T-Mobile Street Level Coverage Map

WOW. This coverage locator is THE BEST in the industry! Where i worked, T-mobile had little to no coverage, and it is shown on this map. Great job!

 

Gaiacomm International Terahertz repeaters, are designed to provide indoor
and outdoor coverage in a wide variety of environments.
The Gaiacomm International Terahertz repeaters are true repeaters offering signal down
conversion to an IF (intermediate frequency). Repeaters are more effective than
BDAs because at this low IF, highly selective bandpass filtering effectively
rejects adjacent band competitors and interfering signals. Then, the signals are
up converted back to their original frequencies, amplified, and radiated via the Base Station server antenna.
Most other units in the competitor category are simply bidirectional
amplifiers (BDAs) that offer little or no band pass filtering. These
units will amplify and re-transmit competitor’s signals, using valuable RF power
that could be used to amplify the desired in-band signals.
Many people install inexpensive BDAs, and quickly find out that the coverage
area and overall signal levels are less than what they expected. This is because so
many other undesired signals are consuming the RF power in the BDA so that
little is left for in-band signals. A repeater will transmit only the desired signals,
so no RF is wasted. Also, a repeater is frequently competitively priced relative to
a BDA, especially if external bandpass filters must be added to the BDA to make
it rejects out-of-band signals.

 

Very cool! I'm guessing these are availible on the Gaiacomm website? Post a link if you have a minute please!

 

It's still way inaccurate. They still do not show the tower in my hometown (they had it on compass years ago!). From the map, it usually shows green coverage only right next to the tower, and only has the signal going out 1-2 miles at most. I know the T-Mobile tower in my town goes 3 miles easily, along with other cells around me.

 

Not yet. But soon there will be datasheets that will explain the overall BSP system.

 

It seems to be marginally acurate for me. Many areas in Phoenix are correct. However, I posted another thread in the Western Forum that explains that they do not have correct coverage maps for Rio Verde, AZ. Granted I'm sure the maps are computer generated, but it said I would at least have fair coverage when in fact I had none...

 

Wouldn't that be a surprise for someone to check the compass maps in Rio Verde, sign up for T-Mobile service, then have no service
These maps are a great idea, but carriers need to put every effort in them to make them as accurate as possible, and T-mobile did a great job publishing this map online for everyone, and I hope other carriers follow as well.

 

Andy:
If you get a minute, go onto the T-Mobile coverage locator and take a look at Rio Verde. You will see that there is supposedly a tower very close to the town. I know exactly what tower they are referring to also. It is on Dynamite/Rio Verde road right before the town. When I drove by it yesterday, I had signal on my phone, but not like I was right next to the tower. They may be co-located with however owns it at one point, but not anymore. On the coverage locator, it looks like they have coverage all throughout the area. Check it out!

 

I will; I have exactly 10 minutes till I have to leave, so I'll do it later if I don't get a chance. Hmm, they must have a tower somewhere around, but it probably doesn't penetrate far enough. Maybe there was a tower outage?

 

I have been up there 3-4 times in the last year and never had service. This was the first time that I had used the Coverage Locator and thought I would have service there.

Like I said though, a few years ago, someone with a Voicestream phone did have service up there. I think it was around 2001...

 

Verizon has the street level one in the store. The online one is levels 7, 8, and 9 only. In the store they have levels 1-6 available.

 

That is pretty nice. If I was with Verizon, I would definitely head out to one of the stores to take a look at the areas I frequent the most often...

 

For my home area, ive noticed that the map is about is about half a mile off. I know exactly where the t-mobile tower is, and the dark green is located half a mile away from that location.

 

Huh... interesting. Maybe it isn't as good as we thought!

 

PhoneScoop has JUST learned about the TMO street level coverage maps:

http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=1175

Can we say "old news"?

 

I think that Rich Bourne? has just been too busy to post it. And I don't think that phonescoop is very TMo heavy.

 

Still, you've got to respect them for being so accurate. The area I live in is pretty much spot on. Other carriers really, really need to do this and use it as a sales tool instead of the maps that show where the carrier can offer service as opposed to the map that shows where the carrier does offer service.

 

According to a post on HoFo, the PCC maps will be updated and improved tomorrow. I don't know if that's for the public pages or the internal pages.

 

In my immediate area, I've found the maps to be somewhat conservative.

I have traveled in areas that are in gray on the maps (indicating a "fair" signal), but my Nokia phones consistently display full signal strength (all 7 bars) in those same areas.

It is extremely nice to be within line-of-sight of a T-Mobile tower right at home, which explains the same full signal strength on the phones, in my basement.

 

Welcome to the party Phonescoop...

 

It would be neat to have this coverage map info for E-Plus. There is a tower locator option on their site but its details make it hard to tell where exactly a tower is located.

 

As of 10:00 AM EDT, the PCC site is not reachable. Hopefully this is the updating of the maps.

 

Tonight, the old maps are still available via http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage

However, the new maps are available at http://compass.t-mobile.com They look much nicer, and seem to be a bit more accurate IMO. No username/pwd required. I think these will be on the regular TM site in a couple days.

 

Matt, do you have any ideas why T-Mobile would change the normal compass site to not require username/password anymore? This site, which was mostly only used by employees, is now open to everyone...? Why?

I'm not trying to point out that this is a bad thing, but it does give out more info than the street level maps on the regular t-mobile website, like new tower locations.

 

I'm curious to know whether the T-Mobile Compass site will show current shared towers with Cingular or whether these maps already reflect the fact that T-Mobile got the former GSM-1900 Cingular CA/NV network.

 

The old Compass site showed I was in the high range of Good. Now it shows I'm between Good and Fair which is what I think is more accurate.

The latest maps are dead nuts on!

 

Andy - I don't know why the changes were made to allow compass access to all.

ShoresGuy - AFAIK this shows all towers that T-Mobile has cell sites on - owership doesn't matter. It showed CA/NV sites last year before the acquisition was complete, so there should not be any issues or additions from that transaction.