[Kris Kumar]

Originally Posted by jimfee

There are however, a thousand variables that play into a good signal, on a recent cell to cell with my wife the call was loosing voice quality, I asked her where she was standing in the house? She said "the living room", I told her "get in the kitchen" and she was amazed at the better signal.

Hopefully in the next few years we will get home-level signal strength tool, instead of the current street-level. ;-)

[Kris Kumar]

Originally Posted by jimfee

There are however, a thousand variables that play into a good signal, on a recent cell to cell with my wife the call was loosing voice quality, I asked her where she was standing in the house? She said "the living room", I told her "get in the kitchen" and she was amazed at the better signal.

Hopefully in the next few years we will get home-level signal strength tool, instead of the current street-level. ;-)

[Sven Johannsen]

Originally Posted by brntcrsp

Well, GSM is notorious for poor building penetration, espcially the upper band that T-Mobile uses. The 800(850) band supposedly eases some of that burden, but t-mobile doesn't seem to interested in improving their US infrastructure for the future of wireless. :roll:

Yea, but here I am in the corner of the building with floor to ceiling windows within three feet of my desk. One story building BTW. A few weeks ago I was in California in a location that shows minimal if any coverage, in interior rooms in a building with no windows what so ever, and had a bar or two and made and received calls. Might have been roaming though. Don't recall.

I am a EE BTW so do understand some of the realities. RF propagation in real environments does tend to take on some characteristics of a Black Art. Mostly because you can't determine all the variables.

[Sfielder]

This has been around for quite a few years in the UK, but I guess compared to the US we are quite a small country!

see orange site below, it lists 3G as well as 2.5G coverage

http://coverage.orange.co.uk/uk/UKCoverageSearch.htm

Simon

[Kris Kumar]

Originally Posted by Sfielder

see orange site below, it lists 3G as well as 2.5G coverage

Wow..just when I thought that US carriers had made progress by providing street level coverage info, I find that our European brothers not only have it, but also one for 3G. :-(

[aristoBrat]

Originally Posted by brntcrsp

I wonder how far behind it is. We're a large customer of t-mobile's, and they recently installed a tower on our campus to improve reception because we were between too many towers causing massive amounts of dropped calls. Between the new tower and replacing old SIMs the mobile service has drastically improved yet the strength is not reflected on the map.

FWIW, the UI and coverage maps seem to be newer at:
http://compass.t-mobile.com

(at least in my area)

[aristoBrat]

Originally Posted by brntcrsp

t-mobile doesn't seem to interested in improving their US infrastructure for the future of wireless. :roll:

Regarding T-Mobile's US infrastructure:

29,401 = towers on-air at the end of 2004
26,898 = towers on-air at the end of 2003
--------
2,503 = new towers in 2004

That's almost 10 new towers brought on-air every weekday last year. If that's not working on improving, I'm not sure what is. :roll:

[Sven Johannsen]

Originally Posted by aristoBrat

Regarding T-Mobile's US infrastructure:

29,401 = towers on-air at the end of 2004
26,898 = towers on-air at the end of 2003
--------
2,503 = new towers in 2004

That's almost 10 new towers brought on-air every weekday last year. If that's not working on improving, I'm not sure what is. :roll:

Or you can look at that as 10% increase in coverage. Maybe that's good, maybe not. From my point of view it depends on if you benefited from that 10% :wink: