A few observations from being on the road for 16 hours in the last week.
* Who owns all the cell phone towers that have been erected along I79 that do not have any cells attached to them. My only thought is that these could be some of those infamous Verizon towers starting to appear or they could be AT&T towers in preparation for extending 3G service to broad range of highway coverage. (3G is desperately needed. Even worse, Edge service along I68 would not even allow a data connection to my phone rendering my phone based GPS useless. )
* Is is possible for the antennas on the towers in western MD and West Virginia to be tuned to where the it pushes the signal out father, but when you get within 1000 ft of the tower you end up in a deadzone of now signal. I noticed this phenomena 4 years ago, but on this trip, the cell phone signal would get worse as I got closer to a tower.
The first step in a successful revolution is to defeat all competing revolutionaries.
cgarison wrote:
* Is is possible for the antennas on the towers in western MD and West Virginia to be tuned to where the it pushes the signal out father, but when you get within 1000 ft of the tower you end up in a deadzone of now signal. I noticed this phenomena 4 years ago, but on this trip, the cell phone signal would get worse as I got closer to a tower.
Depends what the elevation pattern is on the antennas. If the main beam is going over your head and you are in a null, that could be the problem.
Verizon likes to put up their own towers if possible. I imagine AT&T is the same way.
However, because Verizon is CDMA and AT&T is GSM, AT&T would usually need more towers to cover the same area than Verizon.
If the towers are close together, it could be an AT&T expansion.
When it comes to broadband, I don't know if Verizon's EVDO has a range advantage over 3G or EDGE. Locally, my phone shows more EVDO coverage than 1X overall.
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