Dropped calls a problem with any service provider?

Dropped calls can and will happen with any provider. Wireless service is not designed to cover residential areas as well as it does highways and shopping areas.

 

Another big factor in the dropped call sector is the number of people that are on the tower when you are calling. I'm sure you are aware that the bars of service on your phone is a poor way to determine if your phone will hold a call. I live in a residential area where I get 1 bar on my phone, but rarely miss calls and never drop them unless I am in the shower However if you get into an area like a university, the dropped call frequency will increase just because of the number of people that are there and saturating the tower.

 

Usually, when a tower is too congested what happens is that it won't give your cellphone a new channel to make the handoff from the tower you are getting away from. Eventually, the signal from the first tower becomes too weak and then you start asking "can you hear me now?" more than often, until all the sudden you are talking to the air. Right after that you see your phone jump from zero bars to full 4 bars in a split second. I hate when that happens.

 

Would this also be the reason why sometimes my phone doesn't ring when I get a call even though my signal strength is good?

 

Yes. Your phone can get logged out of the system periodically even though power is on and signal is full. It might be best to turn your phone's power on and off a couple of times a day if your not a heavy user.

 

That is true for users who don't move the whole day. For instance, when you spend the whole day at home, your phone will be on the same tower all the time. Turning on/off the phone may help there. However, if you go to work or school, you'll be handing off to different towers as you move, therefore this automatically takes care of the registration for you on a daily basis and it wouldn't make any difference if you turn your phone on/off. In addition, TDMA phones (don't know about CDMA), send a packet to renew their registration just about every 5 minutes so the tower database is constantly updated. Therefore, you can be home all the time and tower registration renewal is taken care of for you.

Now, this doesn't mean that everything is red roses and life is perfect and the phone will always ring. Even though the phone is registered as active with the tower an incoming call may fail due to other factors: the phone may not respond in time to the tower's request to "ring", the tower's request may not be heard by the phone for X number of reasons, maybe you were making a call at the same time or just hanged up a call and someone tried to call you at the same time. Sometimes due to atmospheric conditions, interference, trees moving, you name it, the phone can send the response to the request to "ring" back to the tower but the tower may receive it with errors (remember this is digital info) and think that the phone is out of range and order the switch to go to voicemail. There are many other reasons why a phone may not ring when it is supposed to but I don't want to make this post longer than what it is.

 

Very interesting fellas, thanks for the responses. So probably what is happening in low signal areas is that either the tower has dropped my phone and it hasn't sent a renew packet yet or that the ring request isn't successfully making it to or from my phone. Will CDMA2000 help reduce this from happening?

 

It's hard to tell if it will, but these problems are inherent in any wireless broadcasting technology. However, at least in my opinion, with nearly 90% reliability, I don't think companies are giving this problem much thought. Let's hope that with 3G with newer software, newer switches, more capacity, more intelligent phones and more tower density, these problems will get as close to the vanishing point as possible.

 

There is nothing like saturated or congested cell has big number of drop calls, because if there is congestion in network your call never get thru, whereas drop call scenario comes after call gone thru.
Yes there may be definitely service provider behind drop calls. Few reasons like you may be lies in the cell where it has faulty carrier unit.(responsible for transmitting GSM signal) or service provider did not define handover to another cell in their database or there may be fluctuation in their BTS link (Which is known as Abis interface in GSM).

 

Wow! This thread will be five years old this year.

 

So, should we buy the thread a cake? I vote for chocolate.

-Jay

 

funny. I have dont the same thing.

 

i am new here on the board and live about 10 miles outside owensboro,ky (w.ky)
i have a 2week old lg cu500 my wife has a lg 1500, under the best
conditions i get 2-3 bars on both phone's,few trees,no hills
is there a map site that shows where cingular's towers are located?
thanks.

 

There is a tower search @ http://www.cellreception.com/towers/ , but you cannot search by specific carrier. I've also noticed that some locations that came up on that site do have towers there, but not cellular towers. Also note that even if a carrier is listed as owning the tower, another carrier may also be leasing space on the tower. For example in my area AT&T leases space on several Nextel-owned towers.

-Jay

 

The best antennae search I have found is...

http://antennasearch.com/

it shows antennaes, and towers...

 

thanks that tower map really helped, it show's my closest tower about
1- 1 1/2 miles away, got to be the phone

 

You also have to remember that your carrier may not be on that tower, and many sites like those attached to buildings may not be listed in that database.

-Jay

 

Exactly, we have buildings, water towers and wood poles and none are listed on these site because they do not require an ASR (antenna structure registrations) this is commonly refered to as a FCC id. Take a look in the cell site pages and see what panel antennas look like and you will be able to look around your area and point them out.

 

do you think cingular would email or send me a map of they towers
they they use?

 

They already have a map. Just use their street level coverage map on their website. http://www.cingular.com/coverageviewer/
If you are not experiencing good service in areas where the map says you should, then either your phone or a network problem may be suspect. Also remember that this map reflects street level coverage, not indoor.
-Jay

 

i just check the map link, it shows me that i'm in the orange solid and spotty red

 

You should be good in a red and orange coverage area, but I don't trust LG phones. I had one last year (LG CU320) and I returned it back to Cingular after 26 hours because of the really poor audio quality and dropped calls.

-Jay

 

Here's a link to the thread where I talked about my experience with the LG CU320 (The LG 3G phone that was out right before the CU500 was released)

http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/l...impressions-of-the-lg-cu320-2.html#post375149

-Jay

 

my wife put her sim card in a nokia, that we have for an extra phone,set them side by side, my new lg bounching between 1-3 bars never solid sig
the nokia had 4 bars constant.

 

also i don't know but i have always had second thought about an internal
antana

 

I would drop the LG. Cingular uses Nortel equipment at the towers just like my company does. I have not been impressed with LG phones at all. Most of my trouble tickets I check are related to LG phones. Nokia and Motorolas works better on the Nortel equipment. I prefere Nokia myself because they handoff real well between 850 and 1900 (PCS)

Get yourself a good Nokia 6125, 6103 etc and I think you will be happier.

LG's are ok phones and they probably work better on CDMA but they dont work as good on Nortel GSM from what I have seen.

I dont know how good they work on Nokia GSM, which you will run across if you go into the old AT&T wireless areas.

 

In my area the old Blue Network was on 1900, and the Orange was on 850. Using a 3G phone in this area the 3G service is on 1900, so I was using it on the old Blue towers. The phone absolutely sucked. I traded the CU320 in on a standard Moto V3 and was much happier.

-Jay

 

the old AT&T had alot of 850 as well but put the GSM in the 1900. When AT&T built their GSM network it was only offered in 1900. The customers werent to happy going from TDMA 850 to 1900. It works out good today with all the spectrum needed for UMTS.

 

i took back the lg today, bought a nokia 6102i, full bars now in the same place
where i had 1 on the lg.