Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home

[gTen]

Originally Posted by k8e

I could call and ask Sprint what partner network they think I should be connecting to, but I guess I wanted to be able to see it for myself. (The completely different tech you're talking about is Sprint and Verizon being CDMA and AT&T being GSM, right? I had forgotten about that.)

Thanks for the suggestion about changing the radio. I'm curious about all things about modifying my TP2s, but I've been having a hard time finding a starting place. I use PHM Regedit for some enabling some hidden settings, but that's it so far. Is changing the radio an advanced task and is it easily reversible? My knowledge level right now is I don't understand unlocking or know how to flash a ROM. I've tried looking for tutorials from time to time but keep getting overwhelmed by unfamiliar terminology. That's probably a question for the WM Legacy Devices area, though.

I feel like Sprint should theoretically be able to come out here with some kind of high-tech dowsing rod and walk around following the beeps until they yell, "there's yer problem!"

.

If the roaming party allows data roaming and not only voice. you can get your ip address in the browser and based off ip address tell who it is.

Also if you trace the tower your connecting to, based on tower code you can tell who it is.

There might be other methods available via EPST but those are the 2 I can think off the top of my head.

Radios and information can be found here:
http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/cdma-tp2-d...-included.html

Flashing a radio is reversible, just make sure you don't flash any radio thats not on the list I gave. Unless you are in need of a new paperweight.

[eric12341]

Flashing a radio is even easier that flashing a custom rom as it just triggers a soft reset rather than a hard reset. Just make sure it's a CDMA Radio (Sprint,Verizon,USCC) and not GSM (AT&T,T-Mobile)

[k8e]

Thanks - though now I'm even more perplexed. I couldn't find out how to trace the cell tower I'm connecting to, but I tried the IP address lookup you suggested, using Tracemyip/Maxmind/Whatismyip. Results:

Sprint Automatic: 246.23.244.x - Sprint PCS, no other data found
Roaming Only: 184.215.140.x - Sprint PCS, location Wichita KS (I'm in California!)
Sprint Only: 107.37.164.x - Sprint PCS, location Concord, CA (60 mi away but makes more sense than Wichita)
Roaming Only: 183.140.38.x - Sprint PCS, location Mission, KS (near Kansas City, KS)
Roaming only:173.140.38.x - Sprint PCS, Mission, KS
Roaming only:174.154.32.x - Sprint PCS, Wichita, KS
Sprint only: 107.39.83.84 - Sprint PCS, Vallejo, CA (70 mi away)
Sprint only: 107.32.58.x - Sprint PCS, Oakland, CA (40 mi away)
Roaming only: 173.154.182.x - Sprint PCS, Overland Park, KS
Sprint (automatic): 107.38.131.x - Sprint PCS, San Francisco, CA (50 miles away)

Is the "location" referring to a specific tower that I'm connected to, or the physical location of a server somewhere or something like that?

And does it make any sense that when I force Roaming, I still always get a Sprint IP address? Does it make sense that on Roaming, the "locations" are in Kansas, when I'm in California?

Maybe these tables are not kept up to date?

.

[k8e]

Sprint tech support Supervisor tells me that it's impossible to force a Sprint phone to roam onto another network. She says that it will never roam unless there are physically no Sprint towers in the area - it will always try to connect to Sprint first and only roll over if Sprint is unavailable. I said, that sounds exactly like the Automatic setting, so what's the difference between Automatic and Roaming Only, then? She said, they are exactly the same thing.

That doesn't sound right to me at all. I didn't believe her, but is she right?

[EyeB]

could be right, i mean since the late 1990s, early 2000s, where there used to be other cdma providers, now it's just verizon/sprint and their subsidaries, if it isn't sprint it'll be one of their smaller companies (or ones that pay sprint to use their towers) or verizon towers and their companies.

so really the only roam it does are on verizon towers :S, i heard people using verizon radio having good results but can't say anything on this myself. But verizon probably doesn't give sprint phones priority so service would be voice only/2g?

edit scratch that maybe... I just remembered I was traveling through nebraska/kansas last month, I did end up roaming, I have no idea whose towers I was on (I actually didnt even see any buildings for like 75miles in farm country). The speed sucked, I mean it was probably in the bytes/s not even kb/s. The voice did connect for calls though. Point is that I've never experienced this before even using the roaming only setting. I may have been roaming using an analog signal? I don't know if the tp2 supports this but it felt like it was using a really old technology

[demonlordoftheround]

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In rural areas, you roam on 1x. Probably less than 100kbs. Verizon doesn't let Sprint roam on 3G unless you have a corporate PRL, and even then sometimes not.