I have switched from Sprint to Nextel

nice. i always felt Nextel coverage was better, the main difference though is that Sprint is going to have better roaming, and in some places, EV-DO. but if your voice only and like beefy phones it is going to be a good fit.

Good Luck!

 

Nextel has more reach in these parts as well in the panhandle, they cover areas that Sprint won't cover for ages to come... Is there a particular reason why Sprint hasn't colocated onto the Nextel sites?

Hopefully, AnthroMatt will have something that works...

It would've been nice if the hybrid phones would have supported 850 roaming, although the technology limits this, IIRC.

 

Honestly, after being on Sprint I don't see how I could ever go back to being on just straight Nextel. I suppose I would be okay if I only needed my phone for voice... but Texting and Data usage on iDen would kill me.

Have you considered trying Airave? It's supposed to come out in the coming days... that might be worth a shot.

 

I thought you only had to pay the 30 bucks if you wanted unlimited ld from home. Can't you buy it for just the improved coverage?

 

Sprint has co-located on many of the Nextel sites already. They've chosen the ones that they felt were the most needed and made them first priority. But no matter how many IDEN sites Sprint adds CDMA to there will never be an exact match in coverage. The CDMA panels are often set up differently than the IDEN panels using different azimuths (directional beams). Plus the frequency difference can also be a factor. That doesn't mean that IDEN coverage will always be better either. There will be many places where the CDMA side will be better.

 

Matt I think you're problem is that repeater there. I've seen some repeaters actually make the signal worse if it's interfering with another site causing pilot pollution. If Sprint had installed a full blown site instead of just a repeater I bet you would have had better results.

 

the only company that uses repeaters (that i know of) in my area is Cricket... that is rather low buck to use repeaters..

Nextel has always been a solid company, im not going to re-hash this debate, but i still stand firm that IMO Nextel went south when Sprint bought them and sat them on the back burner and never converting them to CDMA.

at any rate, for Voice only, they are still hard to beat, reception is good here for them, except in the country, then pretty much everyone has them beat...though ive noticed on certain military installations (a few that are VERY rural) they have some of the best coverage...so it all depends i guess.

 

Sprint only has 31 repeaters in the entire Phoenix metro market. That probably includes sprint store repeaters (some stores have them). So I think you just got very unlucky winding up near a repeater. Whether or not that's messing with your EV-DO signal I can't say for sure. But I know someone on here who should be able to tell you.

From what I observed Sprint actually invested heavily into the IDEN system after the merger. In fact there was a time when the majority of new sites going up were IDEN only which kind of annoyed me since I thought CDMA should have been the top priority. The IDEN engineers were working seperately from the CDMA engineers for a long time in making their own network improvements. It would have been too much of a burden to try to convert the IDEN system to CDMA in that short of time period. The IDEN PTT system was still superior to anything that CDMA had. It's not easy to combine two totally incompatible technologies and now that they have Qchat available I think the time has finally come to start phasing out IDEN for good and/or selling that part of the company off to someone else.

 

Repeaters can be a pain, depending on local and the type of equipment being used.

Most repeaters have to be programmed to match the donor tower, sector, PN, carrier group ETC and some are what I call dumb repeaters and just amplify anything.

Sometimes network management will do a frequency retune of the network to clear up crowding issues or add additional capacity and forget to program the reapeater to match the changes.

IPCS in my area uses alot of repeaters and they swear by them as the output power is about 5 watts more that a regular cabinet.

Sprint is probably using an Andrews Repeater which is pretty decent stuff.

I dont know if they support EVDO it depends on how old the repeater is.

 

Sprint installed a repeater here in the city of Orange about 2 years ago and it worked for about 1 month. Then it stopped working and was dead for an astounding 5 months before they finally realized it wasn't working and fixed it (despite my repeated attempts to tip them off about it). It does feed from a donor site and they did program it correctly but the donor site is much too far away to be very effective. So basically this repeater boosts coverage to just one very small shopping center.

 

At the time QChat was "right around the corner", but it took forever to show up. I think Qualcomm is to blame for that--and it hurt the Nextel CDMA plans.

 

Sprint actually did alot of work to the Nextel only towers in my area. They spent millions upgrading capacity and equipment and even add a few towers. Sprint did more with the Nextel network in my area in a year than Nextel did in the previous 5 years by themselves.

Its easy to point fingers but both Nextel and Sprint are to blame really. Nextel had some of the best customer loyalty and the lowest churn but they didnt stay on top of technology progression. All the other carriers were boasting more features and higher speads and Motorola the sole provider of iDEN couldnt match what GSM and CDMA are able to achieve. Even WiDEN speeds would make GPRS feel like broadband. We debate about Sprint and Nextel back and forth but alot of times we forget to think of the heartache the employees have to go thru.

Larry,

The repeaters can be linked with Alarms back to the Switch or NOC by using just a plain old POTS line but most of the time their not. Alltel has one out on an island in my area, but the tech told me he hadnt been out there in 2 years. Repeaters sometimes lock up or overheat and need to be turned off and on. I have one on another island thats owned by a rich guy and he's the alarm system, cause if it acts up you will definately hear about it.

 

For the most part, repeaters only care about the frequency and not the actual technology. Provided the repeater is repeating all the needed channels, at least one for voice and the separate EVDO channel then you should be fine. The problem could be is the repeater was integrated and programmed when you were only 1XRTT and was never reprogrammed to accommodate the EVDO upgrade.

Low buck? Repeaters are a very cost effective solution for carriers with a mature network to enhance coverage in weak spots. It takes a number of years to pay off the $500k plus investment in a brand new cell site. For a mature network, a $50k expenditure in repeater equipment is a much wiser decision. Some engineers think repeaters are a cure-all device but a repeater has to be carefully integrated into the existing network to optimize it's utilization. A poorly integrated repeater could wipe out the uplink frequency around it thus blocking calls, or it could be putting out too much RF, thus overdriving the repeater and causing it to shut down and cool off. Those are just two examples, but it's not as simple as some people think, you can't just toss up a repeater and expect it to work flawlessly.

Repeaters are often deployed to assist in providing solid in-building coverage, hence why it was probably installed near the shopping center. A donor site to a repeater can be well over 10 miles away provided the right antenna is installed to bring in enough signal for the repeater to use.

Most carriers, at least Sprint and Verizon in my area are alarming their repeaters via wireless modems integrated into the repeater. The bigger problem is most carriers don't actively monitor their repeaters. Quite often technicians don't even know they exist because they don't show up on their screen of blinking lights.

 

im sorry guys, i did not mean to stir the pot about Nextel/Sprint.

It was an opinion. if you read everyones post, they almost all include the words "in my area", i was merly remarking that same token about where i live and work, but with the pre-face that things went sour here.


on a lighter not, i do apologize about the repeater comment. i maybe rushed the gun on that comment, and i learned alot from the returned comments.

thanks guys.

 

repeater and DAS systems are a great way to beef up little dead spots and the zoning alone is worth it. Repeaters tend to raise more havoc on CDMA than they do on GSM but regardless they need to be well engineered or they will be a pain. I have an odd ball 1900 repeater that only covers about a mile long stretch of a hill where line of site from the nearest tower goes to crap.

They did a network re-tune and the repeater hasnt worked since due to the fact no one know how to program it. The repeater is made by a off brand company and actually has a PCS GSM phone wired inside, im guessing it measures the DL and UL from the donor site.

 

I don't think an apology is needed, I know I sure didn't take any offense by your post and doubt anyone else did.

 

I didn't see any post that necessitated an apology. We're all here to share and learn.

 

This particular repeater though is really not in any significant shopping center. There are a few little mom and pop type shops and a McDonalds. No grocery stores, Walmarts, Home Depots, Best Buys, etc. The entire area could have benefited from a full blown site so I'm still baffled as to why they chose to do a repeater here when almost every other synergy site was a normal site in Orange County. This repeater doesn't even give me full signal inside the McDonalds right next door. I literally have to be standing directly in front of it outside to get full bars and a -65 to -70 dbs. I just don't see much if any benefit from it.

 

It's probably still not working right.

 

That's what I'm thinking. I wish they would just upgrade it to a full blown site.

 

I hope things are better with Nextel

 

Why is there SMS like that? Being Based on TDMA you would think the SMS would be fairly straight forward.