Next G Observation

As I understand it, Optus uses telstra towers to transmit ?

Therefore "-> IF <-" Optus and telstra both transmit at the same signal strength ??

Then it may be in the "quality" of the actual phone handset to 'pick-up' the signal that makes the difference !!
Mainey...

All I know is that my wife's Telstra Samsung had emergency service only until recently. My Optus phone has always had full strength.

Optus GSM does not roam to Telstra outside of its own (Optus) network

John, I didnt say that they did.
My wife is with Telstra, I'm with Optus

Sorry Jim that was directed at Mainey's comment.

My understanding was that the emergency only business is the only shared feature of the GSM networks.

My original post is:

""As I understand it, Optus uses telstra TOWERS to transmit ?
Therefore "-> IF <-" Optus and telstra both transmit at the same signal strength ??""

In many, if not all cases, both 'carriers' share the same phone towers, however obviously with their own different signalling equipment installed, only the actual metal/concrete 'tower' is common to both carriers and then only as a device for mounting their respective telecommunications equipment.

The various handsets would make a difference in the ability to receive their respective signals, because some handsets are far more efficient than others, that's why only some (4 ?) get the Country wide "tick" and most handsets don't.
Mainey...

Optus and Telstra share only a few towers around here, and Optus coverage is rubbish compared to Telstra.

Sage words indeed.....:-)


Cheers

Bware
Sorry old Chap, you left yourself wide open for this

You probably have plenty of room inside the skull.....lol


.I'm outa here..

.

Doug,
Just think of the size of the chip they could put in there LOL

Bware
I can't comment...I'm not here.


.

Doug,
I finally appreciate your humour and you're not here LOL

Hi Billowaggi, What phone have you got? I have heard that the Samsung or Nokia are the way to go.

Cheers

D

Hmmm ive been suspecting for a while telstra is paying for positive coments - this confirms it
Next g stops dead at the outskirts of perth i could go on with a list of places it doesnt work just on the outskits
it cracks into life as little as 5km from town with toodyay (virtually the city) and dwellingup being examples
it will get spasmodic reception at some high spots elsewhwere but thats it
and pleeeese dont make me show the picture again of GSM outperforming next G.
as a country user of CDMA and now a city user of next g please dont insult my intellagence again

Hi all
I AM NOT PAID BY TELSTRA !! if anyone would like to check I have been a usefull and helpfull contributor to this forum for many years. I am actually a farm machinery machanic in the S.W. of WA so I cover a lot of country and what I said above is true!

Dunworkin, the phone I use is aTelstra ZTE F165 sold as Telstra country phone, my previous handset was a LG TU550 this did not work so well.


Regards Ken.

Thanks Billowaggi, will be changing phones when all is settled down and CDMA is finally closed down so am doing a bit of research.

Thanks again

Cheers

D

During a recent trip 20000km around mid west WA (in via docker river and out via Balladonia), like Ken we found our NextG had far better coverage overall than our cdma phone, like in Menzies and Sandstone our nextg LG TU500 worked fine but our cdma Kyorcera had no signal at all, only found some spots in the hilly areas of south west were we had slightly better on a few occasions with the cdma.

yep and there it is Menzies now has a tower they didnt for years
Obviosly all new towers dont have CDMA
doesnt change the fact that you WILL get reception alot further from a CDMA tower (yes i used to have a Kyocera) than a next G tower.
the closest towers to menzies used to be nth of paddington and leonora
Looks like Daveyhurst even has a tower now

_ Its not hard to make CDMA reach look bad with all the extra towers!!

But still i Cannot get reception along stretches of th SW highway just out of perth, Between Gidgiegannup and 5k before toodyay, jonon forrest NP (in Perth) and most places with a dirt road
yea sure the sw coveradge is pretty averadge but it craps all over
alot of other places i have been

the only way that could be possible is if a next g tower was also on a high oint i have proved time and time again the biggest achilles heel with next G is its innability to "bend" iit is STRICTLY line of sight even a small hill will cancel reception

Well that's what was happening, myself and another camper next door both had NextG phones and he asked me if I was getting reception. I was getting great reception (like he was) and he had been speaking to others around the campground who didn't have NextG and they weren't getting any reception.

Had a think about it and you were probably getting reception from the Yorke penninsula. By all accounts next g works Ok over flat ground or out to sea. From memory Rapid bay is surrounded by hill which would prevent any local towers

Yes it is surrounded by hills and we could see the lights of the southern suburbs of Adelaide, so that could be right.

Mark.

But what do you define as remote ?

Is 5 km out of town 'remote'.

If you're on the wrong side of a hill and you can't see the tower, then it can't see you, and you won't have coverage. In flat country the range of a tower is less than 30km and if there are obstacles, it can be considerably less. I am not trying to defend Telstra or any other carrier, but the laws of physics do apply and unless you dot the country with phone towers, it just won't work. The technology is very very good, but it does have limitations. One the one hand, people scream every time a tower goes up near them, on the other, they expect miracle coverage.
Cheers

OK so i may not know the technical terms for "bending" but i do know as a user CDMA was much more likely to work in valleys, by rivers and in other low spots than Next G.

Well.. I don't think it's that technical, but people use it to refer to the effect on radio waves at VHF and higher frequencies were coverage is essentially line of sight from the transmitting source. In practice, this coverage often extends somewhat further but there is a definite limit and the effect is much less on the frequencies used by mobile phones. One interesting aspect of the NextG technology is that it can actually work with the signal from several towers concurrently. (not much use in the country where you might be lucky to see one).
I have several of those dreaded chinese ZTE phones and while I have had some issues with them, lack of coverage was not one of them.
A few weeks ago we stayed on a farm near Taree which is located in a valley west of Nabiac. Mobile phone coverage there was always a problem and still is, however, I used my NextG phone as a modem that weekend and still managed to get a reasonable data rate on a high gain external antenna. The signal on my CDMA phone was no different, both showed 0 to 1 bar on the signal strength, the only difference was that with the nextG phone I could look at my emails, look at the rain radar (we were camping and the weather was of interest) and a whole lot more that could not be done with the CDMA phone.
So, people should just accept that technology moves on and for the most part NextG is miles(km) ahead of the clunky old CDMA technology. Oh, and for those who like the "other" carriers, just look at their coverage maps for 3G services.
Cheers

Brett,
what model phone did you buy ???

Hi harryopal, I am not jumping in to defend any political party here but could you please supply me with a name of any Gov department that gives us mere mortals a 'service that we want'? LOL

Cheers

D

Just like when the Government owned the Commonwealth Bank.

It had reasonable charges and paid 3% interest if you had $100 in the account - and all the other banks had to compete.

As soon as the CommBank was privatised, the Directors wanted to impress the Shareholders (they vote on Directors pay rises, not customers) charges went up and interest payments plummeted - and all other banks followed.

Thankyou Howard Govt for screwing the citizen again.

Ummmm Errrrrr!!!!! The Commonwealth Bank was floated in 1992 by Mr Keating if my memory serves me??

Hardly a case of being screwed by the Howard government which was not elected until 1996??

March 1996 - John Howard becomes Prime Minister.

July 1996 - the Australian Government made a public offer of its remaining 50.4% shareholding in the Commonwealth Bank.

- at that time the government lost control of the Commonwealth Bank.

Mike DID posted

"As soon as the CommBank was privatised, the Directors wanted to impress the Shareholders (they vote on Directors pay rises, not customers)"

except in the extraordinary case of telstra, two thirds of the shareholders voted against those pay rises but they were ignored by the board (McGauchie) and the pay rises went through anyway.

Yes your right Mike forgot about the split sale, was so long ago.
Still it was not opposed by labour at that time, not that it would have made any difference :-)