Well, I just called into Cingular to ask if they were having Signal problems in my area. They said everything looks fine, and asked why. I told them both mine and my mom's phone weren't working and she's way across town. They said it may be that I wasn't getting a strong signal, even thought I live 6 blocks from the tower. She thought I lived 3 miles, for some reason, their computer can't figure that out, but the intersection she gave me is about 6 blocks away. She said maybe a tree was interfering with the signal, which sounds like hog wash to me. She had me take my phone apart so that it'll start working. Well, here's my question...
Why would a phone show 5 bars of signal strength even thought whenever I try to make a call I get ...
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GSM doesnt requuire you turn your phone off for five minutes every day,its just a good thing to do because:
A: installs any updates sent out
B: allows phone to re-register with network
C: its like rebooting your computer, its need to be done regularly
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I do turn it off and on at least once a day, sometimes more. She said it needed to wait 5 minutes, which is what I was asking about. With a computer, all you really need to do is remove the power so the RAM will clear out. There's even software to clear it so you won't have to reboot. Other than that, there's really no reason to rebooting a computer.
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doesnt need to waiot five minutes, i usually just do it 30 seconds or so
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[quote]
Why would a phone show 5 bars of signal strength even thought whenever I try to make a call I get a "Call Failed" message and the bars suddenly drop? Are phones programed to give false hope?
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I find this statement very humorous and believe that you may (sadly) in fact be correct in this assumption.
Based on the reading I have made - this does not seem to be isolated to you.
As for the rep stating there is no issue in your area - I would take that also with a grain of salt.
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Why can't they just tell me there is? When there is, I usually say, ok, thanks, ask how long until it's resolved, and go on my way. It's when numerous people are having the same problems and I'm told everything's fine. That's when I feel betrayed, lied to. Pretty much how Johnny 5 felt. (I wonder how many people even know who that is.) Reception issue is one of the reasons I'm considering switching. That, and cost, possibly. (I get 23% discount with Sprint, but, it amounts to about a $20 difference/month, so it may not really be worth it.) For as long as I can remember, we've had weird signal issues in this area. Well, I'd say it started when we had some flooding about 4 years ago. Ever since then, we get dropped calls and connect...
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Maybe the problem is still new and they have not sent a memo out about it yet. If there was a problem and the rep knew about it they would tell you. They would have no reason to do any differently.
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She said, and other reps have told me this, that they can look at the status of the towers and it tells them whether it's gone down or has any problems.
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yes, but what we are looking at is what tech has reported, if it hasnt been reported we dont know.
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Ahh, well, that makes more sense. They should say that, instead of saying all the towers or working. They could say, well, nothing has been reported from tech that we're having any problems, but I'll pass the word along so they can check on it. They used to open trouble tickets when I'd call in about stuff like that, now they pretty much tell me to turn on and off my phone and to wait a while since a lot are using the tower.
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just depends on the rep you get, i hate to give away the secret, but not every Cigular rep goes out of his/her way to make sure we get every issue resolved with customers, which leaves the people who do try left cleaning up their mess đ , normally, with your situation we have what we call a "network issue ticket" we can file, which basically shoots tech a thing saying what the problem and and where its located at, and I'm sorry it sounds like you didnt get the best of help from whoever you spoke with.
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Try this. #88 SEND
That should go directly to the tower techs.
Do not start with the usual "My phone is dropping calls and messing up"
This is the script.
"This is Joe Blow. My cell # is 555-222-4444
I am dropping calls at the intersection of West Blvd and Cherry Street; North Chase and Dawson; at my residence 5574 Oak Dr. I am using a Motorola xxx."
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Johnny 5 is alive!!!
Short Circuit, all the way...
It sounds like a load issue if you're getting a signal but it wont complete. It's like the towers are "full" or something, which would definitely be a problem. There may actually be a problem in a different area that they've had to re-route through your area while they're fixing the first.
I naturally have my expectations low. âšī¸
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Well, I've gotten a "Network Busy" error on my phone, and, to my understanding, that means the tower's "full". That, as annoying as it is, is somewhat understandable. When I get a "Call Failed" error, that's what's annoying.
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You dont have a motorola phone by any chance, do you? When i had my old vzw moto, it did that all the time, except going from 3 bars to 1 bar and taking 4 minutes to connect. and when i hung up, it would go straight back to 3 bars!
When you think that this whole "bar" system is just interpreting the decibles that your phone is getting, i think different manufacturers interpret different signals as a different number of bars. For example: Moto gets -73 dcb. Nokia gets -73 dcb. Moto has 4 bars, nokia has 5 bars (full serivce).
There is no way to "regulate" exactly what constitutes "5 bars" since they are just a manufacturers representaiton of a number which is too high for them to display (or too low because they are negative numb...
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Do you even understand how phones work?
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My guess would be no, i love quotes on here that make absolutely no sense đŗ
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Have you ever noticed when you don't shut down your computer it begins to slow down and not function as well?
Your phone is basically a little computer. Restarting it updates software changes that have been downloaded. For those customers that never power cycle (off then on again) the updates never install and the phone starts not functioning.
6 out of 10 customers with handset issues in my store simply need to power cycle their phone. That is why the first step in every trouble shooting process is that. Saves everyone much needed time.
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A computer needs to be restarted because the RAM gets filled up. Electric current is what keeps the info on the RAM. When it's turned off, power is cut going to the RAM, and it's cleared. That's pretty much the only reason you need to restart your computer unless you install something that requires it. Many business never turn their computers off and they pretty much have no problems. Unless you're running programs that require high amounts of RAM, you probably could get away without restarting.
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I only turn my computer off every 5-10 days, when it starts running slowly or freezes up.
But it's a good idea to turn the gsm phone off at least once a day.
This was the explanation I've been given by our tech support:
Turn your phone on and it connects to a tower. Let's say you stay at home all day, you'll most likely be fine, because you stayed on that same tower, or the same cluster of towers, that are close to you. If you start going around town, your signal doesn't always get handed off from tower to tower.. instead of being 6 miles away from a tower like at home, you may be 10, or 20... the further you get from the original tower, the more degraded your internal signal will become (it won't always register on the screen as low si...
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dca
Jul 18, 2005, 12:21 PM
With computers: the object is to shutdown your PC, not just do a restart. Its just a good thing to do, not only is RAM temp storage while the unit is on, but lots of TSR apps rattle around in the ram... Not only is RAM an issue but if the PC is a heavy networked PC, shutting down disconnects itself on shutdown, then automatically reconnects itself on startup, solves many issues if you run terminal emulation software to have Windows PCs talk to UNIX servers...
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Consider your phone like a laptop, wirelessly connected to your local network, if your laptop isnt connecting to the network, whats one of the first things you do? Power cycle, smae thing with your phone, and we constantly send out updates, thats why we advise you to power cycle, its not like microsoft where you get a patch every couple of months, we send them out regularly, thats why everyone says to power cycle, it solves 75% of peoples problems.
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I don't powercycle when my laptop's not connecting. I troubleshoot the network connection to make sure all the settings are correct and stuff.
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Link
Jul 18, 2005, 11:52 PM
Well that is also some of the steps in troubleshooting a phone. Power cycling is the main that does solve a lot of problems I see with tons of customers I get.
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I understand that, that's why I powercycle a few times a day. It's getting annoying when everyone's saying the phone's like a computer or a TV or whatever and that you need to powercycle them so it'll work good. A phone needs powercycling for update stuff, everything else doesn't really need powercycling under moderate use.
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Link
Jul 19, 2005, 12:11 AM
I found some computers it is good to turn them off then on, does a memory wipe or something like that. Kinda like my brain, it turns itself on/off every once in awhile... then the peanut butter sticks.... wait what was I talking about? đ
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you need to dial the area code if you dont it will display "called failed"
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The area code is set in all my numbers and is always dialed.
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there are many people using these towers each and everyday the reason we tell ya to turn your phone off and on once a day is to have the best tower registration, its like your computer if you download something that requires a power off and on to mke your program work efficiently its the same thing
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