Barely a Sprint signal on Kennesaw Mountain

It might be that the towers are not aimed right for you to pick up a signal there, but usually 700 feet don't matter.
I guess it's pilot pollution then. I've been on top of a lot of mountains with my CDMA phone(Verizon) and never experienced pilot pollution problems, even though my phone was able to 'see' tons of towers.

 

I have noticed the same problem. It seems like the signal is very poor at the parking lot on the top of the mountain, but once you walk to the actual top the signal becomes strong again. When I was hiking on it my phone kept going from sprint to digital roam to analog roam to no signal.

 

Any pictures of the mountain/area?

 

a) the panels on the nearby sites are tilted downward
b) as SPCS is CDMA, you're probably have issues with pilot pollution -- basically, being able to see too many sites from the top of the mountain.

These sort of issues also exist on the tops of other mountains around Atlanta and north GA, including Stone Mountain (where even VZW CDMA "poops out" and drops to AMPS at the top while non-CDMA carriers generally work fine), Fort Mountain between Chatsworth and Ellijay, etc.

In Chattanooga, which is basically surrounded by mountains, carriers generally avoid the problem by having sites atop Lookout, Signal, White Oak, etc. mountains -- something that's impossible to do in state or national parks or forests, hence the issues at Kennesaw Mountain, Stone Mountain, etc.

-SC

 

TKR,

I couldn't agree with you more. And you're right it is a very common problem. You would think by now the CDMA technology would have evolved to help reduce or eliminate the PN offsets that are weak or unusuable but it hasn't. Like roamer1 said it's definetly the old pilot pollution thing when your phone sees too many stray signals at the same time and doesn't know which one to pick. Even though the panels are typically tilted downward a tiny amount of signal will propogate upward. Very seldom are panels aimed upward towards hills but I have seen it.

 

I've seen panels tilted upward, and there was no mountain or tall building to cover.

 

So I guess the thing to do *if*Sprint wanted to provide reliable service up there would be to add something like a microcell or very weak cellsite that doesn't cover much surroundings(and spill down,creating problems off the mountain). Just for arguments sake.
Now, a GSM carrier wouldn't have to do this, correct, since a GSM phone can still 'see' through all those offsets and lock onto one single offset, correct?

 

I have as well. *shrug*

 

I believe that GSM has similar problems in situations like this that's caused by a different issue. Maybe someone else can explain it better.

 

I didn't know that was the case. I will do some resarch and post it here if I find anything.