At last Sprint improvements in Thousand Oaks, CA!

I'll snoop around Lynn Road and Hillcrest Avenue in the vicinity of the T.O. mall tomorrow and see what I can find!

 

Thanks again Larry for the update, my wife and I work just down the road from there at Amgen. Nice to see Sprint increasing coverage in the area.

 

Yes, it has improved. My house is less than one minute from the Oaks mall off Hillcrest. I remember back in the days when I would come down the hill toward Hillcrest drive and the signal would get very weak, sometime cut out totally. Its full and well in that area now. I think it has been like this for about the past 6 months or so. Having had Sprint a few years back and having them again now...they have done a wonderful job filling in some major holes in the T.O. area. I have also looked to try and find where that tower is that services the Oaks mall area and have not found it yet, but I will keep looking. Now if they would just improve service in Newbury Park.... hehe

Oh...question
I was in Solvang this past week and noticed Sprint PCS service on my phone. If I remember correctly (and I may not) when I was there less than a year ago I was roaming on Verizon. So I take it Sprint does have their own service in Solvang????

 

Oh...
No progress on that new tower at the end of Lynn Rd. Drove by it yesterday. PCW...u live in T.O.?

 

yeah that explains my good coverage while driving thru there on my way to Santa Barbara.......

 

Nothing found at the T.O. Mall, but...

Well, I drove around the perimeter of the Thousand Oaks Mall this morning and searched high and low for anything that might be a cell/pcs antenna, including panel arrays, signs, lamp standards or other poles, building facades, fake rocks, you name it. I found NOTHING in the mall property or on the mall itself, including a close look at Macy's. I didn't find anything in the Lynn Road/Hillcrest Avenue/101 overpass area, either, including the Circuit City store and surrounding areas. This was a hasty drive-by search, so I certainly may have missed something somewhere.

Two thoughts: The series of buildings along Hillcrest Avenue, north of the Mall, might bear further snooping - I made a brief pass through and saw nothing; remember, I was driving and couldn't spend too much time gawking. The other possibility is Rasnow Peak, which is the city's primary transmitter site that overlooks the 101 freeway to its north and Hidden Valley to its south. Would SPCS put a site at that elevation in in a populated locale like T.O.?

I did find two fairly nearby cell sites a few blocks north of Hillcrest, just west of Lynn Rd., although their placement is better suited towards the Lynn Ranch area rather than the mall, given the topagraphy and structural blockage.

One site was on the northwest corner of Lynn and Camino Dos Rios adjacent to the Lutheran? church parking lot entrance. It's a monopole with two narrow panel antennae. The equipment containers are above ground behind the Lynn Ranch sign. This site has been around for some time. I didn't get out to check the enclosures for labels, etc. Too much traffic coming into the church for some event.

The other site was two blocks west of the church on the northwest corner of Camino Dos Rios and Calle Yucca. The three wider panel antennae were mounted on a pre-existing wooden utility pole. Below the antenna was a Nokia enclosure. Again, I didn't get close enough to conduct a thorough inspection. Perhaps next time!

I did snap a few digital photos of these two sites, but I can't seem to upload them to WA forums. I'll try again later.

To the previous poster (tooterbugs): Yes, I live in N.P. in the old American Oaks area below the water tower adjacent to Lynn Road.

Later, I'll take another hop over to the end of Lynn Road at the end of Two Winds Ranch and check that pole-mount array a little closer.

Finally, according to a Nextel site list I was shown (updated last month), they have a site on West Potrero Road east of Wendy Drive (and east of the White Stallion Estates gate), just as you crest that hill and descend into Hidden Valley. It, too, has been there for just over a year, I think.

More later...

 

Well, perhaps a quick drive to the National Park Service regional HQ across the street on Hillcrest might offer a bird's eye view of the roof of the Macy's store. Now I'm really curious about the site!

 

don't fall off........

 

PCW-
"One site was on the northwest corner of Lynn and Camino Dos Rios adjacent to the Lutheran? church parking lot entrance. It's a monopole with two narrow panel antennae. The equipment containers are above ground behind the Lynn Ranch sign." ---> This is a Cingular/T-Mobile site.

"The other site was two blocks west of the church on the northwest corner of Camino Dos Rios and Calle Yucca. The three wider panel antennae were mounted on a pre-existing wooden utility pole. Below the antenna was a Nokia enclosure." ---> Do not know this one. Will have to go check it out. With "Nokia" being on it sounds like AT&T Wireless.

 

Larry-
The tower you are thinking of may be the one on Lynn Rd. on a light pole on the campus of California Lutheran University. The light pole is right next to Lynn Rd.

 

It's Sprint

 

How is the Sprint coverage in the Oak's Mall, Verizon is good except for a few spots downstairs by the Disney store, I ocassionally will lose calls. Verizon is rock solid in almost all of the building at Amgen, except in the Concrete basements where I do not even get pager coverage. Good to see Sprint increasing the coverage, maybe in a couple of years I will switch over.

 

Coverage in the Oaks Mall is quite good. I have received many calls while shopping and had no problems with signal. It is full in most places that I can remember. Yes, this is a change... back in the days it did not work very well (if at all) in the mall.

 

There is a new site going up in Newbury Park at Ventu Park, in the Ralphs shopping center with Antennas facing each direction of Hillcrest, the antennas look like PCS, I would guess it is either Sprint or Cingular.

 

I"ll be glad to check the Ralphs

Will do this morning. How's that? Any clues to look for that would indicate that it's SPCS?

 

The antennas are there - construction underway.

Drove by Ralph's this morning (Hillcrest and Ventu Park in Newbury Park, one long block north of the 101 freeway). At the northeast corner of the complex, above the Community Dental Group, two rooftop enclosures have been built. One is at the northeast corner, the other at the northwest corner (about 70 feet apart). Both enclosures are open (framed and roofed only), and panel antennas have been mounted on horizontal brackets. There are no building permit signs posted anywhere outside that I could find, nor any workers present.

Larry, PM me with an email and I'll shoot some photos and send them to you.

PCW

 

Returned to Ralph's with the camera, located the construction crew on their lunchbreak, and they happily acknowedged that they are indeed erecting a Sprint PCS site. (These guys were laborers doing exterior carpentry and finishing and had nothing to do with the RF equipment.)

 

Wow! What Sprint won't do to meet the strict needs of the city council and improve coverage for both myself and PCW. Are we special or what...hehe...joke.

 

Newbury Park is a community of Thousand Oaks

Larry:
Newbury Park has its own post office branch and zip code (91320) but is a community of the City of Thousand Oaks. So is the western half of Westlake Village (the Ventura / Los Angeles county line divides the lake itself).