Tech Advice: Cell Phone Service

by Jonathan Sessions

September 8,2007

Over the past few weeks, I noticed I was having trouble calling people using Sprint, but last week it hit an all-time high of failure. I was having some problems reaching a friend. I tried giving her a call, but my phone paused and then gave a "called failed" message. I tried calling her a couple more times and then called her husband. That call failed. I thought something must be wrong with my phone. I turned it off, back on again, and my call still failed. Then I called my sister and the phone worked, but another call to my friend ended in another failure. I then realized both friends were on Sprint.

I spent the next 30 minutes calling everyone in my phone book with Sprint (around 60 people). Every call failed. Fed up, I called the local Sprint store to get some answers.

I explained my situation, and the technician confirmed the issues were happening because of a Sprint network upgrade in mid-Missouri. He told me my experience was the worst he had heard of and he could not imagine it getting much worse. I told him I could not imagine it getting much worse than not being able to call any clients. He laughed and gave me some information about the upgrade.

Sprint will soon roll out Evolution-Data Optimized, or EVDO, in mid-Missouri. EVDO is the third generation (3G) of wireless data transmission for CDMA networks (Code Division Multiple Access networks). Sprint offers download speeds of up to 1.4 Mbit/s over EVDO, which is much faster than the current data transmission rate, but still a distance way from the speeds of even the oldest WiFi standards.

For the mobile professional, this means faster on-the-go connectivity. Using a 3G-capable phone, both e-mail and Web pages will load at a noticeably faster rate. Many users have already noticed the benefits of 3G while traveling. A client of mine recently upgraded to the Treo 700p 3G capable phone. During a recent trip to Kansas City, he noticed Exchange Synchronization, sending e-mails, and viewing the Web were much faster than the speed in Columbia.

While Sprint is working on getting its 3G online, AT&T activated 3G service (High Speed Downlink Packet Acceess, or HSDPA) in Columbia in July with fewer compilations. Although the speeds of each network's 3G offerings are comparable, the true limiter is often the capabilities of the chips inside each phone, information that can be hard to find from the network, and usually requires a visit to the phone manufacturer's Web site.

While there is no set date for EVDO rollout in Columbia, I was informed it would be around September or October, but the current network issues would not last that long.

When I called on the last day of August, the employee said issues were already beginning to improve. Hopefully, the worst is over and within the next couple months Sprint customers will get to see the benefits of the outages.

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