Monterey / Carmel CA - what's the deal with spotty coverage

[HunterHunter]

They sent a text out a few months ago saying they were upgrading. One area now has 4g.

But the areas that have 3g have become really really bad with regards to coverage.

Does anyone know how long this process takes ? Does it make sense the 3g coverage is suffering if they are upgrading the towers to 4g?

I'll give it another month - if they don't improve I'll be forced to go to the evil empire and pay more.

 

[kate]

I've seen other people complaining about coverage while their area is being upgraded, so it's not unusual. Not sure how long it takes, but it does take awhile.

Sprint (which Virgin Mobile uses) is upgrading their 4G LTE network across the country, and should be completed in 2014. Some more info:

http://newsroom.sprint.com/presskits/sprint-network-vision-information-center.htm

Sprint pushes back Network Vision completion date to mid-2014 - FierceWireless

 

[Rxpert83]

They sent a text out a few months ago saying they were upgrading. One area now has 4g.

But the areas that have 3g have become really really bad with regards to coverage.

Does anyone know how long this process takes ? Does it make sense the 3g coverage is suffering if they are upgrading the towers to 4g?

I'll give it another month - if they don't improve I'll be forced to go to the evil empire and pay more.

You've got to consider the network as a whole, not just 1 or 2 towers.

When towers go down for maintenance, that traffic gets diverted to other towers in the area, increasing the load placed on them. If they're planning on upgrading all the towers in the area (as sprint is doing most places), they can only do so many at a time. This can result in a prolonged period of less than optimal performance.

Your best bet is to call the carrier and see what's up. Many will at least partially credit you for downtime.

 

[HunterHunter]

Thank you for your answers. They were helpful.

 

[jmatherly411]

They sent a text out a few months ago saying they were upgrading. One area now has 4g.

But the areas that have 3g have become really really bad with regards to coverage.

Does anyone know how long this process takes ? Does it make sense the 3g coverage is suffering if they are upgrading the towers to 4g?

I'll give it another month - if they don't improve I'll be forced to go to the evil empire and pay more.

There are 4 towers out of 22 in the Monterey/Carmel CA that have been 4G LTE 1900 PCS upgraded, (1) Alvarado St./Roof Mounted Antenna (2) Sunridge Rd./Monopole Tower (3) Holman Hwy @ Scenic Dr./Roof Mounted Antenna (4) Cabrillo Hwy @ Rio Rd/Roof Mounted Antenna. Samsung is the OEM for Network Vision in the South Bay market which has over 200 towers to upgrade. 2 towers are currently being worked on in the Monterey/Carmel area, none of the towers have received 3G upgrades in this area as of right now only LTE. Some of these sites will get TD-LTE (Time Division LTE) on 2500Mhz frequencies which will provide great capacity and bandwidth, most of Clearwire's old WiMax sites will be converted to TD-LTE. Upgrades can take weeks or even months depending on the weather, availability of upgraded backhaul to the site, getting permission to access a site that's on private property, etc. Backhaul is the biggest time consumption as subcontractors usually do this not the OEM. When they do a full build site the OEM installs the 3G and LTE equipment all at once, the routers on the Network Vision equipment can accept multiple backhaul sources including T1 lines. On a site thats been Network Visioned all the voice and T1 lines are plugged in together into the router, and all the sites bandwidth is managed in the router for voice and data combined. So if a 3G NV site has a lot of voice traffic or low trafic, data speeds can go up and down significantly after an NV conversion, even without new backhaul installed. Until fiber is pulled to the towers your 3G speeds are going to fluctuate throughout the day.