Sprint now claims fewest dropped calls

You know something, I cant believe the level of ignorance people have when it comes to network quality.

For Instance- I person over on Hofo was complaining because he only got 2 steady bars of service while at home, but yet he never drops calls and never has break-up but yet Sprint still sucks at home because he only gets 2 bars of service....:loony::loony:

 

So true, bars on cell phones are not something to rely upon any more. One could have 5 bars and the call could end up being choppy or even drop. To me if the calls are clear and can hold a good conversation for a good while with out drooping then that is excellent and that goes for any provider.

 

That's the benefit of Cingulars advertising if you think of it. "More Bars in More Places" makes people assume that is what matters & not the dropped calls or quality of calls.

My oldest daughters boyfriend has Verizon & we were talking & he said that Verizon never has a lot of bars & that is why he doesn't like them.
When I asked about call quality & dropped calls, that's when he said he drops calls all the time & the quality is choppy on his LG 8300 phone.

I told him never go by the bars, but by the call quality & connections. He said going by that he feels Verizon is worst then going by the bars on his phone.

 

Well they can't get up a site everywhere and make everyone happy. No carrier can do that. But trust me the synergy process is working out excellent and I've seen it first hand here in So. Cal where a whopping 8 new sites have been added within 4 miles of where I live just since late last year. And coverage was already good even before this expansion. Looking at the map for NYC I would say they're doing quite well as a whole.

 

Being a long time wireless forum internet junkie I've heard a lot of those claims as well. I'm still amused by some of the things people say on forums.

 

I was a Verizon Wireless customer for sooo long that I never had the opportunity to share all your dropped call experiences until a couple of weeks ago when I joined at&t. I used to think: "What is a dropped call?"

With VZW, the areas that were bad were KNOWN bad areas. I knew ahead of time which proved its resilience. I didn't get the surprised dropped calls or call failures.

 

AT&T doesn't have nearly as many cell sites as Verizon, T-Mobile or Sprint in So. Cal. Oh wait...didn't I already post this before on another thread?

 

And that is why people from different area's have such different experiences with carriers.

Here Sprint & T-Mobile don't have as many towers and even Verizon is behind AT&T.
Now I do have to say Sprint has shown me they have good coverage here, and I want to go out West Jersey & see how they are compared to AT&T. So far in field test mode, they have been about 10 to 15 db less the AT&T in the area's I have checked including my home, but they were better in MD and parts of PA.

I am suprised at how many people when I really ask them about verizon, find they get dropped calls around here, no matter which phone they are using, where some say they don't have too many dropped calls or no service. I haven't tried them in a couple of years, so I don't know if they have improved to the point of calls going into VM when you have a signal & the phone never ringing.

 

Comparing the db doesn't really mean much because different carriers, phones, technologies and frequencies can show very different. The EC-IO is the more important factor. As long as you have a useable signal that's what really counts. Does it really matter if you have -60 or -90 db? From my experiences one is as good as another. I have two Sprint LG phones (PM-225 and LX-350) side by side and the LX 350 always shows about -3 to -5 dbs better. I wouldn't be surprised if my brother's Sanyo would show even better than my LX-350 and I'm sure there are others that would be worse. When I force my phone to roaming mode I pick up Verizon and Verizon usually shows about -5 dbs better than Sprint here at my home. However the EC-IO (the real indicator) on Sprint is better. The frequencies make a difference but the difference is not necessarily better just because the dbs are showing a little better.

 

I am sure you are right on the db, unfortunatly I can't find the EC-IO to see what it is, and is this also something that GSM uses?

Like I said for me I have been impressed with Sprint's coverage with the phone I have, 2 times calls were not that great (too much background or interference noise made them hard to talk & once was in A.C. on the 12th floor).

Does Sprint have a shared/family plan thru SERO? I couldn't find anything about that on their site.

 

Not sure if GSM use EC/IO. Someone else can answer that one.

Sprint does not have shared/family SERO plans but of course you can always get more than one of them.

 

Ok on the EC/IO question, hopefully someone can answer that.

As for the SERO question, guess the 15% discount would be my only choice. Thanks.

I still don't know what I am going to do, right now without a contract I really can't buy 4 new toys (at least 2 would be) and I don't know if I want to get stuck into a 2 year contract yet.
Personally if AT&T does do a shared unlimited SMS plan I will stay with them since I know how the service works and am happy with them.

I guess once our contract is settled I can look into it further, but right now I can't do anything buy figure out cost's & which would work better for me & my family.

 

No, I have had other Co-Workers ditch the company phones (which were Sprint) and get VZW or Cingular.

 

It matters if you are outdoors and then go indoors. If you are outside with -90dB at 1900Mhz means your phone will more than likely be useless indoors. If you go below -100dBm, under most conditions your connection will be very fragile and many times calls will drop. So I consider dBm very important because it measures the robustness of your connection.

I know calls can still drop and bad audio can happen with a strong dBm connection, but that's due to interference and it is a completely different game.

 

It's in the following article, hope it helps:
System and method of controlling transmission electric power in a CDMA base station - US Patent 6535740


Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The invention relates to a system and a method of controlling transmission electric power in a base station used in a CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) system.

2. Description of the Related Art

In the past, a CDMA system for cellular mobile communication has been controlled based on the standard IS-95-A of TIA/EAI (Telecommunication on Industry Association/Electronic Industry Association).

In the CDMA system, since a plurality of mobile stations use the same frequency band in common, it is necessary to decrease an interference of electric power between the mobile stations and to increase the number of the mobile stations, which enable multiple access.

To this end, transmission electric power must be accurately controlled in each base station to a proper value. In this case, the proper value of the transmission electric power is usually selected such that a data error rate falls within an allowable range at a minimum value of the transmission electric power when a base station receives a signal from a mobile station. That is, the electric power received by the base station or desired-to-undesired signal ratio (SIR) determined from the received electric power is uniformly controlled regardless of a location of the mobile station.

Also, the mobile station which is busy may communicate with a plurality of base stations through the same frequency band without any interruption of communication by repeating soft handoff (or softer hand handoff) to smoothly change the base stations from one to another. Herein, the mobile station always receives pilot signals from a base station which currently communicates with and the neighboring base stations, in order to add a new base station as an object of soft handoff or delete the base station as an object of soft handoff. Then, from electric field strength of the received pilot signal, received desired signal energy-to-whole received energy ratio (Ec/Io ratio) is measured, and the measured ratio is compared with a threshold value which is given as a reference value which is determined in relation to addition of an object of soft handoff or which is determined in relation to deletion of the object of soft handoff. For example, when an Ec/Io ratio of pilot signal from a base station exceeds a threshold value T-ADD, soft handoff addition procedure is performed.

Herein, it often happens that a base station stops transmission, for example, to maintain or to check over a CDMA communication system. In such a case, since the pilot signal from the base station is rapidly stopped, a mobile station which communicates in a service area with the stopped base station and the neighboring base stations must quickly perform the soft handoff addition procedure for the neighboring base stations.

In the procedure, it is required to transmit messages between the mobile station and the base station with which the mobile station communicates.

Techniques related to soft handoff in the CDMA communication system are disclosed, for example, in Japanese Laid-Open Publications No. H09-326754 (namely, 326754/1997) and No. H10-145834 (namely, 145834/1998).

However, no consideration is made at all in the above-mentioned techniques about the fact that each base station is interrupted or stopped for maintaining the base station and about the problem resulting from such an interruption of each base station.

In fact, when a base station which is communicating with mobile stations stops transmission suddenly, a call disconnection inevitably takes place during communication in a radio link or channel between the base station and the mobile stations which are communicating in a service area with the base station.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Therefore, it is an object of the invention to provide a device and a method of preventing occurrence of disconnection of a radio network between mobile stations and base stations (a base station and the neighboring base stations) when the base station stops transmission in maintaining of itself.

To prevent the disconnection, the method of the invention reduces transmission electric power of the base station gradually in stopping transmission of the base station due to its maintenance, and performs soft handoff deletion procedure for the base station to be stopped and soft handoff addition procedure for a new base station, until transmission is completely stopped. Namely, a duration time from a start of the reduction of the electric power to a stop of transmission is desirably controlled less than a period of execution time of the soft handoff addition procedure and the soft handoff deletion procedure.

 

Yes. All mobile phone systems use it. Ec/Io (or Eb/Io) is a technical way to say "interference". It's a ratio of "good" signal to "bad" signal.

The bars on your phone show your over-all received signal strength, including interference. If you have "full bars" on your phone, but theres alot of intereference, you'll have a bad or dropped call. Or maybe, the interference is so bad, your phone can't understand anything sent from the basestation, and you can't connect to the network at all.

 

....isn't that also known as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)? At least that's how they call it in WiFi networks.

 

My point was regardless of where you are as long as the phones have a useable signal and work good that's the important thing. The db is just a number and there are variables and more important factors when making comparisions.

 

So has Verizon improved in your neighborhood, Larry? I always thought Verizon didn't work well up where you live...

 

Personally, I don't think we will see a shared Unlimited Family SMS on AT&T in a while. They are releasing the iPhone soon, which they expect to bring in a lot of new customers to AT&T...I honestly can't see them becoming more customer friendly at this point.
Interesting about the dropped call issues people are experiencing there with Verizon. I know a few years ago, Verizon did have some issues, some of which I experiences as well in places such as Elizabeth and Newark, but from what I hear, a ton of capacity has been added and my Dad never has problems when going to NJ these days, so if I had to guess, things have improved, but you can never listen to others, you gotta try it yourself.

 

It works ok. It does seem to be better now than it used to be even though they didn't add any new towers that I'm aware of. So I don't know how they did it.

 

Verizon magic!

 

Lol, well lets not complain. Maybe they tilted one of their sectors differently or something.
Seems like out in my area, the only carrier really expanding these days is Sprint now. AT&T did some expanding last year and early this year, but that seems to have settled down; Verizon activated some sites last year and early this year but nothing new these days...Way to go Sprint.

 

It's called churn. When customers quit, that leaves more capacity available and things start to work better.

 

Similar, but different. There's alot of ways to talk about "unwanted" signal, depending on the system and what you're looking for. C/I is looked at in GSM. CDMA and WCDMA have different properties and SIR (Signal to Interference ratio) is looked at....which is differnt than SNR (yes, Noise and Interference are 2 different things)

 

It's been a while, but from what I remenber the definition of Ec/Io ( Ecee over Inot), is the Average Power Of The Pilot Channel over The Total Signal Power.

In practice this ratio is often used to compare CDMA base stations with each other.

As you said it is similar to SNR but just a different way to measure useable signal.

 

1st let me say Thank you for everyones input on the EC/IO and what it is about, I have to see if I can find it on field test mode on both phones.

As for your thoughts on the shared SMS with AT&T, I can dream since I believe your right with the iPhone coming out next month they are counting on that for new adds.

With the dropped calls, I am next to Elizabeth and I hear both sides of the story on their coverage, and yes the only way to know for sure is to try it out again and see if the dead spots in town and other area's are gone, as well as the dropped call issues I had with them in the past.

I do have to inspect a new Verizon reseller tomorrow, maybe I can get him to loan me a phone for a while to test.
I know the 30 day test drive won't work, since you have to port the number out to take advantage of the trial & that won't work.

 

I understand that noise and interference are two different things, but I thought the network could not tell the difference between them (or discriminate between them) since after all, the receiver only cares about the usable signal, or doesn't it?

 

The SIR is the Signal-To-Interference ratio...
I guess the Ec/Io will control how much interference it will take to handover the signal, via soft handoff (SIR).

 

Different systems have to look at usable signal in different ways. In WiFi you have one Freq channel for your signal, and everything outside of that is "unwanted". But SSMA signals like in WCDMA everyone is using the same frequency at the same time, so "unwanted" signal has to be looked at differently.