ktgumbo

I currently have Sprint PCS, and the coverage is awesome, full antanea everywhere i go. The problem is that I am paying $125 a month for 3 phones family share with them. I just ordered ATT's GSM coverage and get the same minutes for only $75 a month, but it seems the my signal is not as powerful and comes in and out of service.

I called ATT and they said that GSM phones dont work that well indoors? WTF! IS this true? I have 30 days to try this out, and if it does not work, then im gona cancell this.

I know this should be the cell forum, but whoever goes there?

95gt

the people that know about this stuff


Hey 700 posts. Comin like a freight train

Mike

You should have stuck w/CDMA.

From what I've heard ATT doesn't provide the greatest service. We have Verizon and have been very pleased w/thier service.

Berner

Now that ATT and Cingular are merging together they are going to run off a W-CDMA network and not the GSM anymore. Gsm is powerful in europe but in the states it suckes pretty bad. Its too expensive to put up gsm towers and its just getting off the ground in the states so the coverage area sucks. ATT is 14 mill in debt right now to so cingular is just going to aquire that debt so dotn plan on getting good service anytime soon.

ktgumbo

SO i guess i should cancel then huh, even though its $50 a month cheeeeeeeeeeapppper?

mt6forlife

What good is cheeeeeeeeeeeeeppppper if you can't use it?

CLpower

I just went from the ATT TDMA to GSM and am very happy, it does lose calls on occasion but it's better thent he TDMA in my opinion.


What's this about getting rid of GSM? What does that mean for me?

Berner

i dont know how long its going to take to go into effect but i wouldent worry about it for a while. They have a lot of shit to workout first.

JakeCL

wrong

Slooo97CL

iTrader: (1)

smokin crack buddy?

Berner

so i take it with your responce you know what you talking about?

03TypeS_RENAMED

Maybe you've noticed this or not, but GSM phones don't have an extendable antenna like CDMA phones, because the way GSM works, they don't need reception diversity.

So in some way or another, in those places where you're indoors and the carrier you're choosing doesn't have good coverage in that spot, your reception will suck more with GSM.

ktgumbo

Ya i did notice that. But my sprint cell is like full signal, and now this is mediocre.

03TypeS_RENAMED

Yeah, my wife had a T-Mobile phone, service sucked big time. First GSM phone (always liked CDMA) and had a bad impression already.

CDMA is a better technology altogether, although GSM has been around for more time.

The average revenue per user for a GSM carrier is higher than for CDMA, because of the lower cost of the handset. That's why you'll get relatively marginally better rates from ATTWS, T-Mobile, Cingular than Verizon, Sprint, or USCellular.

GSM = cheaper but crappy voice quality on bad coverage, CDMA = expensive and better voice quality.

Remember that Cingular has bought AT&T wireless, so expect a brand name change later this year.

kensteele

There's a whole lot of speculation here in all these posts. All I can say is go back to your Physics, and you'll get the answers. All the other non-factual information is just rumor and conjecture.

So to answer your question, there is no such thing as a GSM phone does not work well indoors. It depends on how far away the cell tower is located, how sensitive your phone is built, and what the construction of the house is. THAT will mostly dictate what the properties of the GSM signal on the 1900mHz frequency (or maybe 850).

In the meantime, nothing else changes in the short term. Unfortunately Berner is simply REPEATING what he has heard the popular rumors of the week, he certainly can't believe the things that he wrote first-hand.

03TypeS_RENAMED

Not necessarily those are the ONLY determining factors. You can have 10 cellsite towers 100ft from your house, but if the system, being GSM or CDMA, is badly or never optimized, you'll have crappy performance, no matter how good your phone is. System performance is much more important than signal strength.

An interesting fact about 1.9GHz is that it's a much less "polluted" band than 800MHz is, but 1.9GHz tends to suffer much more from signal attenuation than 800MHz. It is a higher energy signal, though.

Deploying a 1.9GHz system for instance, is more expensive because you need more cellsites to provide efficient coverage, and optimizing performance for a 1.9GHz is much more difficult than for 800MHz.

I know these facts because I work for cellular infrastructure, and have done cellular network optimization and performance for several large carriers.

Slooo97CL

iTrader: (1)

they obviously didnt teach you much.

what? i dont think so. i think you pulled this one out of your ass.

how are you going to say this? GSM has cripser/clearer sound, no question about it. Coverage and sound are different things.

kensteele

Well, this is the part that troubles me. Would you like me to provide you with a dozen examples of either CDMA phones without an extendable antenna or GSM phones with an extendable antenna?

Nobody here, including me, understands what that statement means....reception diversity.

kensteele

Fine. I was assuming that the system was performing adequately. We all know of course that if the tower is not doing what it is supposed to do, your phone is going to have problems no matter what.

How about this. You can have an AT&T cellsite right in your backyard and if it is not even turned on, you could be sitting on your deck and not be able to place a call (from that cellsite) at all.

proaudio22

Even if you did understand it, it wouldn't make any sense b/c it's basically an oxymoron. Any talk of diversity reception with one antenna is silly.

03TypeS_RENAMED

You guys are such a-holes its unbelievable!

suXor

bwhahahahaha

You guys need RF 101, followed with a good dose of antenna diversity traning, and digital network physics.....

BTW. GSM and TDMA are the same dame thing... GSM uses time division.

suXor

OH, and I don't care how frickin much you tune and optimize, if you don't have the capacity to support droves of calls, then you continue to fragment your BTS's until each traffic call has crap for bandwidth, and your overall coverage bubble on that BTS shrinks from all the pilot polution.

Point is, GSM is cheaper because they don't put thier money in the network like Sprint and Verizon. You get what you pay for.

dallison

whaaat???? are you kidding me?
GSM is what att and cing are going to.

you have to realize that analog has been around since 83 and digital since 95. this gsm thin has been here for a bout 2-3 years. it is going to be better.

once the 850 overlay is done(which is more powerful) it will be able to penetrate better.
the 1900 does not seem to travel as far as the 850 and tdma.

awe has over 1 billion in cash. each co will have some debt to pay off

dallison

and it also depends on where the towers are situated.
in your case where u travel there may be sprint towers everywhere, if you had awe the service may be spotty

now if i lived in your same neighborhood and didnt use awe at home and if i go in the opposite direction and it works where i need and sprint may not work. then awe will work for me.


most co's minutes are the same, its just the coverage areas are different.
most people shop for service where they know it will work. and unfortunatly some buy it b/c of the looks of the phone, so they have no room to complain

dallison

sounds like