Improving cellphone reception.

[Pixie]

Ok what I was trying to establish is whether they had any line-of-sight to the local village.

If they do, or if they can find some powered site nearby that has any view of the township at all, then I would suggest you forget about cellphones and install a 802.11b/g repeater and build a community wireless access scheme. Now everyone in the area gets telephone, fax, and fast broadband, and for very good price too.

The deciding factor on such a system is getting a solid link to an area that already has ADSL, and that means a line-of-sight link.

Steve

Broadband in Mangawhai is also crap - often as slow as dial-up

[boomer]

Broadband in Mangawhai is also crap - often as slow as dial-up

But DB knows best.. he's a qualified Engineer of EVERYTHING.. renowned world wide... internationally even.

Tony,
Tell them to try telecom, otherwise they have to just use a landline or bush drums...

[FROSTY:Me]

Thanks for the advice guys.
One thing my mum said yesterday was that the location "thingee" on the screen changes all the rime.
As in the cellphone goes nowhere but the location bar can say any one of three locations.

[boomer]

Thanks for the advice guys.
One thing my mum said yesterday was that the location "thingee" on the screen changes all the rime.
As in the cellphone goes nowhere but the location bar can say any one of three locations.

because she's on whats called fringe coverage; her cell phone is switching between cell sites, at least 3, because the signal to those cell sites is not adequate to serve the phone. So they hop, hand over, transfer the phone to another cell site... and so on and so on.

The cell site says, sorry. i cant hear you well enough i'll pass you on to my neighbour.. and this happens continously, hence the change of location on the phone.

give it up mate... get a telskum or a land line

[Dave Lobster]

Which three (PM me)?

The (one) Telecom cell for Mangawhai is in the same place as one of Voda's, so not likely to be of much use.

I'll have a look later to see if the Telecom one has their version of 3G on it.

[Zimsar10]

Thanks for the advice guys.
One thing my mum said yesterday was that the location "thingee" on the screen changes all the rime.
As in the cellphone goes nowhere but the location bar can say any one of three locations.

Never mind a Telecon phone - as I posted on Page 2 - you can - according to the Vodafone coverage maps get "fair" coverage using a 900Mhz UMTS phone - Vodafone call it "Extended 3G".

Here it is again:

Related to your problem - do you know of anyone who has a 900Mhz device that works on Vodafones Extended 3G Network? Also have you checked their coverage maps?

http://www.optimap.co.nz/MapProxy/Ma...addr=Mangawhai, New Zealand

The above indicates you can 2 bar 3G coverage, it takes awhile for the map to load btw.

Also - check their coverage maps here:

http://www.vodafone.co.nz/coverage/