Two semi-success stories

jameswadewilson · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2008 10:21 am Post subject: Two semi-success stories

Here is a long drawn out story of our quest for fast Internet access in the middle of nowhere:

We live in the mountains of North Carolina a little Northeast of Hot Springs, North Carolina: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=35.938197,-82.70216&spn=0.0213,0.030856&t=h&z=15

There is no cable available and the Verizon phone lines have so much noise, hum, and load coils that dialup barely works. Forget about DSL and ISDN! The only wireless (not cellular) is provided in places that already have their choice of cable, DSL, EVDO from two vendors, and different flavors of GSM Internet access.

We don't even have power lines, but use solar and a little hydro power when the area isn't in a drought.

When we first bought our property ten years ago there were just a couple of places where we could get voice service up on a mountain on our property with a bag phone, and then just barely!

About four years ago we ended up with Verizon phones because Cingular didn't work at all. We could make a digital Verizon call with the new phones if we got to the right place on the mountain - not too low, not too high. We got phones that we could plug a yagi andtenna into them and things became a little more reliable. If you could juggle enough you could actually tether a cell phone and get 1xRTT data for a bit of Internet access.

Then US Cellular put a tower in North of Hot Springs on Forest Service land and we could roam from Verizon and get voice most anywhere: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=35.922212,-82.796016&spn=0.010652,0.015428&t=h&z=16 This is about 5 miles away. Now we could get 1xRTT in the old shack with a Yagi and repeater!

Unfortunately the US Cellular 1xRTT is slow and unreliable compared to 1xRTT elsewhere, even when we drove close to the tower and got a great signal. US Cellular is being drug kicking and screaming into data over cell sites. They claim that they are rolling out EVDO now, but don't know when they are going to get around to upgrading the Hot Springs site.

In the last year Verizon started EVDO in the Asheville, NC area. We have learned that the cell site that we were hitting is located at 425 Jake Ln, Marshall, NC 28753 about halfway between West Asheville and Marshall. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=425+Jake+Ln,+Marshall,+NC+28753&sll=35.922212,-82.800179&sspn=0.010652,0.023754&ie=UTF8&ll=35.723068,-82.736835&spn=0.010679,0.015428&t=h&z=16&iwloc=addr This is about 14.5 miles away.

So we can actually get EVDO on 800 Mhz at our property with an antenna on the side of a mountain. Since my brother is building his place on the side of the mountain he stuck a Yagi in the air and connected it to a repeater and gets fairly reliable EVDO. Sometimes he stays connected with Verizon, but drops to 1xRTT occasionally. Sometimes to card (Pantech UM150) switches to the US Cellular site for a truly miserable 1xRTT experience.

I used the Verizon VZ Access Manager last night to switch to EVDO only by hitting Control D, filling in the password field with diagvzw, and changing the settings to HDR (High Data Rate) only from Automatic. We'll see how this works, since the card won't switch to 1xRTT in this mode it should never be tempted by the stronger US Cellular signal.

Our place is in a little bit of a valley with hill to the South, blocking any reception from the Verizon site. The valley opens to the West so we get pretty good US Cellular reception.

I started fiddling around yesterday with my system to see if I could get any EVDO. Oddly enough, when I pointed the yagi antenna South towards the Verizon tower and got an EVDO RSSI of 118 off and on. This can be checked by hitting Control D in the Verizon Access Manager, typing diagvzw as the password, then hitting Field Test. You can see the EVDO section at the bottom part of the window. You can also see if the site is using 1.9 Ghz or 800 Mhz. An EVDO RSSI of 125 seems to indicate absolutely no signal. Anything else you may be able to do something with.

I noticed previously on the Verizon coverage maps that Northwest of us on the Tennessee border that the place is blanketed in EVDO. I swung the antenna to the Northwest and got an EVDO RSSI of 117! I installed an Intelligain SG800 800 Mhz amplifier in line and got an EVDO RSSI of around 104 to 97! Smile

This morning it was at 125 again during a light rain then started coming back again. I have the cell card (another Pantech UM150 from 3G Store) plugged in to a CradlePoint MBR1000 WiFi router (also from 3G Store) so I can't tell what the signal strength is now, but I can wath YouTube videos and use Google Earth now! Speedtest. com reports about 500 kb down and 39 kb up with a latencies between 150 to 250 msec most of the time. Leaving a ping test running (type in 'ping google.com -t' in a command line) reveals that the latencies can occasionally run much higher or even time out, but are good most of the time.

A Skype phone call sounds great now, but nobody was able to hear us. ??? Maybe because of the low upload speed.

I'll keep working with antenna placement and maybe even a small dish if I can figure out how to make a biquad antenna that will do the 800 Mhz band and try to hang in there until US Cellular offers EVDO in this area. At least we can get some work done.

Verizon was of very little help, mostly just telling us that we were not in a service area and so were out of luck. Even so, if we were up on the hill with our Verizon phones the phones would try to hang on to the really weak Verizon signal rather than switch to the much stronger US Cellular signal for voice calls. Complaints about their roaming partner's (US Cellular) poor 1xRTT were dismissed with a, "We can't do anything about that".

US Cellular can't give us a timeline for EVDO rollout for the Rich Mountain cell site.

When I called the 3G Store I was discouraged from trying to get Internet access via cell by the person I talked with and was encouraged to get off the phone as quickly as possible because he had other callers waiting. He also argued with me about EVDO being possible on 800 Mhz! I'm using EVDO on a Yagi cut for 800 Mhz via an 800 Mhz only amplifier and the Verizon software says that I'm using 800 Mhz EVDO. So there! Smile

The Cradlepoint router is nice, but it cannot use external antennas for WiFi without internal modifications and doesn't have the handles and statuses that would be very handy. You cannot see if you are roaming, if you're using EVDO, or even what your signal strength is with the Pantech UM150. You can with the Verizon software, so it is possible.

There is our story so far. Many thanks to 3G Store for this forum and to the many forum users for all of the information that helped us get this far!

Jim_in_VA · Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2008 12:38 pm Post subject:

Good report. Looks like you got a handle on it.
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jkbrigman · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 12 Jun 2008 Posts: 11

Hello JamesWadeWilson;

I'm also a "james" and I'm born and raised in Madison Co. I was in Hot Springs just this summer. Howdy back at ya.

I came to Raleigh from there over 20 years ago to go to NCSU. I had to stay here to find a job. All my family is there and I miss home something fierce. I'm surprised by your success, and I congratulate you on your ability to get a cell signal north of Hot Springs. Few people on the outside know what it's like for you or understand how far "out" you are.

Believe it or not, the lot on which I just built a new house can't be served with cable, dsl, or satellite. I eventually went with EVDO and my story is the "Falling off the grid...." one.

So here I am, practially in the "middle of it all" and I'm using an Alltel KPC680 EVDO expresscard and a Cradlepoint CTR500. (formerly a KR-1 EVDO router which didn't work worth a flip)

I'm getting good EVDO here and it's ALMOST as good as cable. I'm employed in the tech industry, so not having internet is "no option" for me.

By the way: what are you doing for TV? I've got two of the coupon-eligible digital tv tuners and am receiving OTA digital SD and HD television instead of cable. Picture is far superior to cable and it's FREE.

You can reach me at jkbrigman--atsign--yahoo.com.

JKB