NEOTEL COVERAGE

[catruter]

I just took my neotel light phone and drove from johannesburg south (forest hill) to carltonville along the N12 highway.

I had signal all the way from my house and could phone from the phone with no problems all the way up to the R500 turn off to carltonville.

I find this amazing because Neotel coverage map shows that therE is no coverage in most of these area's but i was able to use the phone with no problem along this route.

whats even more amazing is that i was one of the first people in my area to get neotel light, the coverage map at that time said i had excelent cover, i installed a external arial and i have had a perfect connection ever since (just had to adjust my external now and again to pick up a better tower).

just recently my mother who is staying a cottage in my back yard phoned Neotel to get a phone for herself.

she was informed that there is no coverage for my area, so she would not be able to get a phone at this time.

when she told me i was amazed because she had phoned Neotel from my Neotel phone and given my address.

i then went and checked there site to see if they still showed my house as being in a excelent coverage area and to my amazement it showed that i had no coverage at all.

to make a very long story short, Neotel still wont give my mother a phone and they still insist that i do not have any corverage for my house even though i am using my Neotel phone everyday
(downloading, surfing the internet and phoning)

i have a RSSI 72 - 77 and full 4 bar signal, download at 15 - 17Kb/s all the time.
in a area that they say that has no coverage what so ever.

COULD SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THIS COULD BE POSSIBLE?

 

[catruter]

Does the Neotel Rep maybe have an answer for me?

 

[catruter]

Neotel Rep?

 

[cyberbyte]

I have the exact same story regarding my neighbor. He eventually got the phone but was a story for over 2 weeks... Even worse the map did show excellent coverage...
Get this, although the map shows excellent coverage, without an external antenna there is no way to get the service to work. Go figure!

 

[catruter]

Well my connection is working properly with an external arial in a area that they say has no coverage at all.

Even though i have been using them since July 2008

My mom who is living in a cottage on my property cant even get them to give her a phone.

Neotel is selling a great product BUT there service sucks!!!

 

[cyberbyte]

Have you asked Neotel to come out for a coverage check. They used to come out to your premises to test the signal and then may provide you with service...
Also, have you tried giving them a bull**** address during the initial call?
and then updating it later on? LoL

 

[catruter]

No I have not asked them to come out and do a signal check.

I would think that they would want to keep there coverage map as up tp date as possible and that they would want more customers.

I mean if you increase your customer base, you increase your profit margin. Thats just good bussiness, i would think?

I am using a Neotel phone everyday and i phone them from the Neotel phone to apply for a second phone, so naturally it stands to reason that I have coverage.:erm:

Or are the reps at Neotel just to slow to see this. there coverage map is not up to date and not accurate

 

[SteveO]

coverage maps are theoretical so it might just mean that the coverage is better than expected

 

[Neotel]

Coverage

Have you asked Neotel to come out for a coverage check. They used to come out to your premises to test the signal and then may provide you with service...
Also, have you tried giving them a bull**** address during the initial call?
and then updating it later on? LoL

OK You are talking about what we refer to as 1x on the Lite. 1x has a wider coverage areae than EvDo. If you are getting signal where it shows no coverage then that is just luck I'm afraid.

The test and sell scenario has come back to haunt us quite badly in some cases. Our covereage maps indicate worst case scenario Ie maximum capacity for that particular BTS No More no less. As it is RF it is possible for the signal to travel further than indicated on the coverage maps especially with 1x. as for the Shyte address on the initial call, when you call to change your address we have built the GIS logic into the address change so as to prevent address changes to areas of no coverage.

As the BTS fills up with users the signal actually shrinks, it expands again as users log off. What we call cell breathing.

 

[catruter]

Thanks Neotel Rep

Thank you for the response and explaining, i just hope everything stays great with my connection. I just wish that you could officially extend your coverage over my house so that my mother could also get one of neotel's phones, she only wants to use it for telephone calls. Or you could put an extra tower in my area( i do stay on top of a hill) then every one in my area could enjoy Neotels Products

 

[Next Thing]

Our covereage maps indicate worst case scenario Ie maximum capacity for that particular BTS No More no less. As it is RF it is possible for the signal to travel further than indicated on the coverage maps especially with 1x.

This is a bit contradictory from what you have told me in calls I have had with you.
On the map I have excellent indoor. But I get far below that even with an external antennae. According to you I should not even have signal .........

 

[ads]

I guess the Neotel rep has made the point, but the underlying technical reason is fairly clear.

Neotel is using CDMA2000 at 800 MHz, resulting in very wide coverage per site (more than GSM, which is 900 MHz, and has a hard limit of 13 km per site because of TDMA issues). The standard is also superior to GSM in terms of handovers (does "soft handovers"), and general voice quality (provided, of course, that you're not talking to a GSM phone at the other end). These have been the standard cell networks in the US (and countries like Korea, even Australia) for many years, so it's not particuarly surprising. China is about to roll out CDMA2000 to 300 million subscribers.

Why the actual coverage is much larger than predicted coverage is because the cells in any CDMA network (including W-CDMA) "breathe" - shrink as they get more loaded. Since Neotel doesn't yet have the voice overloading problems of the mobile networks, their coverage is going to be much better than claimed (for voice / low-speed data - they do seem to have high data loading in some areas).

BTW This also explains why Telkom can make such outrageous claims about their W-CDMA coverage. Basically, they claim the "unloaded" coverage, unlike Neotel, which claims only the "loaded" coverage - Neotel may be a bit underselling in the short term, but is more honest in the long term.