Coverage Inside Griffity Observatory

[jimwayda]

I attended a planetarium show at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and was surprised to find that my cell phone service both inside and outside of the facility was very marginal. I have Sprint and immediately after walking into the entrance I was able to make calls with one to two bars. On the other hand, inside of the planetarium, I did not have any signal. I phone was set to automatic roaming and I did not roam. It is a Blackberry and therefore it is not possible to "force roaming" to test if there was a Verizon signal. Outside of the planetarium while looking down at the city, the signal on Sprint was very marginal.

Are there a lot of NIMBYs in the Griffith Park area that are anti-cellphone? Why doesn't Sprint and apparently Verizon have a good usable signal in and around the observatory?

[larry]

Actually that has always been a problem there at the observatory. I've been going for years and have to stand in certain spots and get lucky in order to make a call. Sprint actually has that area around the observatory well covered with plenty of cell sites. But the problem lies in the way it is elevated so high above everything else. Once you get up to that level your phone is bouncing on 10 or 15 different cell sites in the city below and as a result can't choose which one is the best and strongest signal. This is called pilot pollution and with CDMA it is very tough to use in a situation like this. Obviously Sprint would have to install a cell site right at the observatory in order for the signal to become reliable. That's certainly not going to happen. I don't remember if I have ever made any roaming calls there.