Hello Lance, and Welcome!
First, let me suggest that we de-couple my views from those of Ray D. for the moment. Not that we are at odds, necessarily, but to keep "our" dialog straight.
The major thrust of your message to me was focused on the ability of current and future wireless "voice" service protocols to scale with minimal effects caused by spectrum shortages. The points I cautioned about, however, had nothing to do with voice services. Rather, they had to do with the consequences of streaming multimedia and other near- and real- time data services. I actually concluded the message to which you responded by stating that next gen wireless platforms would very likely be more than acceptable, implying that some level of data services would be realized as advertized, in a satisfactory manner, provided that wireless service providers exert control through the use of acceptable use policies and throughput caps. The latter would prevent users from driving limited spectrum resources into the ground. I also listed several ways in which these conditions might be optimized up to a certain point.
Having said that, you also asked about Sprint PCS services in NY City. More often than not, I don't mention specific service providers by name when an issue of contention exists (unless there is only a single, or dominant, provider within a given class, when there is no sense in hiding the name), but since you asked, and since you have provided testimony from Sprint's own CTO, I feel compelled to respond in kind.
I started using PCS about year ago. When they launched their services here in NYC I suspect that they put more emphasis into promos and price competition measures than they did in platform resources. They appear to have severely oversubscribed their network here, initially, in other words, far ahead of their ability or desire to make their network whole for many users, until recently. Some of the consequences, and the measures they've had to undertake since then, in part, and IMO, follow.
Their re-sectorizing, with regularity on weekends, for about six months (and more recently less frequently, but still they get you when you are least prepared to be without a wireless phone during a weekend cutover) has caused me many moments of grief. This is more than conjecture on my part. During one extended outage on one weekend, when I was sorely in need of wireless services, I spent several hours on the phone, on and off, with their repair services group. At that time one of their supervisors told me that this was the cause of my down time, pinpointing the exact antenna sites involved right down to their coordinates. I chalked it up to growing pains at the time, until it became apparent to me on subsequent weekends that there was no end to this sort of thing in sight.
Most users don't notice this, but in my line Friday Night 'Round Midnight', is a crucial time frame. That's when they begin their work on their antenna sites, sometimes running into Sunday Night, on and off, until they get it right.
During busy hours, when I am not on the phone, and when I am not in a dead zone, they often dump my inbound [to me] calls to my voice mail bin! Why is this? Here's what I think is happening, although I have no direct proof.. but all of the signs seem to point directly to this:
Sending my incoming calls to voice mail during busy periods, due to inadequate air interface and PSTN link provisions on thier part, allows them to bill for inbound minutes (which invariably results in a return call in the outbound direction at some point by me, anyway, hence they double-whack you, coming and going) while freeing up what I suspect are overly-taxed air- and PSTN- links, so that they could be used for outbound calls only, during periods of high usage.
Effectively, if this scenario is accurate, voice mail becomes an overflow release used to overcome inadequate link and base station provisioning. This, as opposed to voice mail's original intent, which is to accept and store my incoming messages when I chose not to answer the phone, or when my unit was turned off.
When you think about it, sending incoming messages directly to voice mail doesn't tax wireless facilities at all. Doing so only involves the PSTN (from whence most calls are originated), and trunks to their voice mail servers.
This practice prevents "apparent" blocking and the attendant fast busy signal that we detest hearing, while allowing billing to proceed for both directions, with fewer wireless resources expended by the carrier. It then causes further minutes to be used in the outbound direction (by me) at some later time, possibly when peak-usage subsides, when I return the call to the original caller.
Things have gotten a little better lately, although I still get voice mail messages during periods when I am not tying up the phone, and when I am not in a dead zone, and always during peak hour activity. And it continues to annoy the hell out of me, whenever it happens, because sometimes the same process is put into motion all over again: Phone Tag.
I regard these "measures" as downright irresponsible, if you ask me, and they have left a very bad taste in my mouth because most of these conditions were altogether avoidable if proper planning, not to mention a tad of customer advocacy, went into providing the service in the first place. In this last regard, they went far beyond what might be called simple negligence, IMO.
Instead, these were, IMO, engineered conditions, keyed to profit maximization at the expense of users, due to users' powerlessness to either perceive or do anything about what is actually taking place.
I therefore suggest that when one reads your passage, which I have copied below, they read it with grain of salt. Especially the part from Sprint's CTO:
"Sprint's CTO has stated they have no problem in NY and that the most heavily used base station in their system is at one of the airports and uses a maximum of 13mhz (out of 30 mhz which I believe they have available)... How is Sprint's service in NYC? Do they get bogged down during rush hours and at busy intersections during traffic jams? The current auction displays very little aggression on their part to obtain more spectrum it seems to me and that confirms the adequacy of what they have perhaps."
Perhaps they should have been more aggressive in providing more base station-, PSTN- and air link- resources prior to, and then again in response to the success of making, their initial offers and claims. It might have saved me, and others I'm sure, many weekends of aggravation and cussin', and allowed us to receive our incoming calls, to this day, in a more timely manner.
Again, none of this has anything to do with my original points concerning the potential for congestion on next gen wireless networks, vis a vis streaming m-m and other data services. But thanks for your response, nonetheless, and allowing me this opportunity to reach catharsis on this other matter, which has been festering for some time.
In the end, I agree that it is how the spectrum is adminstered, and how it is utilized, and not necessarily a function of the generic medium type that matters. Another factor that comes to mind is the sheer number of purveyors carving up the single resource known as the airwaves, or spectrum. Interfacing and partitioning this limited resource a thousand different ways has its price, too. What price competition...
FAC
ps- Unlike other service providers, Sprint PCS still doesn't work in the Lincoln and Brooklyn Battery Tunnels. |
