So I was in the loverlie lil' village of Kernville. With my two phones with me, I thought for sure my Sprint would be the service of choice. Tmobile was on top. Sprint showed service but it must have been on an unauthorised CDMA roamer. Would not connect and all I got was static. Walking around, Tmo got service. I have been reading on WA how Tmo is being left in the dust by other carriers, what with mergers, acquisitions ,and such. Deutsche Telecom is correct, they don't need no stinken partners and acquisitions. Coverage? They seem to cover the waterfront. If you look at the coverage maps, TMobile seems to be very conservative in their claims to coverage. This is only my unscientific observation, I updated my Sprint PRL January 6 or 7th. Anybody ever go to Kernville? What was your carrier? Did it work?
Sprint doesn't serve Kernville but you should have been able to roam on Verizon there if your phone was set to automatic mode.
T-Mobile's maps are conservative for California. But if it wasn't for Cingular they wouldn't have a network and a very good network to boot. Travel outside of CA and you will see why most people are not happy with T-Mobile, very little build out & very few roaming agreements.
He also doesn't state what kind of phone he has... He may have a dual mode phone that won't pick up CDMA 800 and may have had issues with Verizon's analog. Given he's saying he heard static, that can only be analog.
Very true. Verizon's analog system here in parts of CA is practically useless now. The other day I forced my phone to analog mode just to make a test call and all I got was a fast busy signal.
You're not the first person I've heard complain about that problem out there... It does kind of suck because there are times when SprintPCS customers with older Sanyo phones roam out of Sprint coverage area and then can't make a call because VZW's analog is so terrible.
Yes and add the fact that Sanyos were pretty bad at 800 Mhz roaming to begin with and you have an even worse roaming experience.
It would probably help out if he'd tell us which SPCS phone he was using when he mentioned the horrible roaming experience. Chances are, the phone was one that only did 1900Mhz CDMA and 800Mhz analog.
ok mister anti-sanyo For what it's worth, I put my LG PM-325 in analog on US Cellular's network (Sprint's preferred roaming partner for whatever reason) and it was actually very very clear-sounding. I was actually surprised. Digital reception was better than analog, though. Granted, I'm not in CA, but I was still surprised that my phone actually worked ok on analog.
My Sprint phone is a Samsung VI660, a dual band tri-mode model, quite up to date. I updated my PRL on Jan 7th, just before my excursion to Kernville. My TMobile is also a Samsung, the E105. I am partial to the Samsung product. I am going to Yosemite this weekend, the 14th-17th of January 2005. I would think that the Sprint will come out on top with analog, we shall see.
Let us know how the Yosemite coverage is I thought the carrier with any realy coverage was analog through Golden State (or something like that?) I like Kayaking down the Kern River above Kernville.
Yep Sprint does have roaming agreements at Yosemite. I haven't been there since 2002 but at that time I was able to roam on analog fine.
When I was in So CA last time, I got fast busy signals on both, AT&T analog and VZW analog; practically useless. If you go outside urban areas ,though, analog works just fine in my experience.
I've been there, but it was well over two years ago... Last time I was there there was AT&T (now Cingular blue) TDMA and AMPS and Commnet Wireless AMPS, and *no* GSM, CDMA, or iDEN. VZW is NOT licensed for far eastern Kern County since Contel never built it out and Commnet got the area as "unserved area" a few years ago. Do you recall if your TMO phone was on the TMO/Cingular orange shared network (310-170) or AT&T/Cingular blue (310-380)? SPCS has waffled back and forth between roaming on AT&T/Cing blue and roaming on Commnet -- as of PRL 10024 SPCS was on AT&T/Cing blue again. VZW customers will roam on either AT&T/Cing blue or Commnet depending on their home market; VZW customers from virtually all markets in the West will roam on Commnet. (Many other Commnet systems are in VZW's PRLs nowadays, but the one in Lake Isabella/Kernville (SID 3034) isn't, and neither is AT&T/Cing blue (SID 1917.) I expect Commnet to build out CDMA sooner or later to take care of VZW customers with AMPS-less phones.) -SC
