FRFF cell phone survey

Did you bring your cell phone to Falcon Ridge last year? If you brought a cell phone to FRFF 2004, or know someone who did, - What carrier was it? What type of phone? - Did you get coverage? Was it pretty solid, spotty, or marginal? -- Cos

I have cingular...I believe it's passable but not great. A few years ago when I had sprint I remember getting signal when many others couldn't. But that was long ago so I don't know how sprint is these days.

I have an LG 4400 phone through Verizon and coverage was great. I was able to get a good to strong signal pretty much anywhere throughout the festival site whenever I checked.

same (or similar) phone and service here, and it worked great.

verizon owns. LG phones own. w00t. :D

(8000 represent!)

grr.

vcast or not, i want that phone!

it rules, but it's huge. :D

and i miss some of the features of the 6000 like: silence mode, the "down" button being the Message center button and "vib+high" for a ringer setting.

muaha. in your face! my 6000 roooooooooooooooooooooooooooolzz!!!!!!!!1111

funny enough, those are three of the things i love about it.

it needs a speakerphone, so, when i find the time, i'm going to crack !!! my 6000 open and resolder a few wires and force the outer speaker to rock that shite. with a switch, sho'nuff.

> verizon owns. LG phones own. w00t. :D(8000 represent!)

I hate to break it to you, but Sence the 8000 is all digital it might not work. I think the tower is analog.

Well, that'd be a bitch....

My phone doesn't do analog either... but... I seem to remember that the phone I had then (lg 510) had digital signal, not analog...

My current phone (lg vx4500) doesn't do analog.
I shall have to see what happens, I guess.

The coverage maps at Sprint and Verizon show digital coverage in the area. Probably a VZW tower, with voice coverage available to their various partnerships. I can't squint enough to make out the area on the Cingular Nation map. A Cingular store might have a better map, especially a store in the area.

> The coverage maps at Sprint and Verizon show digital coverage in the area.
> Probably a VZW tower, with voice coverage available to their various partnerships.
> I can't squint enough to make out the area on the Cingular Nation map. A
> Cingular store might have a better map, especially a store in the area.

With Sprint, inless they put up new towers sence last year, the signal ended well before the pharm.� Even when I new for a fact that Verizon's tower was analog, the maps said it was digital.� Go figure.

Verizon is updating their towers. Actually, everyone except Sprint is updating, since regulations require all-digital service (by 2010, if memory serves).� Sprint isn't updating, since their towers have been digital from day one.� They are adding new towers, but their focus has always been urban and Interstate, so I doubt Hillsdale has a Sprint tower nearby.

Sprint's map does list the area east of the Taconic as 'digital roaming,' meaning that Sprint has a service agreement with whoever owns the towers, and that the towers are digital.� If the Sprint phone isn't on an America plan, you'd have to pay roaming charges (69 cents/minute, I think), but you'd have voice service.� Sprint would also lose Vision features, but I doubt you'd use those on the hillside.

5 bucks a month and roaming is free.

I am not quite sure verizon acually owns the tower in Hillsdale. If memory serves, it's some small cell carier that only exsists in Columbia County, NY.

5 bucks a month and roaming is free.

True, but you're locked into it for two years.� So it becomes $120 for roaming over the length of the contract vs. 50 cents/minute roaming (75 cents.minute for long distance roaming).�

dang! brotha's got a good point.

between $5/month for no roaming, $5/month for unlimited in-network text/picture messages, $5/month for wireless insurance, and whatever else can be racked up, those verizon bastids can really stack up a bill.

don't even get me started on the whole "USE TEXT MESSAGING FOR EVERYTHING! VOTE FOR THIS! JUST 99 CENTS! GET YOUR GHETTO RINGTONES!"
fineprint: $.99/day, 7 days a week, until you cancel.
You'd think it was Phillip Morris running verizon, what with the way they try to get 13 year olds on daddy's family share to submit to these texting schemes and add a nice extra $30-$40 a month in bullshit fees. Then again, isn't a joke a day to impress your friends (on the big yellow bus, i'd presume) worth the toil it puts on your parents wallet? After all, who better to trick into spending money than those who don't know that they are...

I was talking about Sprint.� I think Verizon's plans are much better overall.� Sprint wins with the Fair & Flexible and Ready Link, but for anything else, Verizon is king.

Verizon can rack up the charges too, as can any carrier.� VZW's TXT/PIX bundles are overpriced, the nationwide plans have odd minute breaks, and their overage charges are outrageous.� Of course, they let you change your plan (minutes and/or coverage area) whenever you want and I love their call center people.

My favorite small print: Cingular's more bars in more places (as compared to Cingular before the merger with AT&T).

There has to be an analog signal there, as my�vx6000 worked perfectly last year, and it's a dual-band (2 Digital as opposed to tri-mode 2 Digital/1 Analog)�digital-only phone.

Funny enough, I've never found ANYWHERE that my non-analog phone wouldn't pick up a signal.� This accounts for just about everywhere between Boston, Framingham, Amherst-Berkshires, Concord/Stow/Hudson, and Fall River/Providence.

Bottom line, I don't anticipate that you'd have any signal issues, most especially if you are hillside.

i have problems inside places around framingham/westborough/marlborough areas, but not outside. inside my work i have 0-1 bars.

where at in framingham at?� are you talking about the giant route9/30 retail-shopping clusterfuck?� i am pleased to say that i have not been in that garbage heap of a mall in a long enough time to know how the well service in there would fare.

i work out in the friggin' Stow boonies, and only half of the store i work in has a practical verizon signal.� sprint, on the otherhand... it's funny that we sell sprint, seeing as how we usually have to bring the phone outside in order to activate/obtain a signal.

here are some useful letters and numbers*: 89q73db6i87a263oi4q23i578to83756qk82375.�

(*only useful when used out of presented context)

no i just mean that general area, inside grocery stores and buildings. i work just outside framingham/southborough.

I had the same problem activating VZW at my old store.� The tower was well behind the building, and we couldn't get OTA to work without going outside.�

Sprint doesn't offer OTA programming; they can be programmed with no signal at all.

Aye, that's the good thing about activating a Sprint phone:� you don't actually need the signal, which is good, for likely obvious reasons.

i do, however, believe that sprint phones can be updated for new tower information.� see the bottom post in this thread for more (hopefully useful) information.�

There has to be an analog signal there, as my�vx6000 worked perfectly last year, and it's a dual-band (2 Digital as opposed to tri-mode 2 Digital/1 Analog)�digital-only phone.

You mean that there has to be digital signal, right? :-)

The LG 520 from Verizon was a tri-mode phone.� I don't know the 510

Yeah, I said that pretty incoherently.

What I meant was.... the 510 could DO analog... but I'm pretty sure it wasn't.

My current phone doesn't even do it.

and i hate to break it to you, but i dont care, since i'm not going to FRFF :P

loser!!!!
;)

mmm-hmm.

Verizon here too.... LG 4500.

And I had full signal everywhere on the farm.

neal and i have verizon and it works fine...much better at frff than it does in all of chicago, honestly.

Take the hint and move to Long Hill farm. You can install plumbing and move into the budgiedome. Oh yes, and build the chair lift up the hill and get a satellite dish and...

... a blender.

The Budgiedome already has a magick solar powered blender that makes margarita smoothies.

does it also make your penis bigger?
that's what it's all about, you know.

Do you mean specifically mine?

...a bigger penis.

verizon wireless had the best service...i brought it to frff 2003.

Verizon-

The covereage is spotty, but it is the *ONLY* cell tower in Hillsdale, NY.

I have Cingular. I can't say if it works or not as I didn't have it last year. but I will have my phone with me this year and see how it works (although I won't use it much)

Had (at the time) last year a sprint phone with me..no signal at the farm at all

well, that's not so different from Sprint anywhere else, really...

ain't that the truth. that's pretty much why I switched to the evil empire of Verizon.

Yeah, I did pretty well with Verizon coverage.

The other people I called that didn't have Verizon... not so much. :-P

-- Pauley

I don't have verizon, so I don't have service up there, which brings me to a conundrum: I have Zilpha's ticket, and we need to meet up so I can give it to her so she can get in. Can someone be a contact that gets service?

you can use my number, but you can also probably leave the ticket at the will-call booth with her name so that she can pick it up when she arrives and therefore there wouldn't be any worries about trying to call each other.

*nods*
I think that's probably a better solution...

that's a good idea!

I had T-Mobile last year, with no service anywhere on the farm. I did have coverage by the time I got back to the highway, though.

In general, I found T-Mobile suckey, and I now have Cingular. We'll see how it goes.

I have a grudge against T-Mobile after trying to get a phone and they deemed me sucky and wanted like a $200 deposit. Tried with cingular right after and had not one problem getting approved. T-Mobile dorkuses.

At the 2004 FRFF we found good reception for Sprint/Virgin Mobile on the hill.� Didn't try in the lower areas.

T-Mobile signal was undetectable anywhere near FRFF.

� Al

Virgin Mobile obtains service through Sprint, and Sprint tends to obtain service througth Verizon's towers, so there's a signifigant chance that Sprint could work nearly if not as well as Verizon's phones.

A�major-ish reason that some/most(?) Sprint phones don't always work well on a Verizon tower is due to a signifigant amount of Sprint phones using the 1900mhz band, whereas Verizon tends not to use that CDMA band as often, leaving Sprint's compatibility to be inconsistent.

According to my Sprint rep, there SHOULD be an increase in Sprint�compatibility�in the general Berkshire region, with the remaining problems being caused mostly by phones that prefer CDMA1900, when the VZW towers are typically rated for the more common CDMA850 (digital), or even the AMPS850 (analog) which might not be supported out there to begin with.

I would recommend that Sprint users should update their roaming capabilities upon entering the FRFF area.� With Verizon, this would be done by dialing *228, option 1, option 2, I believe.� *228 is typically phone-activation, however, this MAY work with Sprint, as while the activation method for Sprint phones are fairly different, phones use nothing more than an offset in a 6-digit number (MPL) to differenciate between carriers.�When *228 is dialed, the phone will vary who/what it contacts for activation based on this MPL number.��If the MPL is the only difference between carrier-phones, there shouldn't be any reason you couldn't update tower info on a Sprint phone via this method.� Then again, this sounds theoretically, and infinitely, easier than getting through to Customer Service.�

I'll have more on this in a day or so, as this would be the best, if not the only option as far as getting the best possible Sprint signal on a Verizon tower is concerned.� I don't personally deal with Sprint often enough to remember how to update roaming capabilities.� (for the record, roaming capabilities have nothing to do with roaming charges)

I just realized that I posted this as a reply to another post.� Eep.� I sorta ditched the relevancy, and went on a tangent.

Verizon's *228 is OTA programming and roaming update.� Sprint's initial programming is manual, so they don't have an OTA option.

Sprint's *2 (Customer Solutions) will sometimes perform a system update to your phone before placing you into the queue.� That might only be for my old phone.

*228 from a Sprint phone delivers an 'incorrect number' message.

EDIT: It has come to my attention that updating the PRL does not directly have anything to with signal reception, as it directly pertains to Preferred Roaming List, which seems to deal only with roaming charges associated with non-sprint/verizon tower usage.� This is speculatory, however, so YMMV.

Hmm.� Thanks for checking that out.� According to what I just found out, it seems that you need to call *2 (which someone else mentioned, I believe), and ask for you account to be "flagged for a prl update".� If all goes as it should, this should be done on their end, and then you would need to dial *2 once again, and after selecting English (1), it should update your PRL (roam capabilities).

**I'm told you can also call *2 and then verbally ask for "PRL Update", which should automatically handle it, but I cannot confirm this.**

I have not confirmed any of this myself, as I don't have a Sprint phone, and I can't do it with my work demo phone.�

There's always the possibility that this won't have any signifigant effect on Sprint coverage at FRFF, but no harm can come of it.