I told Larry months ago that the Sprint tower at our local mall wasn't working. I even told Sprint's network people, thanks to Larry. I never knew if it got fixed because I switched. Well...I went to the mall on Friday, and now the Sprint panels are completely gone. They (used to at least) own the tower. They had the top spot too. Now Cingular and Nextel are the only carriers. I thought, well maybe Sprint is putting their panels down at Nextel's for some reason....nope. They're just gone. That's freaking stupid. Now there won't be any coverage inside the mall. T-Mobile I think has a repeater or otherwise they'd be dead, but it still fades out inlarge stores, but Sprint will most likely be completely dead. Verizon is dead in there too (Verizon loves to suck where people actually go around here) so much for roaming. This makes me mad. I bet calls are dropping on I-95 now too, because this site serviced a portion of the road and the mall, it's a great placement for a site. Here's the map, the tower's in the parking lot, and since a portion of the map is light green, it's clearly gone. Yet iDEN will work fine...
I have never know a Sprint antenna to just disappear like that. Are you sure it was Sprint? How do you know they owned the tower? I doubt that they would want to remove a cell site that services a mall. Typically they would add CDMA to the Nextel array so maybe that's going to happen real soon.
It used to be on SSUSA. It isn't now, so I guess they don't own it. I know it was Sprint because I had 100% signal -40's near it, and it followed the typical Sprint pattern around here. Now the signal is crap, and for awhile there were wires coming out of the panels and stuff, like they were taking it down. Well they did. The Nextel panels got a redo to the synergy style (3pps and much thicker and bright white), however no CDMA 1pps site. I'm guessing they wanted to save rent on the tower, but they need CDMA ASAP haha. I'll update if I see anything new. Stinks because now only Cingular and Nextel work well, with T-Mobile at least realizing they should use a repeater to help most of the mall.
That makes no sense what so ever, especially by the that mall & Rt 95, I know exactly where that is, I stayed in the Hilton by there 2 years ago. Maybe they are working on a synergy site with the Nextel panels & still are working on it? or they have a different location they are putting the tower? I hope they fix this before the big race weekend in June. Keep us updated on this.
Yeah it sounds like they have a synergy site coming there. They could be waiting on the local telco or might need a special permit to procede. It varies depending on the local government. BUt I'm surprised they didn't bring in a CDMA COW for temp service.
Like I said the CDMA side has been down for awhile. Either way, it will impact CDMA service, because sprint was at the top....now they'll be about 75ft down. Not a big deal I guess. I'll probably head over to the mall Friday after my test to unwind, so I'll check the situation out. Fire...long drive from there to Dover. You can't get a place anywhere in Kent County? Smyrna has a new hotel opening up, I don't know the brand, but if I had to guess...I'd say Hampton. Check that out, or check out the Hampton in Middletown (19709). That's where I'll be living this summer, and its closer than Ogletown.
Sometimes lowering the elevations of the panels can actually improve service to the areas right around the cell site. Generally when they place them higher up they're trying to expand the reach of the RF but the areas right below will usually get a little bit less due to the umbrella effect.
We already have the hotel booked, we are staying across from the University of Delaware by the MD line again. It's about an hour drive using back roads to Rt.1, you can't get a hotel anywhere closer, they are booked 5+ years in advance.
Darn, that's crazy. Hence why I avoid Dover like the plague on race weekends. Course I hardly ever go down to Dover anymore, traffic's awful. I'd rather go up north. Yeah, there's a lot of hotels in Newark, surprisingly. I think they only get full for race weekends and graduation, which is 5/26 this year (yay c/o 07). So that's two full weekends in a row for them.
I went past the mall today while merging onto I-95. The Sprint panels are completely down. There is about 50 feet of unused tower space until the ATT panels, then the Nextel panels. It looks stupid. However, my phone did show 5 bars while merging. So I am guessing that Sprint has added panels onto Nextel's placement. Won't know for sure until I go to the mall. The v3m hardly ever shows 5 or 6 bars, so that tower must have CDMA active again (about time) otherwise it'd most likely only show 4 max.
