What type of degradation? I haven't noticed any larger than normal problems.
Many carriers have a end of year freeze on network changes. Although the
freeze has been planned for a long time, I notice it didn't stop sales
people from promising due dates during the freeze period. If you are
expecting to see new service turned up on Dec 31, I don't think your
odds are very good.
Some of my friends at other carriers told me they had a big push to get a
lot of changes into their networks before December 23 to beat the freeze.
> Speaking of telephone style networks. Has anyone noticed significant
> degradation in their cell/pager coverage/performance over the last couple
> of weeks?
What type of degradation? I haven't noticed any larger than normal problems.
Poor signal strength, unusually high number of fast busies when trying to
reach local and long distance land lines. High delays in call processing,
Higher than normal numbers of automatic redials on call-initiation.
This in areas like Tyson's Corner, South Beach, New York City, and
surrounding areas.
From a pager point of view, (Skytel is the easiest to pick on). Areas
that should be 100% full service are showing up in sections as Basic
service. Basic service areas are not delivering 100% of the pages until
Full service is returned, etc. Same regions. Walking through normal Basic
service areas are showing up as Storing messages (no tower connectivity).
Essentially the same areas as above.
Many carriers have a end of year freeze on network changes. Although the
freeze has been planned for a long time, I notice it didn't stop sales
people from promising due dates during the freeze period. If you are
expecting to see new service turned up on Dec 31, I don't think your
odds are very good.
Some of my friends at other carriers told me they had a big push to get a
lot of changes into their networks before December 23 to beat the freeze.
Maybe, I have been noticing it since about a week before Thanksgiving.
Hmmm...
Will it get worse before it gets better? How many people got phones
[cell|pcs] or pagers as gifts this year? And given that this is their
first week of ownership will be beating them half silly?
That's weird. For what it's worth, things have been improving for me in
the Rochester NY region. I can now keep my phone in my pocket in my
upstairs bedroom without losing signal, pages come through within about 10
minutes instead of the half hours of weeks past, and my stereo's reception
of local non-commercial stations is much improved.
I've just been blaming it on the lack of leaves on the trees, but maybe
all the good propogation is accumulating up here -rt
(p.s.: cellular provider is Cellular One [800MHz TDMA], pager is pagenet
[two-way], non-commercial radio stations are WBER, WRUR, and WITR)
I have a AT&T cell with paging..
Both services appear to be functioning just as they always have.
Alpha pages reach me within a minute of sending the email. I have
never had any fast busies or "no circuits available" related
messages. Call processing does vary quite a bit from when I am on the
south-west side of Denver (work) and from the south-east side where I
live.
I recently drove from Denver to Sydney, Nebraska with service just
about the entire way. A co-worker with sprint-PCS tells me that his
cell has _improved_ in quality recently (ie - better signal strength
in basement, etc).
But what I hate most about my cell, is that when I am working and
nobody is bothering me, then my computer screen starts to wiggle from
the interference from the phone, I know a call is coming in and just
about throw my phone out the window every time... Just one of those
things I guess.
-rt