3G light up in CT or Cingular Rom?

[chymmylt]

Well I finally broke down replaced the HTC rom that came on my TyTN last night with the cingular rom (1.31) and today something funny happened - I had a U when I left my house! :) Formerly I only had 3G when I went into the city. So I'm wondering if there's something magically new in the Cingular rom that allowed me access to differn't then the HTC or whether with the release of the 8525 tomorrow if Cingular is lighting up new towers so when people go and buy it they can all have the joy of 3G :)

Only problem is that aroumd my house - I have lousy 3G coverage (1 bar) but would have full coverage with GSM. Within my house fortunately the 3G signal is nonexistant so it goes over to GSM. If I remember correctly that 3G is actually CDMA and I think they use the same towers is Sprint does in the area because as I drive around - the signal strength mirrors nearly perfectly my expierence with Sprint (which is why I left them - terrible coverage in my area) It's too bad that the phone doesn't have a toggle that if you don't have at least 2 bars of 3g but there's full GSM to default over to the GSM (I know I can disable 3g altogether if it turns out to be a problem).

Well at least I can now confirm that (with the right rom?) Cingular has 3G coverage in Stamford, Darien (poor) and Norwalk CT (I haven't driven anywhere else today)

[goestoeleven]

It's probably not your device/ROM. More likely you're seeing the continued buildout of Cingular's 3G network...

[chymmylt]

Yeah I just saw somebody on Howard Forums post that they just got service in CT today too. I figured that was the case but it just seemed like an extreame coincidence. - Not that there's anything wrong with that ;)

[gravejoker]

3G is not CDMA .. it's WCDMA which is totally different than CDMA ..

[chymmylt]

I realize that CDMA and WCDMA are differnt tech, but would it lkely use the same towers as CDMA? I know that the towers (at least in my area) are not generally owned by the carrier but rather rented out to them. If they use the same towers - it would explain why their coverage mimics Sprints signal so much in this area (rather then Cingular's GSM coverage).

[gravejoker]

not know for sure but I dont think it's possible to share towers between different technologies .. one technology issues .. two why share something with competitors ..

[chymmylt]

well if it's running in the same frequencies I BELIEVE it should be able to transmit and recieve both (kinda like your laptop can do 802.11B and 802.11G) but I could be wrong on that - also, at least the towers in my area, the majority of them are independently owned and rented to the companies so from that stand point, I think it's obvious why - the more people renting their towers - the more money! :) Course this is mostly speculation on my part (cept the fact that I know that 6 of the 9 towers in my area are independently owned).

[jamiefiedler]

the actual tower is either owned by a carrier and space is leased to other carriers, or owned by a 3rd party and leased to carriers. the radio equipment located on the tower belongs to the carrier, and is not shared with other carriers. i realize there may be roaming agreements, but they are not sharing tower equipment, you are just using another carrier's tower. your provider pays the carrier you used for handling your call while roaming.

one tower might host a cingular GSM radio system, a t-mobile GSM system, a verizon CDMA system, a WCDMA (UMTS/HSDPA) system, a 800mHz iDEN system, and maybe a few local repeaters for local government.

towers are shared between competitors primarily because they are actually owned by a third party. carrier owned towers still have exceptions though, often because zoning laws limit available tower space. the carriers work together in this sense, because otherwise each might be locked out of another's coverage area due to local limits and restrictions on tower construction.

sometimes you have to work with the competition to get the job done!

[chymmylt]

Nice to have people smarter then me around ;)

[Quentin-]

I realize that CDMA and WCDMA are differnt tech, but would it lkely use the same towers as CDMA? I know that the towers (at least in my area) are not generally owned by the carrier but rather rented out to them. If they use the same towers - it would explain why their coverage mimics Sprints signal so much in this area (rather then Cingular's GSM coverage).

Yeah you pretty much hit it on the nose. Not many operators own their own tower, and towers aren't cheap to build. So if they're doing a rollout the most logical thing for them to do would be to put their equip on the same towers that probably everone else does (Sprint, et al). That does NOT however mean they are actually using Sprint's equipment.

-Q

EDIT: Never mind...

jamiefiedler already answered this in more detail. Sorry for not reading more ;)