carrier experience this.

[Eric47]

it could be just the simple fact that TMOB is the only none 3G company in your area, and they just cant hold the capacity like all the other carriers in your area.

ive always heard great things about ATT in Cali' id suggest checking them out.

[Matt]

Originally Posted by EricN4707

it could be just the simple fact that TMOB is the only none 3G company in your area, and they just cant hold the capacity like all the other carriers in your area.

ive always heard great things about ATT in Cali' id suggest checking them out.

While 3G service can help with capacity issues, there are plenty of other things that can affect capacity.

[RadioRaiders]

Originally Posted by KA3SGM

Had it happen to me twice in the past few years at several sites, you could park at right at the cell site, with receive signal strength in the -55 db range, but you couldn't complete a call.
...
Turned out both times to be a bad Control Channel Radio card at the tower site.

The Tower was transmitting a proper control channel, so the phone sees the site and displays the proper received signal strength, but it was unable to hear the response from the phone, and the phone simply timed out when you attempted to place a call .

Typical Ericsson RBS 2106 BTS Cabinet.

That sounds odd. Each sector is independant of each other. If a TRU was faulty in one sector, one of the other 2 secors should pick up the call when you're under the site. What you described sounds more like the whole site was locked. Was it a new site?

[KA3SGM]

Originally Posted by RadioRaiders

That sounds odd. Each sector is independant of each other. If a TRU was faulty in one sector, one of the other 2 secors should pick up the call when you're under the site. What you described sounds more like the whole site was locked. Was it a new site?

Actually no, neither was a new site, but where the sites were located(1 a co-located monopole and the other a water tank, were in places hard to drive around the entire site to check all sectors.

The water tank access road lined up perfectly with sector "B" and where I was trying to complete a call from was in the same direction.

Seems if the phone sees the strongest control channel from 1 site when initiating a call, in this case, it would only attempt access to the strongest channel per the given site ID.

The tech swapped only the one radio and no problems since then.

Capacity wise, no major issues has arisen, but the original Ericsson RBS 2102 was swapped with a RBS 2106 when they started marketing EDGE a few years ago.

The original site I had problems with, the tech swapped a radio and a controller card, in that case there was the issue of placing calls, but then occasionally the whole site would go off-air.

The card swap fixed the problem, they upgraded the original RBS 2102 to a 2106 at a later date, and more recently added several sites around that particular one, and have now gone back and added a second 2106 cabinet to the original site.

They have had faulty radio's and obviously capacity issues since then, and T-Mobile has been great in managing those issues.

With the only exceptions where the problems are capacity related and they are stuck adding cabinets to existing sites, as where the real issue is in a NIMBY zone, and they have almost no chance of adding another tower where they actually need one.

The techs have thanked me for calling in the detailed information that I can get from my Nokia 6190, because that information will automatically stump the regular customer care reps and automatically open up an engineering trouble ticket.

I find that many of the techs use the 6190 Net Monitor themselves to do preliminary testing, before they break out the more expensive network analyzers.

I have gotten callbacks asking signal and channel info from surrounding sites that I guess have helped them pinpoint those problems.

When I can list another 6 or 7 channels that my phone is seeing that are better than -90 db, but I still can't complete calls, that sends at least 1 tech out to test drive the problem area and start checking the BTS equipment.

The phone errors were along the lines of a single beep "Call Failed", and not the 3-4 beep "System Busy".

Once you pressed send, the phone would hang at AGCH for about 15 seconds before the error.

I have had System Busies before, and usually you get the error within 2-3 seconds of pressing send.

I'll have to start getting some photos up of various sites in my area, there are a few just under construction and many more in the planning stages, and this is an area that is pretty well built out already.

[RadioRaiders]

Originally Posted by KA3SGM

Seems if the phone sees the strongest control channel from 1 site when initiating a call, in this case, it would only attempt access to the strongest channel per the given site ID.

The tech swapped only the one radio and no problems since then.

Capacity wise, no major issues has arisen, but the original Ericsson RBS 2102 was swapped with a RBS 2106 when they started marketing EDGE a few years ago.
.....

I have gotten callbacks asking signal and channel info from surrounding sites that I guess have helped them pinpoint those problems.

Yea, if theres only 1 dominant signal and it's faulty, then that makes sense that you couldn't place a call. But I really wonder why nobody on the OSS side at T-Mobile picked this up? If a sector suddenly loses all it's traffic, there should be alarm bells ringing, they shouldn't have to wait several days for a customer complaint to be called in! And then to call you back asking for more info?! That's rediculous. What are their OSS people doing??

PS- The RBS 2102 is an old cabinet (stopped production 5 or 6 years ago, I beleive). It can support EDGE, but not the dTRU, which is why most operators have upgraded to a 2106.