4G (Sprint, Clear) woes in Chicago. (Manhattan: apartment, how much, home)

[hxcobd]

(I know there's another thread on this topic, but it's Clear-specific, so I'm hoping this one will be a little more generalized.)

I picked up the Sprint Evo 4G this past week, hoping to make it my primary source of internet in my apartment, as well as for tethering on the Metra to work and such.

I live in a highrise near the Loop, and as some predicted, reception is horrible in my apartment. I get virtually no 4G signal whatsoever and even 3G is shaky.

The instant I leave my apartment and hit the street-level, 4G signal is awesome. About 75% of my Metra ride to the NW suburbs has great 4G coverage as well.

4G speeds have been fantastic as well. I pulled a 9 meg download, 1.5 meg upload on Monday on the Metra into Chicago.

What's with the signal issues in highrises? This basically completely destroys any possibility of considering it as a primary source of internet... If I lived basically ANYWHERE ELSE, it would work perfectly for my uses.

Anyone else have any input on 4G in general? Especially those of you in highrises?

[nikitakolata]

Originally Posted by hxcobd

(I know there's another thread on this topic, but it's Clear-specific, so I'm hoping this one will be a little more generalized.)

I picked up the Sprint Evo 4G this past week, hoping to make it my primary source of internet in my apartment, as well as for tethering on the Metra to work and such.

I live in a highrise near the Loop, and as some predicted, reception is horrible in my apartment. I get virtually no 4G signal whatsoever and even 3G is shaky.

The instant I leave my apartment and hit the street-level, 4G signal is awesome. About 75% of my Metra ride to the NW suburbs has great 4G coverage as well.

4G speeds have been fantastic as well. I pulled a 9 meg download, 1.5 meg upload on Monday on the Metra into Chicago.

What's with the signal issues in highrises? This basically completely destroys any possibility of considering it as a primary source of internet... If I lived basically ANYWHERE ELSE, it would work perfectly for my uses.

Anyone else have any input on 4G in general? Especially those of you in highrises?

I wish I had a solution, but I can't say that I do. Have you tried moving to various places in your apartment? I only ask because I use clear wireless at work and I haven't had any problems with it at all. My regular cell phone, on the other hand, has horrible reception. I'm on the 35th floor of a high-rise downtown.

With my cell, if I'm in certain parts of the office, the reception is fine and in various "positions" within my personal office the signal is decent. I sit in an office with windows on the north side, if that is of any relevance; my last office (in a different building downtown) also faced north and I had bad cell reception there too. I don't know if that has anything to do with it or not.

[hxcobd]

Interesting, nikita.

I've moved all over my apartment. Reception is better towards my window/balcony (understandably), but still shaky enough that I don't think I could reliably depend on the connection for streaming video/gaming.

Oh, and my apartment faces southwest, for reference.

I really just don't get the height thing. I think I'm gonna take my Evo onto my building's rooftop tonight and see how 4G fares up there in the open air.

Like I said though, on the street-level, signal is fantastic pretty much the entire time.

[chet everett]

Most people do not think about the physics that make radio work, but the basic idea is that an antenna is generally designed to be some whole number fraction of the wavelength of the radio antenna. The tiny antenna on a cell phone is typically a quarter of the length of the signal while the big whip antenna on a truck's CB is also a quarter wave. This is important because the effective "cage spacing" needed to create a barrier to radio waves is a similar function of wavelength. The window mullions in most offices are thus tight enough to quash most AM radio signals, while the relatively tiny wavelength of cell phones ought to require basically wrapping yourself in window screening to exclude the radio signal. Heck look how much metal surround a Metra train, but the WINDOWS are plenty big in comparison to the tiny antenna!

What is the difference between your apartment building and your office? Radio interference! All the other residents that have cordless phones, wireless routers, microwave ovens and similar devices that are basically creating super dense stack of "radio jammers" very closer in frequency to your 4g router.


The digital signal that they use is supposed to be good at incorporating error correction, but just like all the folks that were supposed to be able to get digital TV with it's error correcting and instead got crummy blocky pictures or none at all the theory and practice are two different things...


I suppose you could hold out hope that if enough neighbors all called Sprint or Clear they might install a macrocell or special repeaters in your building, but realistically that is a very long shot. Both those firms want to to continue to expand west and north along the commute / vacation routes. Many more users to snag that way....

[latikeriii]

IMO, I think its partly the construction used in high-rises and that most cell towers are shorter than most high-rises(unless you're close to the Hancock Building or Sears Tower) therefore the signal is weaker above the cell towers than below. Also, if you live around a lot of high-rises, signal could be affected that way too.

This is just an opinion, I could be completely wrong.

PS, Sprint offers an extra antenna that you can install at home that helps with reception, it's like $10 per month or something.

[Blackbeauty212]

How high up is the OP.....Like in NYC the higher up you go in some these older Buildings the worse your reception will get....because you're phone is affected by Pilot Pollution..(It's seeing tooo many towers at once) in urban areas a tower can be placed every 3 blocks to handle the larger loads in one area (like Midtown Manhattan)....New Building are affected as much because most are installed with Micro-cells during the construction....so Phones in the building only see that one strong micro-cell and aren't boucing between towers outside.

Its the nature of the beast with Cell Phones and CDMA tech nothing can be done...Sprint does offer the Airave micro-cell but it needs an Internet connection and the op wanted to use his phone as his main Internet device.....

[Swandaddy]

The 186 ms ping time and 1.6 Mbps speed I'm getting from HTC Evo 4g is much faster than the absolute zero nothing notta I've gotten from RCN for the last week. Except for the half hour their truck was here when somehow it magically worked perfectly. Regular web surfing; the Wimax is acceptable enough; online gaming, major issues right now. Aaaagh!

[MaxDaddy]

I don't think wireless signals can go thru brick and concrete walls of the many buildings downtown. You need a clear view of the sky towards which you are pointing your modem in the direction of the tower. I live in the burbs and have no issues with Clear home service, I love it. I'm in a single-family home; few buildings obstructing the signal here.