Would Sprints Tower changes effect my signal?

[johnmcd348]

For the past month or so now, I have had trouble with my Arrive. I've been lucky to get 1 bar of signal strength and some of the time, I even find myself roaming locally. I get a lot of dropped calls and quite a few missed calls that do not even show up on my phone. I do however, eventually get the voice mail notification from those "missed" calls.

Had a very long talk with Sprint Tech Support and they referred me to my local service center.

This is what the tech told me:

My Arrive is part of the older Nextel/Sprint EVO service phones and they are in the process of switching over their cellular network towers and the older model phones will not work as well on the newer networks.

Was he feeding me a line? I thought it odd that I have full strength on their store, not surprising since there was a cell tower(Sprint) about 100yds in front of the store. But, if I drive about 1 nautical mile away, I'm roaming.......

My wife's Samsung Epic 4G was having similar problems a couple of months ago but now has seemed to gotten better, about the same time mine started loosing signal.

Any input from those of you who are in the know about these things?

Thanks

 

[eric12341]

I highly doubt sprint is making any improvements anywhere, service is still crappy where I'm at even after they gave me several resolution dates. You can try going to network.sprint.com to see if anything is scheduled but due to my experience I doubt anything will change near you.

 

[anon(5335877)]

Sprint's supposed to be working on Network Vision: an network upgrade that's supposed to bring LTE to their network, and provide other significant improvements. So that could be the upgrade that they're talking about, but I don't know what they mean when they say the older model phones won't work as well on the newer network.

Sprint said that Network Vision is supposed to make an improvement for everyone, not screw customers with older devices over.

Now, they sent you to a service center? Like for phone repairs? So who answered your question they guy who fixes phones? Because I don't think he's a network engineer. He either came up with a BS answer (that's I guess half true) or he doesn't know what he's talking about.

The fact that your wife had the same problem before but hers got better when yours got worse made me think maybe the tech was right, but I looked up both phones and they both access the same type of network (both CDMA and 1xEVDO, neither access WiMax).

They should have let you talk to a network technician/engineer/whatever it's called. Or file some sort of trouble ticket so someone qualified can look into the matter.

 

[Laura Knotek]

I was at Android Central's forums a few weeks ago. Sprint's Network Vision upgrade is making things worse for a lot of customers in the areas where Sprint is currently working on the upgrade.

The common consensus on Android Central is that Sprint's network will get worse before it gets better in those areas.

 

[johnmcd348]

Thanks for the input. I got the feeling the guy was feeding me a line. While I was in there though, there was a business man who was coming in with trouble with his Nextel/PTT devices and the girl at the counter told him that those phones were going to stop working in the coming weeks also. It also didn't make sense to me being that the signal was so strong in their office right across the street from a tower, yet, 1-2 miles away(as the crow flies) I barely get a signal. They recommended I get the airwave or some other device to help me increase my signal in the home. Either that, or get a new iPhone............. My response to that was no Thanks. I am looking at possibly getting the Galaxy S3 or the Motorola Photon and going Droid for awhile until Sprint catches up with WP.

 

[anon(5335877)]

Thanks for the input. I got the feeling the guy was feeding me a line. While I was in there though, there was a business man who was coming in with trouble with his Nextel/PTT devices and the girl at the counter told him that those phones were going to stop working in the coming weeks also. It also didn't make sense to me being that the signal was so strong in their office right across the street from a tower, yet, 1-2 miles away(as the crow flies) I barely get a signal. They recommended I get the airwave or some other device to help me increase my signal in the home. Either that, or get a new iPhone............. My response to that was no Thanks. I am looking at possibly getting the Galaxy S3 or the Motorola Photon and going Droid for awhile until Sprint catches up with WP.

Oh wow. Yeah, they're decommissioning the iDEN (Nextel) network. They've been saying that for a while now. I'm surprised this guy didn't know.

 

[kg4icg]

Oh wow. Yeah, they're decommissioning the iDEN (Nextel) network. They've been saying that for a while now. I'm surprised this guy didn't know.

He probably didn't read the letter they sent to him letting him known what was going to happen with then IDEN network.

 

[johnmcd348]

so I wonder what their plan is for all those company people who use their iDEN phones to keep in touch with others? That was one of the biggest things I always loved about Nextel when I first started with them. It was so much easier to Walkie Talkie the wife and friends than it was to text or phone them. Even when regular cellular service was down after teh multiple Hurricanes back in 04, PTT worked really well.

 

[anon(5335877)]

so I wonder what their plan is for all those company people who use their iDEN phones to keep in touch with others? That was one of the biggest things I always loved about Nextel when I first started with them. It was so much easier to Walkie Talkie the wife and friends than it was to text or phone them. Even when regular cellular service was down after teh multiple Hurricanes back in 04, PTT worked really well.

They're replacing it with Sprint Direct Connect (SDC). Umm... I think it uses 3G data or something like that. You can look it up if you want, but I'm too lazy.

 

[johnmcd348]

OK. I've been off the Direct Connect for a few years now. We slowly got moved somewhat unknowingly over to Sprint years ago when we upgraded our phones. We went from the Motorola PTT phones to what was essentially a Hybrid phone(PTT on Nextel, Talk on Sprint) and we were then moved over to Sprint accounts. Then finally a few years back, I got tired of carrying my Axim x51v and my cell phone and decided to finally step into the Smartphone world and got my TP2 about a year or two before they came out with WP7.

 

[johnmcd348]

Well, tonight I didn't get calls from work and they ended up getting one of my coworkers who lived close by to come by and check on me. My fault, I forgot to turn on my pager also. My phone never rang once, it doesn't even show that I was even called. They left one message about the time my friend came by at 10:30.

I guess I'm going to have to go Droid for awhile until this thing gets worked out. I really didn't want to loose my phone but I need something reliable and my wife's phone seems to work OK in our area. This who event has really bothered me. I really wish Sprint had another Windows device, other than the $600 WinMo phone.

This Sucks.