[SATLUG] [OT] Cell phone rant / open source idea

[Brad Knowles]

On 7/17/07, Thomas King wrote:

>  I doubt this is the case for you, but I do know there are cells that do
>  not have data coverage. The company may have a tower in the area but
>  their service does not offer any kind of data. This is usually out in
>  the sticks, though.

Alltel is really the only carrier that has done any significant 
built-out for the rural areas.  They were smart in that they put up 
both CDMA and GSM technology in each tower they put up, so that they 
could resell that location service to all the other carriers in the 
US, but they themselves only provide CDMA service.

All the other carriers pretty much have build-out only in the cities, 
so when you're outside the city you're actually on the "extended" 
network that really belongs to Alltel but it resold via whatever your 
normal carrier is.  Conversely, when Alltel customers go into the 
cities, they're actually on the "extended" network belonging to 
Verizon.

Check where your carrier has full data coverage in their maps, and 
keep in mind that those maps are hugely overstated.  You won't get 
anything remotely close to that level of coverage in most cases.


Of course, all carriers resell networks from other carriers in this 
same manner, because even Alltel doesn't have towers in all rural 
areas -- they're just the biggest single carrier that does.

All the coverage maps are really very piecemeal quilts that have been 
tied together with spit and bailing wire, and the carriers are 
laughing all the way to the gold-plated streets in front of their 
banks, because the lusers *still* haven't figured out that part.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>, Consultant & Author
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
Slides from Invited Talks: <http://tinyurl.com/tj6q4>

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