"Mini" report on Sprint Coverage

That's why you need to get a Motorola RAZR. So you can force digital roaming when needed.

 

Matt, I had good signal on Sprint. It just would drop calls; I think we were on the 31st floor or something. It probably was flipping between the microcell and some close tower. Verizon worked fine, most likely their microcell was tuned better (big shock).

Verizon was simply awful for my stepfather for the last few days. Didn't work in the Hilton (I never had problems there), Hooters Hotel, and parts of the airport. Beats me what their deal was.

 

Wheter or not a phone/service will work in any particular casino is totally dependent on whether or not that hotel allowed the carrier to install a microcell(s) inside. Not every carrier will be able to negotiate a deal with every hotel. Some hotels might choose to give an exclusive deal to only one or two carriers.

Being above the 10th floor on any hotel will potentially cause problems with CDMA as PN offset bouncing will usually occur. Remember the handoff range kicks in at about -85 dbs and/or -12 EC/IO and then you're in trouble.

 

Yes I do remember my good ol days of -31 ec/io with Verizon here at college. Haha

 

That is interesting that you say both Verizon and Sprint are lacking in Vegas. I have found both carriers to be top notch most places, even indoors. I am out in Vegas on a regular basis and Verizon has never let me down.

 

Verizon has always worked for me in Vegas. Some people must have really bad luck.

 

Be sure to visit the Hilton, Hooters Hotel, and the US Airways terminal. All 3 places had absolutely useless coverage for my stepdad. His phone is older, but clearly some microcells were off or something. Again, it was most likely the height at the Hilton. I thought CDMA was supposed to be better at heights than GSM?

 

CDMA is terrible at heights. Have no idea how it is on GSM.

 

CDMA, like larry said, is horrible at heights. GSM, just like TDMA and Analog work much better.

 

Yeah I think it has to do with the the neighbor lists and handoffs. When a CDMA phone is up on a mountain or high rise building and you try to make a call it will often drop the call because the phone attempts to handoff to towers that are too far away from each other and out of synch with the neighbor lists. CDMA cell sites can't hand off to each other unless they were programmed to do so by the engineers.