Explaining Cell Phone Reception

[rstoyguy]

Originally Posted by Csquare

To my understanding, the radio has a base PRL list of towers to look for. When you switch to a different carrier radio, you are looking at a new PRL list for that carrier. In some areas, the carrier selected my have more towers and hince "better coverage".

Yep, that's pretty much it. The PRL tells the phone who they have roaming agreements with and whose towers to use. The more towers, the better signal. Or, if your in the "foot print" of a tower instead of inbetween a couple you'll have better signal/service. The FCC makes them limit the strength of the tower and then grandma doesn't want one in her backyard...

Originally Posted by orangekid

someone should just make a custom radio that has all the towers, with that type of power one could rule the world!!!!

or at least get pretty good coverage.

It'd take one big party that leaves them a heck of a hangover to get them all to use one set towers! That would be ideal, one system and then blanket us with radio waves!

[orangekid]

Originally Posted by rstoyguy

Yep, that's pretty much it. The PRL tells the phone who they have roaming agreements with and whose towers to use. The more towers, the better signal. Or, if your in the "foot print" of a tower instead of inbetween a couple you'll have better signal/service. The FCC makes them limit the strength of the tower and then grandma doesn't want one in her backyard...


It'd take one big party that leaves them a heck of a hangover to get them all to use one set towers! That would be ideal, one system and then blanket us with radio waves!

theoretically it could be done though right? especially on sprint when we have free roaming, if its just a list of availble towers, basically combine all the radios...

[rstoyguy]

Originally Posted by orangekid

theoretically it could be done though right? especially on sprint when we have free roaming, if its just a list of availble towers, basically combine all the radios...

Between the different type of carriers GSM and CDMA, no. Between say Verizon and Sprint.... Sprint would send their roaming bill to Verizon, and then it would depend on their roaming agreements. In reality they have 90 days to bill the other carrier for roaming minutes. I'm gonna say it happens alot quicker now, but everyone wants to charge for their multi-thousand cell site. Since the actual cell-site reports the roaming minutes used, and the phone reports the carrier used....think of all the people that would leave unemployed.

Carriers still charge each other $0.65 and upwards to $3.00 for roaming minutes, but because I use an equal amount of yours, they've worked out some sort of deal and it's always changing. (if that made any sense...lol)

[MrObvious]

The problem isn't the radio guys. It's the tower availability. I agree it would be nice to have a nice availability of cell towers everywhere but that just doesn't happen. What happens is that a PRL file basically says which groups of towers you can roam off of or use natively. Some towers aren't used because of roaming fees the carriers pay being too much.

[orangekid]

Originally Posted by MrObvious

The problem isn't the radio guys. It's the tower availability. I agree it would be nice to have a nice availability of cell towers everywhere but that just doesn't happen. What happens is that a PRL file basically says which groups of towers you can roam off of or use natively. Some towers aren't used because of roaming fees the carriers pay being too much.

what I mean is since we can flash custom radios here, can't some smart guy just develop a custom made radio that gives access to all CDMA towers? I mean I get free roaming on sprint anyways, so what's the big deal. I don't think the carrier will release the radio, I just mean a "hacked" one or whatever you want to call it, (as long as its not illegal, not sure about the legality of making your own radio with access to more towers)

[CozBoogie]

Moved to the General Discussion Forum.

late,
Coz

[drewcam888]

The prl is separate form the radio. No amount of hacked or custom radios will help. If you could combine prl files together then you could get better coverage. But sprint or verizon or whoever would wonder how you used a non listed tower from the stock prl and then stick it to you with roaming bills. So all someone has to do it merge prls and then just update your prl on a stock or custom rom.

[orangekid]

Originally Posted by drewcam888

The prl is separate form the radio. No amount of hacked or custom radios will help. If you could combine prl files together then you could get better coverage. But sprint or verizon or whoever would wonder how you used a non listed tower from the stock prl and then stick it to you with roaming bills. So all someone has to do it merge prls and then just update your prl on a stock or custom rom.

foiled again

[shaggylive]

ok, regardless of the prl any tower still authenticates connected phones, and therefore you will get one of those roaming messages when making a call and have to enter a cc#.
also you carrier will never route an incoming call to non-preferred tower.

[drewcam888]

And shaggy finishes the discussion with a few last points.