Funny that you are obsessing about GSM while ignoring every single thing I said about CDMA, which is soon to displace GSM's TDMA method as the standard air interface.....
the USA is 1.8% of the landmass of the globe, and Europe is only slightly larger at 1.9%. sorry, I don't consider T-mobile to be somebody who covers the majority of area
Nitpick much, do we?
in effect: if you put 1 tower in the middle of a city, and put (say, random bullshit number) 2200 subscribers on it (assuming this is the "maximum") you can't just put up another tower next to it to add subscribers. there's no way to do it without increasing latency, or dividing the towers physically.
So what you are saying is that if you deploy a cellular network in a manner that no carrier would ever deploy a cellular network, frequency hopping is useless? Gotcha, now I understand *eyeroll*
You make it sound like reading through a contract is trivial
I said nothing of the kind, only that you should read agreements before signing them. The section that talks about indoor wireless service is not written in any form of legalese and should be easy enough to comprehend for anybody that is capable of reading the written word.
The things are ubiquitous and intentionally incomprehensible
This is not incomprehensible:
Wireless devices use radio transmissions, so unfortunately you can't get Service if your device isn't in range of a transmission signal. And please be aware that even within your Coverage Area, many things can affect the availability and quality of your Service, including network capacity, your device, terrain, buildings, foliage and weather.
You are the upside down slave, angrily defending his tormentors rather than admit that he's been screwed over by total assholes all his life.
I'll be the judge of who is screwing me over, thank you very much.
Your covetous worship of power is entirely transparent.
I don't worship anything other than a desire to be left the hell alone and succeed or fail on my own merits. Unfortunately the people on your side of the political fence can't help themselves and feel the need to "help" me by using the legislative process to compel me to behave in the manner that they deem best for me.
You hold total contempt for the average person
No, I hold near total contempt for the people that claim to be looking out for the "average" person while they push their own agenda even when that agenda is opposed by the "average people" that they claim to be representing.
In any event, you are rambling pretty far away from my original point, which was the contract of every wireless company states in plan English that they can not and do not guarantee service indoors. The laws of physics will not bend simply because you think you are being "screwed over" by Verizon or AT&T.
as much as one wants to think that the air will scale indefinitely
I never claimed it "scales indefinitely", only that it scales to the point that the distant tower seeing snippets of your transmission can deal with them without any real issue. It's literally just background noise to that tower with a frequency hopping solution like GSM uses. With CDMA it's even less of an issue because your CDMA phone was designed to talk to multiple towers at the same time. That's how soft-handoffs are accomplished. The only downside to CDMA is the near-far problem but that has nothing to do with the number of towers that can hear your phone during a call.
Frequency hopping is only implemented in dense locations
T-Mobile uses frequency hopping on their whole network. I suspect AT&T does as well. If you have a Motorola put it into field test mode and make a call. I will bet you a six pack of your favorite beer that it's using frequency hopping for the uplink back to the tower.
T-Mobile had a product that gave you free calls when you provided your own backhaul. It used wi-fi and your broadband connection. They discontinued it because very few people adopted it.
Regarding being "billed" while using a microcell, what did you expect? You might not be using their tower but you are still using their infrastructure to complete your call. Would you prefer they itemize your charges and start billing us for long distance again instead of just having airtime minutes?
They want people who are smart enough to understand the multi-page small-print legalese
This is not "legalese":
Wireless devices use radio transmissions, so unfortunately you can't get Service if your device isn't in range of a transmission signal. And please be aware that even within your Coverage Area, many things can affect the availability and quality of your Service, including network capacity, your device, terrain, buildings, foliage and weather.
I lifted that straight out of Verizon's customer agreement. If you need a lawyer to decipher what that paragraph says then your teachers failed you and you should request a refund of the monies that were spent on your education.
I'm not a Republican and if you think it's that easy why don't you get some venture capital and roll out a wireless product that promises service indoors? You can start by hiring an RF engineer and asking him what it will take to deploy a product that is guaranteed to penetrate all known building materials without any appreciable signal degradation. When he gets done laughing at you maybe he'll explain the reality of radio transmission and the signal attenuation caused by physical obstructions.
I don't dispute that but you still have to abide by the contract you signed when you got such service. There is no way that any wireless service (be it cellular voice, cellular data, wi-fi, digital OTA television, CB radios, etc.) can be guaranteed indoors. There are too many variables in building construction and materials for any wireless provider to make such a guarantee. If they did promise indoor service they would eventually be sued by someone who would not receive such service.
It's nice when wireless services work indoors. I've been cellular only for the last eight years. I've even got a set of rabbit ears on the top of my TV that pick up OTA HD for free most of the time (it flakes out in bad weather). Neither of those services are guaranteed to work in the manner that I'm using them and I have no one to complain to when they stop working.
Here's the relevant part of Verizon's contract, do you think this is really unreasonable?:
Wireless devices use radio transmissions, so unfortunately you can't get Service if your device isn't in range of a transmission signal. And please be aware that even within your Coverage Area, many things can affect the availability and quality of your Service, including network capacity, your device, terrain, buildings, foliage and weather.
No, I'm a "dick" when people complain about shit they agreed to while being too lazy to understand what they were agreeing to.
Do you have any understanding of RF engineering at all? Do you have any understanding of how building materials can interact with and degrade RF signals? No? Then STFU.
because all three towers can hear you, but only one is responsible for carrying your traffic the others make that channel unavailable to the people within range of the other two towers
This is a overly simplistic explanation. GSM uses frequency hopping for the uplink (i.e: phone to tower) channel to mitigate this sort of interference. The other towers don't perceive your phone as anything other than random background noise. CDMA uses a different mechanism (spread spectrum using a pseduo-random code) to achieve the same results, plus it has the added benefit of being able to do soft-handoffs, i.e: your phone is literally talking to multiple towers at the same time.
The whole point of digital technology is to enable multiple users to share the same channel. Repeaters don't really defeat this. What they can do is increase noise along with signal, usually to the detriment of any phones within range of them. The carriers are rightfully peeved about them because they've spent billions of dollars to license the spectrum that they use and were supposed to have exclusive rights to deploy devices that transmit on that spectrum.
An old ham radio saying is all an amplifier does is amplify crap.
My old WISP employer learned this lesson the hard way. "Sure, we have -100dBm of received power and a negative signal to noise ratio, but I'm sure this $20 amplifier that exceeds the allowable FCC power limits will enable it to work!"
They like the boosters, but want regulation that prevents competition, i.e. that you will have to buy the equipment from them, at a mark-up.
Imagine that, they want control over the equipment that's broadcasting a signal on the spectrum that they paid billions of dollars to license. Next you'll tell me that your local FM radio station had the nerve to get pissed when you started repeating a signal on their channel.
(Hey, how about you just deliver the service you are charging me for instead?)
Did you even bother to read the contract you signed? There isn't a wireless company in the United States (and quite probably the World for that matter) that guarantees service indoors. There are too many variables in building construction and material for them to make any sort of promise about indoor reception.
If you aren't happy with your indoor wireless service there are other options available to you. One has been around for over a hundred years, perhaps you've heard of it?
This is an attempt to discredit the Wikileaks website
Wikileaks has discredited themselves quite well all on their own. It started out as a site for people in oppressed countries to leak out information that their rulers would rather keep under wraps. It evolved into a site that would accept leaks from anyone. It then turned into a site whose primary propose seems to be to embarrass the United States Government.
Mind you, my Government deserves to be embarassed at times but this war that Assange is waging is hardly compatible with the lofty ideas that got Wikileaks started. Some of Wikileaks own people have said as much.
No one else could have handled the iPhone bandwidth demand back in 2007-2009 period any better than AT&T did.
Verizon could have handled it better than AT&T.
The Achilles heel of Apple may be when they release a CDMA iPhone for Verizon and people suddenly realize half the stuff they used to do on the iPhone does not work on CDMA where you get Talk OR Data.
Verizon is supposedly working on a way to rectify this problem. There was a story about it here or on BBR a few months ago. Here's one link that talks about the upgrade to CDMA.
I'm curious to know if this is really a big issue for a significant number of people? I've had my Android phone now for five months on Verizon and I really haven't had a problem with this. I do have the option to use wi-fi while I'm talking on the phone but I've rarely exercised it.
They (AT&T) have been shifting frequencies around and putting 3G services on the lower bands with better building penetration and shifting edge over to the higher bands.
They aren't just moving EDGE to 1900mhz, they've also moved voice services in many areas. All fine and dandy until you get out into the fringe of coverage and can't make or hold a voice call....
As much as I loathe Verizon I've never seen them make changes to their network that dicked over existing customers. AT&T has done so on numerous occasions.
No, it's not the equal protection clause that forces the states to comply with the Bill of Rights. The framers of the 14th amendment intended it to be the privileges and immunities clause. Unfortunately SCOTUS neutered this clause over a hundred years ago and instead opted to incorporate the Bill of Rights piece by piece against the states through the due process clause.
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Funny that you are obsessing about GSM while ignoring every single thing I said about CDMA, which is soon to displace GSM's TDMA method as the standard air interface.....
the USA is 1.8% of the landmass of the globe, and Europe is only slightly larger at 1.9%. sorry, I don't consider T-mobile to be somebody who covers the majority of area
Nitpick much, do we?
in effect: if you put 1 tower in the middle of a city, and put (say, random bullshit number) 2200 subscribers on it (assuming this is the "maximum") you can't just put up another tower next to it to add subscribers. there's no way to do it without increasing latency, or dividing the towers physically.
So what you are saying is that if you deploy a cellular network in a manner that no carrier would ever deploy a cellular network, frequency hopping is useless? Gotcha, now I understand *eyeroll*
You make it sound like reading through a contract is trivial
I said nothing of the kind, only that you should read agreements before signing them. The section that talks about indoor wireless service is not written in any form of legalese and should be easy enough to comprehend for anybody that is capable of reading the written word.
The things are ubiquitous and intentionally incomprehensible
This is not incomprehensible:
Wireless devices use radio transmissions, so unfortunately you can't get Service if your device isn't in range of a transmission signal. And please be aware that even within your Coverage Area, many things can affect the availability and quality of your Service, including network capacity, your device, terrain, buildings, foliage and weather.
You can't comprehend what that says? Really?
You call them "weasel words", I call them acknowledging the reality of RF transmission.
Corporations, even monopolies can not compel you to buy their product. The US Government can. That's the most important difference.
You are the upside down slave, angrily defending his tormentors rather than admit that he's been screwed over by total assholes all his life.
I'll be the judge of who is screwing me over, thank you very much.
Your covetous worship of power is entirely transparent.
I don't worship anything other than a desire to be left the hell alone and succeed or fail on my own merits. Unfortunately the people on your side of the political fence can't help themselves and feel the need to "help" me by using the legislative process to compel me to behave in the manner that they deem best for me.
You hold total contempt for the average person
No, I hold near total contempt for the people that claim to be looking out for the "average" person while they push their own agenda even when that agenda is opposed by the "average people" that they claim to be representing.
In any event, you are rambling pretty far away from my original point, which was the contract of every wireless company states in plan English that they can not and do not guarantee service indoors. The laws of physics will not bend simply because you think you are being "screwed over" by Verizon or AT&T.
I would expect the usage cost and rates to be the same as a VoIP connection, such as that provided by Skype or Vonage.
Why don't you vote with your wallet and switch to one of those services then if you think their tariff structure is more reasonable?
as much as one wants to think that the air will scale indefinitely
I never claimed it "scales indefinitely", only that it scales to the point that the distant tower seeing snippets of your transmission can deal with them without any real issue. It's literally just background noise to that tower with a frequency hopping solution like GSM uses. With CDMA it's even less of an issue because your CDMA phone was designed to talk to multiple towers at the same time. That's how soft-handoffs are accomplished. The only downside to CDMA is the near-far problem but that has nothing to do with the number of towers that can hear your phone during a call.
Frequency hopping is only implemented in dense locations
T-Mobile uses frequency hopping on their whole network. I suspect AT&T does as well. If you have a Motorola put it into field test mode and make a call. I will bet you a six pack of your favorite beer that it's using frequency hopping for the uplink back to the tower.
T-Mobile had a product that gave you free calls when you provided your own backhaul. It used wi-fi and your broadband connection. They discontinued it because very few people adopted it.
Regarding being "billed" while using a microcell, what did you expect? You might not be using their tower but you are still using their infrastructure to complete your call. Would you prefer they itemize your charges and start billing us for long distance again instead of just having airtime minutes?
They want people who are smart enough to understand the multi-page small-print legalese
This is not "legalese":
Wireless devices use radio transmissions, so unfortunately you can't get Service if your device isn't in range of a transmission signal. And please be aware that even within your Coverage Area, many things can affect the availability and quality of your Service, including network capacity, your device, terrain, buildings, foliage and weather.
I lifted that straight out of Verizon's customer agreement. If you need a lawyer to decipher what that paragraph says then your teachers failed you and you should request a refund of the monies that were spent on your education.
I'm not a Republican and if you think it's that easy why don't you get some venture capital and roll out a wireless product that promises service indoors? You can start by hiring an RF engineer and asking him what it will take to deploy a product that is guaranteed to penetrate all known building materials without any appreciable signal degradation. When he gets done laughing at you maybe he'll explain the reality of radio transmission and the signal attenuation caused by physical obstructions.
So wireless is pretty much all there is.
I don't dispute that but you still have to abide by the contract you signed when you got such service. There is no way that any wireless service (be it cellular voice, cellular data, wi-fi, digital OTA television, CB radios, etc.) can be guaranteed indoors. There are too many variables in building construction and materials for any wireless provider to make such a guarantee. If they did promise indoor service they would eventually be sued by someone who would not receive such service.
It's nice when wireless services work indoors. I've been cellular only for the last eight years. I've even got a set of rabbit ears on the top of my TV that pick up OTA HD for free most of the time (it flakes out in bad weather). Neither of those services are guaranteed to work in the manner that I'm using them and I have no one to complain to when they stop working.
Here's the relevant part of Verizon's contract, do you think this is really unreasonable?:
Wireless devices use radio transmissions, so unfortunately you can't get Service if your device isn't in range of a transmission signal. And please be aware that even within your Coverage Area, many things can affect the availability and quality of your Service, including network capacity, your device, terrain, buildings, foliage and weather.
Just because they didn't use the draft this time
So you lied. Thank you, we accept your apology.
No, I'm a "dick" when people complain about shit they agreed to while being too lazy to understand what they were agreeing to.
Do you have any understanding of RF engineering at all? Do you have any understanding of how building materials can interact with and degrade RF signals? No? Then STFU.
because all three towers can hear you, but only one is responsible for carrying your traffic the others make that channel unavailable to the people within range of the other two towers
This is a overly simplistic explanation. GSM uses frequency hopping for the uplink (i.e: phone to tower) channel to mitigate this sort of interference. The other towers don't perceive your phone as anything other than random background noise. CDMA uses a different mechanism (spread spectrum using a pseduo-random code) to achieve the same results, plus it has the added benefit of being able to do soft-handoffs, i.e: your phone is literally talking to multiple towers at the same time.
The whole point of digital technology is to enable multiple users to share the same channel. Repeaters don't really defeat this. What they can do is increase noise along with signal, usually to the detriment of any phones within range of them. The carriers are rightfully peeved about them because they've spent billions of dollars to license the spectrum that they use and were supposed to have exclusive rights to deploy devices that transmit on that spectrum.
or force me to go die in Nam or Iraq or some other stupid war.
Who was "forced" to go die in Iraq? Did we bring back the draft while I wasn't looking or something?
An old ham radio saying is all an amplifier does is amplify crap.
My old WISP employer learned this lesson the hard way. "Sure, we have -100dBm of received power and a negative signal to noise ratio, but I'm sure this $20 amplifier that exceeds the allowable FCC power limits will enable it to work!"
They like the boosters, but want regulation that prevents competition, i.e. that you will have to buy the equipment from them, at a mark-up.
Imagine that, they want control over the equipment that's broadcasting a signal on the spectrum that they paid billions of dollars to license. Next you'll tell me that your local FM radio station had the nerve to get pissed when you started repeating a signal on their channel.
(Hey, how about you just deliver the service you are charging me for instead?)
Did you even bother to read the contract you signed? There isn't a wireless company in the United States (and quite probably the World for that matter) that guarantees service indoors. There are too many variables in building construction and material for them to make any sort of promise about indoor reception.
If you aren't happy with your indoor wireless service there are other options available to you. One has been around for over a hundred years, perhaps you've heard of it?
That's not rape, that's assault with a deadly weapon. Some guy was just convicted of that out in Texas.
This is an attempt to discredit the Wikileaks website
Wikileaks has discredited themselves quite well all on their own. It started out as a site for people in oppressed countries to leak out information that their rulers would rather keep under wraps. It evolved into a site that would accept leaks from anyone. It then turned into a site whose primary propose seems to be to embarrass the United States Government.
Mind you, my Government deserves to be embarassed at times but this war that Assange is waging is hardly compatible with the lofty ideas that got Wikileaks started. Some of Wikileaks own people have said as much.
The courts say they can take away your constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable search while flying too.
Who is the "they"? I hope you aren't implying it's the corporations that are doing this, because it's actually the Federal Government.....
No one else could have handled the iPhone bandwidth demand back in 2007-2009 period any better than AT&T did.
Verizon could have handled it better than AT&T.
The Achilles heel of Apple may be when they release a CDMA iPhone for Verizon and people suddenly realize half the stuff they used to do on the iPhone does not work on CDMA where you get Talk OR Data.
Verizon is supposedly working on a way to rectify this problem. There was a story about it here or on BBR a few months ago. Here's one link that talks about the upgrade to CDMA.
I'm curious to know if this is really a big issue for a significant number of people? I've had my Android phone now for five months on Verizon and I really haven't had a problem with this. I do have the option to use wi-fi while I'm talking on the phone but I've rarely exercised it.
They (AT&T) have been shifting frequencies around and putting 3G services on the lower bands with better building penetration and shifting edge over to the higher bands.
They aren't just moving EDGE to 1900mhz, they've also moved voice services in many areas. All fine and dandy until you get out into the fringe of coverage and can't make or hold a voice call....
As much as I loathe Verizon I've never seen them make changes to their network that dicked over existing customers. AT&T has done so on numerous occasions.
No, it's not the equal protection clause that forces the states to comply with the Bill of Rights. The framers of the 14th amendment intended it to be the privileges and immunities clause. Unfortunately SCOTUS neutered this clause over a hundred years ago and instead opted to incorporate the Bill of Rights piece by piece against the states through the due process clause.