Indoor Coverage

Many people do not have any appreciation for just how complex the telephone network is and how easily congestion can delay or prevent calls going through the network. There are many locations within the network that can act as choke points and the engineers at these communications companies are always monitoring and improving this network.

There are 5 main areas that these choke points can be lumped into. We will discuss them in a moment, however when you add data calls, the amount of traffic increases exponentially and places additional strain on the network. In fact data is growing at a much higher rate than voice traffic. This is becoming a challenge to many cell phone companies since they need to spend millions of dollars to fix some of these data choke points to deal with the exponential growth in traffic.

The 5 areas are: A) Airwaves B) Buildings C) Switching Gear D) Land Lines E) Application Servers. A data bit travels from your cell phone via airwaves, through building walls to cell towers, then via land lines to switching , more land lines to applications servers which will process the data bits and deliver back to you the information you requested. There are ample opportunities for the data bits to be slowed or delayed while each device deals with the traffic that is being sent to it. As traffic increases this only gets worse unless additional capacity is added.

Airwaves

Congested airwaves are less problematic than other chokepoints, but they still slow service.

Take the fastest 3G network today, which can support a download speed of 21 mega bits per second. Someone using a laptop wireless card that also supports 21mbps can surf the web at full speed.

But if two laptop users try to download at 21mbps from the same cell tower, the highest speed each consumer will see is cut in half. If a third user tries to download at the highest speed, divide the peak speed by three, and so on.

Fortunately not every laptop needs or can deal with 21 mbps, but you get the point when you have a congested site that has thousands of cell phones, or wireless cards competing for limited resources the response time can become delayed.

Buildings

City skyscrapers block wireless signals, and office workers using cell phones at their desks clog networks originally designed for people on the go.

These same buildings can attenuate a signal so much that a cell phone can work perfectly fine outside and not at all inside. Weaker signals slow the transmission of data  and also use your batteries power much faster.

Switching Gear

Applications like Yahoo Messenger that constantly send and receive signals on the network play havoc with switches, which were built for sustained calls. A two-minute IM chat can require as many signals as it takes for 10 voice calls. A single computer with an air card can be running 4 or 5 applications at the same time, generating data traffic from each of the applications aimed at different servers in the network.

Signaling traffic is growing 50% faster than data as more apps are constantly “on,” according to Signals Research Group. That’s in part why iPhones generate more traffic than 30 basic cellphones.

Landlines

Data bits flow from cell towers through fiber and copper lines to a switching station and then from the switching station again via land lines to application servers via even more switching stations. Data and calls are then sent to their final destinations over even more landlines and servers.

The scheme, designed pre-smartphone, can push only 75% of a tower’s maximum capacity to the next switch or endpoint. With wireless data expected to more than double annually from 2008 to 2013 as video and apps grow more popular, landlines are a growing problem.

Application Servers

Many of the tens of thousands of applications for smartphones connect to the public Internet through their own servers. So don’t always blame the wireless carriers for bad service. Slow loading corporate e-mail or sports scores can be the fault of an app maker’s own bandwidth constraint.

Whether it is ITunes, CNN or any other site that is receiving lots of traffic from all over the world, the application servers must receive the data, process it, determine what information is being asked for, find it, queue it for transmission and then send it back to the original requester.  And this is the simple straight forward version.

Applications servers can be their own choke point if many users are making the same request at the same time. This occurs routinely when something is advertised on a web site or on TV and thousands of people make the same request at the same time for information about the same subject.

Summary

With all of these possible choke points in the network it is amazing that the communications system works as well as it does. Rest assured that data engineers are monitoring and making adjustments routinely every day to improve the network and adding capacity to deal with an ever increasing traffic demand as more and more smart phones are added by customers across the country.

Much has been written about the potential impact of radiation from cell phones and the impact it may have on your health. The concerns range from cancer to overall health impacts if you use your cell phone too much.  We thought we would take a different approach to dealing with the issue and follow a philosophy that is common to many issues.

Too much of a good thing can be harmful to your health. This applies to foods, the sun, and tobacco and on and on. Cell phones and their use may or may not impact us negatively, but why take the chance.  We all know people that are practically glued to their cell phones all of their working day or perhaps they are wearing the new blue tooth devices which fit into their ears. Even these devices which provide hands free service and are much safer to use compared to holding your cell phone while driving a car, also contribute some radiation.

If you need to use your cell phone for work and use it a lot, you could be susceptible to potential health problems. If you are a teen and love to talk on the phone you could also be susceptible to a potential health issue.  We know that you cannot just stop using your phone. They have become a necessary part of our lives and we cannot live without them. So what are we to do if we are also concerned about our health?

Common Sense Approach

The common Sense approach is just that. Let’s face it we are never really going to find out if cell phones are harmful. Look at the tobacco industry. It took over 50 years for people to realize the impacts on their health. It may or may not be the same for cell phones, but why take the chance.

So let’s assume that they are harmful or will be harmful to our health over a long period of time.  If you knew this to be true what would you change how you use your cell phone?  Maybe. Would you stop using your phone? Not likely! Would you use your phone less? Perhaps for awhile, but then you would fall back into your old habits.

What is needed is a few ideas that you can use to control not only how much you use your phone but where you place your phone to decrease the amount of radiation that is absorbed by your brain. If we apply this approach, we think that you can dramatically decrease the radiation that you are exposed to. Remember that we really do not care if the radiation is harmful or not, we just do not want to find out ten years from now that all of the experts were wrong and pay for it with a brain tumor etc.

A Few Basic Facts About Cell Phones

A few basic facts about cell phones will help us understand what we can do to help ourselves. All phones are engineered to not go beyond a preset level of radiation as determined by the industry and the government. So there is a maximum power level they cannot go beyond. This is supposed to be a healthy level that will not adversely affect us.

As you go further away from a cellular tower, the phone must radiate more power to maintain a telephone call or a data connection. The closer you are to the tower, the lower the power level will be.

The radiation emanating from the phones and penetrating your brain decreases by the square of the distance from your head. This is very important in managing the radiation levels that you are exposed to, as are all of the other facts that are mentioned in this section.

The message is to find ways to decrease the amount of radiation you are exposed to without having to use your phone less than you are, since it has become an important tool in your life.

What can you do?

In listing the following ideas, we recognize that not all are practical for all situations or people in their daily work activities. Select those that make sense for you in your situation!

Use hands free wherever possible including both an ear bud with a wire attached to your phone as well as Bluetooth devices

For long calls, switch to a land line so that you can get away from the radiation all together

Even for relatively short calls it may be appropriate to switch to a traditional telephone

Use your phones speaker phone in appropriate places so that you do not have to hold the phone to your ear

If your cell phones battery feels warm you have probably been talking too long.

Use a phone that is rated as having a lower emission level, check the FCC web site.

If you are mobile and use your phone a lot, try to locate a nearby cellular tower and stop and finish your call parked close to a cellular tower. Remember you should not be driving while using your phone anyway. Switch to hands free mode

Even if you hold your phone one inch away from your head you are decreasing the radiation that penetrates to your brain. Most people will still be able to hear the person on the other end quite easily with the phone held away from your ear.

Summary

These are a few basic steps you can take to manage and decrease the radiation penetrating your brain. Following them and getting into the habit of using your cell phone in this manner will not limit your flexibility and efficiency, but it will decrease the probability of being damaged by this radiation. Remember we are not saying that the cell phone will cause health issues, we are just saying that why do you want to take the chance?  Cell phones have really not been around long enough for anyone to know and some people might be more susceptible than others. Who really knows?  Follow some or all of the above suggestions to decrease the radiation that penetrates your brain. Why wait for the experts to finally know for sure, take matters into your own hands.

If you know of other ideas, please feel free to add them in our comments section!

Wireless Phone Plans

Have you been looking at new wireless phone plans recently? If you have you probably already know just how complicated many of the wireless phone plans are from many of the carriers in the United States and also in Canada. We recently were looking at changing our existing plan to try and save some money each month and at the same time add several features that we decided that we would want. What we found was so complicated and so difficult that we almost gave up. The telephone companies have purposely made it difficult for everyone to select economical wireless phone plans that make sense for each individual person. In this post we will discuss some of the issues that we ran into and look for your comments to help make this clearer for other readers.

Voice

Our family does a lot of local and long-distance calling with our wireless phones. As a result, we thought that we should have a plan that includes airtime for local calling as well as long-distance calling for one simple rate per minute. In addition we receive a lot of incoming calls and we were looking for something that included an incoming call free rate plan. Since we have multiple phones we also wanted something that allowed for free calling between family members. The telephone companies have features that meet all of our requirements however if you purchase them on an individual basis your monthly telephone bill will be quite high. As a result we were forced into taking prepackaged plans that include features that we want as well as features that we do not care about or need. We also wanted so-called smart phone features such as call display, calling number ID, called return and voicemail. Again these features are all available individually, however there is often a better package if you purchase them as a bundle.

Text Messages

Text messaging is very popular these days. Many more teenagers use text messaging than adults however even among young adults text messaging is becoming a common way of communicating. We have had more success in communicating with our teenagers by text messaging than we have by phoning them. There are family plans available for text messaging providing 100 200 and 500 text messages per month. Also if there is long-distance involved, sending a text message can be much more economical than actually making a long-distance phone call.

If you do not take a text message plan, the telephone companies will charge you for every text message you send as well as every text message that you receive. If your friends and family members send you a lot of text messages this can become quite expensive. A simple solution is to take the small text message plan of say 50 text messages per month, which allows you to send 50 text messages each month while at the same time receiving unlimited text messages. If you are the type of person who receives more text messages than sending text messages, then this is the plan for you.

Voice Mail

Voice mail is also important to have as part of your overall package. You cannot always answer the phone nor should you if you are in a restaurant, driving a car or otherwise busy at meetings. Having voicemail is a useful way for your callers to still leave a message. Voicemail is often integrated as a bundle with other voice features and you may want to take this into account when making a decision about purchasing voicemail.

There is a right way and a wrong way to leave a voice mail message. Many people will say that so and so is calling and leave the telephone number and nothing else. This is the wrong way to leave a voice message. The person you called has no idea of what you are calling about and whether they should prepare something prior to returning your call. Leaving a detailed message of what you are calling about along with your telephone number and name is the best method to use when leaving a voice message. This way, the person you called can prepare for the return phone call and have the information you are looking for at their fingertips.

Data Plans

Data plans are also very complicated and confusing. In order to know which data plan you should purchase, you should have some idea of the amount of data that you will download to your phone. If you have a smart phone and are planning to do a lot of Internet browsing, to do a lot of music downloading, and especially to view many music videos or video programs on your smart phone then you will need a large data plan. The telephone companies are charging a great deal for data, in fact more than they do for voice. They are trying to recoup some of their lost revenues due to the competition that voice has with all the different carriers providing service. We suggest that you be very careful in managing your data plan so that you do not go over your plan limits. This can become very expensive.

Summary

In summary the first step you should take is to figure out what services you require how many text messages you will send each month what call features you would like and how much data you will need before deciding on which plan you purchase from the wireless phone companies. Data is particularly tricky, due to the large amounts of data required by video. If you feel that you will never download music videos or video programs then you can safely go with a smaller data plan however if you plan to download video and watch programs etc. then you should probably opt for a larger data plan.

Your comments will be much appreciated on this post.

There is hope yet for the wireless networks as they improve their services and coverage of cities , towns and rural areas. Many people experience perfectly great service were they live, yet when they go inside some buildings or into rural areas, there phones do not work as well. They miss calls and drop calls on a regular basis.

The reason for this is really quite simple. The wireless signal is simply not strong enough for the cell phone to operate properly to process calls and maintain them once a call is set up. There are numerous reasons for a weak signal and we will discuss some of them as follows:

Insufficient Power, Poor Coverage

The wireless carriers all have cell phone towers spread around the country. You have probably seen them in cities and across the country side. The one shown on the left is pretty typical of a small site that provides wireless coverage in all directions from the tower. In more densely populated areas you will see towers that are higher as well as with more radio transmitters on them.

The picture to the left is an example of another tower with more radios and much higher than most towers. The power of each of these radio and the number of these towers is governed by strict engineering guidelines that take into account the power radiated, the area covered and the terrain that is within a 30 mile radius of the tower as well as adjacent towers that are also providing cell phone coverage.

The closer you are to a transmitting tower, the stronger your signal will be and the better your service will be. Someone who is at the extreme distance of 30 miles will not receive a very strong signal and may drop calls or miss calls. The signal degrades with distance on an Radius squared basis.  The density of cell towers and the number of radios at various power levels is one of the main reasons that cell phone coverage can be very good or very poor.

Signal Blockages or Line of Site Issues

Another factor which can impact the signal you receive is what is between you and the transmitting tower that your phone is connected to by wireless signal. If there is a bridge or building or hill between you and the tower, then your signal will not be as strong.

In cities were demand is stronger, there are more towers and also radios attached to buildings to cover every nook and cranny of the city, so that there are no blockages. As you get further out from the center of the city or were there is a significant demand, there are less towers and this is were this type of blockage occurs.

Signal Blockage by Buildings

Many cellualar subscribers or mobile subscribers may notice that the signal illustrated on their hand sets decreases when they go inside a building. You might have 4 bars of signal outside , only to have it decrease to 2 bars while you are inside or even worse no signal at all.

Many buildings are surrounded in some kind of steel and this acts as a serious attenuator to decrease the signal strength. Even if your building is concrete with re-enforced steel wire inside the wall, this will be enough to lower the signal strength. In really bad cases, users of cell phones will have to step outside to use their phones.

Wireless Service Providers are Improving

As you might appreciate, the wireless service providers are working hard to improve service. Every dropped call or missed call is lost revenue for the wireless service providers not to mention a bad reputation that they get.

Since these towers and radios are quite expensive,  the wireless service providers are targeting new installations were they will be able to derive the most revenue. If you happen to live in a low traffic area you may be waiting for a long time before your service is improved.

On the other hand if there is sufficient population density in your area and customers are complaining, there may be a sufficiently good business case for the wireless service providers to spend the money to improve service in your area. There are several ways to improve service.

Increase power to existing radios, however this could be detrimental to other radio systems in the area. The FCC in the US manages this relationship very carefully as do the wireless service providers. Another solution is to divide an area and add a new tower. Permission from local groups must be provided before a tower can even be erected, so it may take some time to add additional radios and towers. Many times the wireless service providers will attach radios to buildings as an alternative to adding a brand new tower and  incurring the wrath of the local citizens.

If you have a large commercial building with lots of wireless customers that work in the building you may be able to persuade your wireless service provider to add small wireless cellular radios inside the building.  Of course you will end up having to approach all of the carriers since not everyone is with the same wireless service provider.

There are also small repeaters that can be purchased. These are broadband repeaters that will capture the full wireless spectrum that the carriers use , amplify it and then rebroadcast the same signal inside the building. Since these repeaters are broadband, they will broadcast all of the signals for all of the carriers. These repeaters must be approved by the carrier and they will have to be installed by the customer at there expense.

This is our first post about improving indoor wireless coverage. How often have you dropped a call in the middle of conversation or had to go outside even to make a call with your cellular phone?  Many customers of wireless companies have experienced this from time to time, simply because the signal is not strong enough for your phone to utilize. It can happen in homes as well as in retail and commercial areas.

Indoor wireless coverage will vary significantly between the outdoors and inside a building, particularly one that has a steel shell.  The steel shell of the building will act as a barrier to the signal. Some power from the signal will get through, but most will not and your cell phone just cannot deal with such a weak signal. If the signal is already a weak signal because you are a long way from the cellular tower, then when you go inside you will have a much weaker signal and your cell phone just will not operate very well.

Cellular coverage or wireless coverage is a function of the strength of the signal that the wireless companies are transmitting, the weather conditions, obstructions between you and the transmitting tower and the quality of the cell phone you are carrying.

In terms of obstructions these can be anything from hills, trees, bridges, buildings and interior walls as well as interference from other signals. Many people find that their cell phones work well outside and then fade as they go inside their homes or offices. They either miss calls or find that their established calls are dropped as a result.

Even weather conditions can sometimes impact the signal strength and decrease the power to a level that your cell phone will not work properly. Fortunately there is a solution to this problem.

Solution

The solution is to install a cellular repeater which picks up the signal outdoors, amplifies and retransmits the signal indoors to improve your cell coverage indoors. Several companies provide products that will help in this regard. These products vary in price as well as performance, so it is important to do your research first before spending in money on these solutions. One area to consider is how much area they will cover to improve the service. Another is to make sure that the device is approved by the cellular carrier that operates in your area.

There are several products on the market that provide this sort of capability to enhance cellular, PCS, 1XRTT and EVDO signals. Consumers can do a simple test to see what happens when they go inside their homes and offices to see if a phone antenna booster might be the answer to your needs.

When you are outside, examine the signal strength displayed on your cell phone. Count the number of bars that are displayed under the cell phone signal strength icon. Now go inside and do the same thing to see if the signal strength has decreased or not. If it has, your signal is being dampened by the building and you probably could use a cell phone antenna booster of some sort to boost your signal. You may want to also try different locations in the building to see if there is a difference. Try the location were you noticed more dropped calls or failure to make a call.

Coverage Map

You can develop a coverage map pretty quickly by checking the signal strength using the number of bars displayed on your phone.  If you decide to purchase an amplifier for your cellular signal, this coverage map inside of your building will help you to figure out which is the best location to place the indoor amplifier and receive the best signal enhancement.

Once you have settled on a solution and arranged to have the repeater installed into your home of office, recheck the coverage map by again checking the signal level in all of the same locations and note the signal strength on your phone. You should notice an improvement and of course better call service with your cell phone. If you do not notice   a difference, your repeater may not be working or it may be configured for the wrong frequencies. Your supplier can assist you with this issue.

We will have many more posts about this issue and wireless issues in general over the next year. Feel free to post comments about our blog, or to suggest additional topics for us t consider adding to the web site. All constructive comments are welcome.