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Старый 18.01.2002, 00:00   #1   
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Post cdma sony debug mode

This page last updated on Tuesday 15 January 2002


I get quite a few questions regarding wireless services. Do you have one? Email me: Licorice at GeckoBeach.com.

FAQ's: Page 1 | Page 2

Why make maps of transmission equipment locations?
Which provider do you recommend?
Will many more cellular towers be established in the near future?
How do I use the Debug Mode on my Telus Mobility Sony Phone?
I travel to the USA several times during the year. What are my options for inexpensive roaming?
I travel from the USA to Canada several times during the year. What are my options for inexpensive roaming?
How much do you make off this web page?
Just how many people visit this site?
What is a SP-lock?
Can I choose an alternative long distance provider on my cell phone?
How do I use the Microcell tower locator numbers on the maps?
There's so many handsets to choose from, so why do you only review a few?
I purchased a phone on eBay. Why can't I use it?
Why don't you provide rates or opinions on other Canadian or US providers?
How does cellular work?
My friend's cell phone works in a certain location but mine doesn't -- why?
What recommendations do you have to keep your cell phone bills down?

There are also two additional FAQ pages: How to interpret the cellular equipment maps and the Cellular antenna ID guide.

Why make maps of transmission equipment locations?
Early in 1998 I noticed a transmission tower under construction on the Pat Bay Highway in Victoria and took a guess at what it might be. Soon after noticing this first tower, I began to notice quite a few of them around the region. Often I find that in a car you tend not to see to much, but by bike you can cover large distances in a short time and you see a lot more.

Once you find a few tower locations you learn a couple of things: first, the general configuration of each provider's equipment; and second, the approximate distance between cells. Once you have located enough cells from a provider, you can more-or-less predict where the next cell will need to be to ensure continuous coverage.

When I first started noting where these towers where, I contacted the business whom the tower was located on. Most businesses (but definitely not all) were quite helpful in providing this information. Residental locations are almost impossible to get information from as many residents don't want the towers in their backyards and if they do have one, they don't want anyone to know about it. I can understand their concern as a cellular provider may give you $5000 or more a year to locate one of these things in a few square metres of your backyard. I found all of the cellular providers unwilling to provide exact locations of transmission equipment, nor were they willing to confirm the site locations I had found.
Tower sites are the easiest to identify as you can see the equipment. Building sites are difficult as you can only see the cells. Telus seems to do a good job at marking their tower sites with large signs and their counterparts at Bell Mobility (Ontario and Quebec) also mark their sites well. Microcell often has little stickers on the cables from the equipment boxes up to the transmission equipment (although I've only seen this in B.C., but not all sites are marked). Rogers generally desn't mark their sites.

The maps were made for a number of reasons. First, many people I knew started to wonder what all these new towers were for. Several people asked me about the new tower along the Trans-Canada at Millstream as well as the few along the Pat Bay Highway. Second, I had these maps of the Victoria area and had made the effort to map the sites, so why not share this information with everyone? Third, finding the sites is a challenge since you're not supposed to know that they exist (at least in the provider's minds), so I consider finding the sites equivalent to a hunt (of sorts). Lastly, it gives me an excuse to try out new bike routes and visit new places in the city.
Of course after Victoria was mapped, the next place was Vancouver. I wasn't over in Vancouver enough to devote time to searching the city for cells, so instead I put up a teaser map of Vancouver West to see if anyone was interested in helping map the Vancouver sites. Sure enough after a few months and a lot of submissions, several areas of Vancouver were put online. The Vancouver mapping project is no where complete, especially anywhere east of Surrey and I encourage people to submit sites!
I have mapped cells in other locations as well (e.g., Nanaimo, Strait of Georgia, Halifax, Whistler, Kelowna), received submissions for places I have not mapped cells (e.g., Calgary, Lethbridge, Windsor), and have mapped cells but have not put them online due to lack of locations (e.g., Ottawa/Hull).

Which provider do you recommend?
I can't recommend any one provider over another, since each caters to a slightly different clientele. You have to look at several different factors, such as costs, coverage areas, charges for extra features, service quality, etc.

Telus Mobility, Bell Mobility, and Rogers AT&T are the big players. They have excellent coverage across most of Canada. Microcell (Fido) is a newer network and offers only digital services in major cities across Canada. Other provincial Mobility companies offer services in their province of origin and have roaming agreements with the other Mobility providers in Canada.
Choose your provider carefully as the phones are not interchangeable between providers due to different technologies. Carefully consider the features of each phone that you actually need: Fido may offer roaming to Europe, which may be nice to have if you actually go there several times a year. A choice of 35 ringer types on a phone may be nice if you actually plan to use any of them besides the standard ring. It's kind of like buying a car based on the drink holders -- often you're unhappy after the purchase because you didn't spend your time doing a bit of homework before the purchase.

Personally, I am with Telus Mobility. In terms of coverage, I wanted a phone that would work in digital areas with decreased power output levels (health concerns), but I still needed a phone that would be used in analog areas with no analog airtime surcharge as I do quite a bit of travelling to areas with limited cellular services. There was no contact to sign, the cost was $25/month, and that included 200 minutes using either digital or analog service. Also included in the monthly fee was voice mail and call display.
Having stated the above, I also own a Nokia 5190 on Fidomatic. Although this phone only gives me digital coverage, it is a nice handset to have for testing the Microcell network and doing comparisons between the different networks. I also own an assortment of other handsets (not activated) to test different wireless networks.

Will many more cellular towers be established in the near future?
This issue has to do mainly with frequency allocations. Traditional cellular phones in North America operate in the 800 MHz band and this is what both Mobility and Rogers use for their analog phones. In 1995, Industry Canada opened a new frequency for digital PCS services in the 1900 MHz or 1.9 GHz band and gave parts of this new band to the four providers (Bell Mobility, Rogers, Telus Mobility, Microcell). Mobility and Rogers (in BC) decided to operate their digital PCS services in a space of their older allocation of the 800 MHz band so that they could take advantage of their existing towers, among other reasons. Microcell only could use the newer 1.9 GHz band.

Higher frequency transmissions cannot cover as large of an area as lower frequency transmissions. Therefore 1.9 GHz transmissions need a greater number of sites to provide equal coverage to an area that uses 800 MHz cells. In B.C., 1.9 GHz sites need to be spaced about 3-4 km or so apart to ensure continuous coverage between cells. Using 800 MHz, sites can be spaced up to about 10-12 km apart.

Over the course of 2001-2002, many more cellular sites will be established across Canada. Telus Mobility will be placing new digital CDMA sites throughout BC and Alberta and moving some of the older Telus Mobility/Telus Mobility/Clearnet PCS equipment to Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Rogers will be outlaying a whole new GSM network in major Canadian cities to supplement (and eventually replace) their TDMA and AMPS services. Microcell will continue to expand their GSM coverage. Bell Mobility has plans to start a buildout of their own 1900 CDMA network in BC and Alberta.
This doesn't mean that you're going to see a ton of new sites pop up though. Base stations take quite a bit of effort to secure and build and it is a lot easier to place new equipment at established sites. It is not uncommon to see 2 or 3 providers using one tower for their transmission equipment.

How do I use the Debug Mode on my Telus Mobility Sony Phone?
This question gives an inside to how Telus Mobility's network works. For more information on using your phone to access network information see both the secrets page and the map interpretation FAQ page.

To access the debug menu on 800 and 1900 MHz Sony phones type 111111 (6 1's) into your phone and press the jog-dial.
Now with the jog-dial select Field Debug. The Field Debug security code for older Telus Mobility/Clearnet phones is 362867 or DOCTOR. For Sprint PCS phones enter 040793. Other Sony phones not on Sprint or Telus Mobility/ Clearnet PCS (e.g. Mobility) will use a different code -- try the default code of 000000.


The menu choice of Screen allows you to monitor the signal strengths, and this is going to make your life a lot easier if you like hunting down tower sites. In digital mode, clicking on Screen gives you two lines of information similar to this picture.

The "174" in the screen example is the one of three cells on the tower which your phone is currently talking to. Cell or 'pseudonoise or PN offset' 174 is part of what I call Telus Mobility/Clearnet PCS tower configuration #1. How I determine Telus Mobility/Clearnet's PCS tower configuration is take the minimum offset number of the tower and divide by 6, since Telus Mobility/Clearnet only uses every 6th offset (see tables below). Tower configuration #1 contains 3 offsets: 006, 174, and 342 (each offset is separated by 168); the phone is currently dealing with offset 174. CDMA technology allows your phone to talk to offsets on up to 6 different towers at once, but this decimal number is the cell you are currently dealing with. Once in a call, this number remains fixed on the screen, even though you may move into another cell.

Telus Mobility PCS users only: Every 4th offset is used; offsets within a cell site are separated by 160.
Bell Mobility PCS users only: Every 4th offset is used; offsets within a cell site are separated by 4.
Sprint PCS users only: Every 2nd offset is used; offsets within a cell site are separated by 170.

Таблицу настройки могу кинуть мылом [email protected]

Telus Mobility/Clearnet commonly sets their sites up with 3 cells, each separated by about 120 degrees. The lowest offset number will often cover the area from 0 degrees (North) to about 120 degrees (moving clockwise -- see figure to the right). The middle offset will cover the area from 120 to 240 degrees and the high offset from 240 back to 0 degrees. The actual angles will not be separated by 120 degrees since it is difficult to accommodate this angling on a square building or hydro pole rack. Furthermore, cells may be angled to cover areas of higher network traffic.

Given the PN offset information you can figure out where the site is located relative to where you are. In the above example, offset 174 covers the southern sector of our figure, so therefore the site is to the north. Once you think you have found the site, circle it clockwise and see if the offsets change from 174 to 342 to 006 to 174 again. Keep reading to find out your approximate distance to the site...

Back to the Field Debug Screen:
The "2" is the receive state of your phone, where the number is one of the following:
0=init OR no service; 1=sync channel; 2=paging channel OR standby; 3=traffic channel init; 4=traffic channel (phone in use); 5=exit.

The "AD" is the hexidecimal number of the receive strength of the nearest tower. Now instead of 5 bars you have a value between 0 and 255. The lowest possible value is 80, indicating no service. As the signal gets stronger, this value will increase to FF, then wrap around to 00 and then head up to the highest possible value of 7F. Just as a hexidecimal reminder, hex goes from 0 to 9, then A, B, C, D, E, F, so if you convert 12 to hex you get C.
If the signal strength number goes above 00 then you are within about 150 m of a cell site. The highest number I have ever obtained is 35, about 6 m from a cell.

The "X A" is fixed and unused.

The "7F" is a power control adjust value. It says fixed at 7F while idling, but will change during a call.
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