Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home
 

Frequent dropped calls at home on Sprint and forced roaming following electrical work nearby - only a coincidence?

My BF and I always had perfectly good cell reception at his apartment until 3 days ago, when suddenly, the cell service became almost unusable (dropped calls). It occurs both on Sprint and on forced roaming only. Our phones both work fine away from the apartment, although I haven't tested yet to see how far is required. We both have HTC TP2s running WM 6.1.

Maybe simply coincidence, the problem began within the same hour I saw a utility worker outside doing something at the electrical cabinet for the apartment complex, about 25ft/10m from our apartment. Also maybe just coincidence, the apartment manager complaining later about her phone "acting weird" all day. (I don't know if she meant her cell phone or landline.) I asked a neighbor in the next building over if he was having any signal issues and he said he wasn't (AT&T).

PG&E (the gas and electric company) says their equipment is functioning correctly. At first, Sprint said theirs was too; 2 days later they said it was due to tower upgrades that would be going on until September 7. Then I realized the rep was talking about system-wide project dates and she could provide no useful information about whether work on towers in my area had actually begun or when it would start or end.

A few times since then my call dropped immediately when I walked by the electrical cabinet downstairs but I can't think of a good reason for this. There is also a bank of about 3 dozen "smart meters" immediately below our apartment, which I think operate on cell phone frequencies, but if they're working right, shouldn't interfere.

If it's the Sprint network upgrade work causing the call drops, then shouldn't the service most likely be better, or at least different, when I switch to Roaming?

I wanted to see if I could get more information about what was happening by using Cellmapper on my HTC TP2 WM6.1 but it wants a newer .Net framework. I'm hesitant to upgrade .Net because I don't know how it will affect my current applications.

I'd appreciate any suggestions on how to troubleshoot the suddenly horrible reception since Sprint and PG&E are uninterested in figuring it out.

Thanks, ppc geeks :)

Re: Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home
 

Yea I wouldn't believe the September date they told you. This is due to the slow speed issues I was having last year, they told me several resolution dates and didn't deliver on any of them and the towers are still messed up despite what the network.sprint.com site says. I would wait it out first but after that then begin to shop around for another carrier.

Re: Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home
 

Try the maintenance map here:

https://network.sprint.com/


If the problem is only at your house, make them give you a free airave.

Re: Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home
 

@gTen that's what I just said in my last post
it simply isn't right.

Re: Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home
 

sorry I missed what you said, I was kind of busy while doing it and didn't see it :/

Re: Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home
 

Hi, thanks for responding to my question.

I'm not satisfied with Sprint's explanation either, since they can't provide any information that correlates with the start of my problems, and it doesn't explain why I get the same bad reception when Roaming Only. I'm in a well populated area with excellent Verizon and AT&T coverage, so I expected to get good reception on Roaming.

Anyone have any ideas to figure out where the problem is actually originating?

Any ideas how to tell which network I'm connecting to on Roaming Only?

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Re: Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home
 

Your definitely not roaming AT&T, different technology completely. You might be roaming verizon, but no guarantee as it depends on who sprint has a roaming contract in your area with.

You might have better luck with roaming reception if you try a different radio.

Re: Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home
 

Just because coverage shows up on the map doesn't mean it's going to be good in your home as well. For example at my house Verizon ,Sprint and T-mobile phones all struggle to maintain a 3G/4G signal and supposedly my house is in a 4G good coverage area (in the case of sprint no 4G at all).

Re: Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home
 

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!"

.

Re: Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home
 

Good point. I never had to use Roaming in this location in the past, so I have no prior example of what the actual Roaming reception normally is here.

Re: Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home
 

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.

Re: Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home
 

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)

Re: Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home
 

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?

.

Re: Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home
 

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?

Re: Perplexed: troubleshooting dropped calls at home
 

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

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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.