Part II: Cell-phone reception in Oakland Hills: The good, the bad and the ugly truth

May 27, 7:20 PMOakland Hills ExaminerMichael Libbey

Which carrier wins the prize for best cell-phone coverage in the Oakland Hills?

A single verdict would be preferable, but topographical circumstances require two winners. In our hills and canyons, reception depends heavily on where you’re located in relation to the antennas of your carrier, and no single carrier covers all areas well.

So, after an extensive survey of antenna sites, city planning records and other data, as well as interviews with a knowledgeable cell-phone hobbyist and spokespeople for several major carriers, let’s open the envelopes, please.

Winners:

• On hillcrests or at higher elevations, your best bet is Verizon, based on overall signal quality. But Verizon has serious gaps in the canyons or areas rimmed by hills, so that requires a second winner.

• If you live at or near the bottom of a canyon, your best bet is T-Mobile, which has 16 antennas installed along our major access roads, providing a good signal in many canyon corridors. By sheer volume of local antennas, it’s in first place, though it also has gaps, notably in Piedmont Pines and along upper Broadway Terrace.

• AT&T is a viable second choice to T-Mobile in certain corridors if you happen to live closer to an AT&T antenna site, or if you simply must have the iPhone. I will detail antenna locations later in this series so you can determine which are closest to your calling point.

Also-rans:

• Sprint, which has inconsistent coverage in the hills from scattered antenna sites.

• Metro PCS, which intentionally focuses on central urban areas, though its coverage reaches many parts of the hills. Purely on a low-cost basis, however, Metro PCS is the best value among the Bay Area carriers.

Whether you can place or receive a call depends primarily on proximity to the signal from your carrier’s antennas, just as with FM radio. But signal strength can be affected by several variables, such as whether solid objects rise between you and the antenna, or which frequency band your carrier uses.

Cell-phone companies are highly reluctant to reveal their antenna locations, mainly for competitive reasons and perhaps for security concerns. But subscribers of T-Mobile or AT&T are in luck. A cell-phone hobbyist has identified some 2,700 T-Mobile and AT&T antenna sites in the greater Bay Area and has created a searchable google map.

I’ll link to his web site in the next segment of this series, when I provide more detailed descriptions of each carrier’s strengths, weaknesses and antenna locations.

T-Mobile has gained its advantage by putting antennas along almost all key access corridors - in the Moraga Avenue canyon (photo at right), Broadway Terrace, Park Boulevard, Lincoln Avenue, 35th Avenue/Redwood Road, Snake Road and Shepherd Canyon Road.

AT&T has done a good job on some corridors, such as Shepherd Canyon and Moraga Avenue, but it has gaps on parts of Broadway Terrace and Redwood Road. Until recently, AT&T customers had the ability to roam on the T-Mobile network, due to a joint venture between T-Mobile and Cingular that pre-dated Cingular’s acquisition of AT&T Wireless. That arrangement recently expired in much of the Bay Area, including the Oakland hills, so some AT&T customers may be noticing gaps that didn’t exist before.

Verizon is a different story. Verizon utilizes the 850 MHz frequency band, which has a greater ability to penetrate through walls (though not hills). This provides an edge in reach over T-Mobile and Sprint, which operate at 1900 MHz. Verizon also has a slight edge over AT&T, which is often at 1900 MHz, though sometimes at 850 MHz.

Because of its lower frequency band, Verizon chooses to cover the area from fewer towers with more powerful antennas. Verizon has five towers across the foothills, and also has sites in the flatlands that aim antennas into the hills to supplement coverage. This creates good coverage over the flatlands and hillcrests, but these towers are too far away to feed a strong signal into our canyons and corridors.

As a result, Verizon works fine if you’re on a hilltop, say Broadway Terrace at Pine Needle Drive, where AT&T and T-Mobile are marginal. Conversely, Verizon is marginal on Shepherd Canyon Road, where T-Mobile and AT&T have a big edge because they’ve put antennas on roadside utility poles.

A Verizon network engineer said he is aware of his company’s weak signal along key roads such as Shepherd Canyon. He said Verizon is planning to add antennas, but he couldn’t be specific about locations as yet. (See later story about Verizon antenna upgrades.)

All of the carriers are working to add antennas as fast as their billion-dollar budgets will allow, but they’ve not been aided by City Hall. When carriers propose a cell site, the Oakland City Council has appeared to give more weight to dissenting voices versus the thousands of cell-phone subscribers who benefit from new installations. The scales seem to have balanced more in the past year, however.

This survey also includes Sprint, but Sprint was the least forthcoming in responding to questions about its hills coverage. Conversations with a few customers suggested its coverage trailed the other three. Sprint operates at the 1900 MHz frequency, which has less ability to penetrate, and its antenna sites in the hills are scattered.

In overall coverage across the Bay Area, Verizon has gotten the highest marks for several years. In the January 2009 issue of Consumer Reports, a survey of 51,000 subscribers ranked Verizon highest in 20 of 23 major U.S. metropolitan areas. Rankings were based on “connectivity” – how many times a respondent experienced static, no service, a dropped call or a circuit busy.

In the Bay Area, Verizon was first with a score of 75, followed by T-Mobile at 73, Sprint at 69 and AT&T at 66. On a proportional basis, however, the 51,000 survey respondents represented maybe 2,000 to 3,000 subscribers in the Bay Area, which is not enough to give a full picture, especially for our hilly terrain.

(Photo at right: AT&T antennas on utility pole along Shepherd Canyon Road at Tiffany Lane.)

Several factors go into selecting a carrier, and one priority is location. How important is coverage at home, versus on the way home or where you shop – versus where you work or travel?

If home coverage is top priority, then a simple test would be to check with neighbors to see how well their phones work. Each carrier offers a 30-day trial period, so it’s possible to sign up for service and try it out. If you have another carrier, you can then cancel that service and still “port” or transfer your old number to the new carrier.

If you often travel overseas, Verizon’s CDMA technology is incompatible in most countries. T-Mobile and AT&T utilize GSM technology, which is used in 220 other countries, so they’re a better choice for frequent travelers.

Another factor is getting the coolest phone model. The popular Apple iPhone is simply a must-have for millions of people, but it’s available only from AT&T. If you need a so-called smartphone, BlackBerry and other models are sold by all major carriers and far outsell the iPhone, publicity notwithstanding. Smartphones are often used for downloading web pages or data, but this survey is focused on voice calling, so no attempt was made to evaluate data reception.

The newest development is for those who get a weak signal at home – you can buy an in-home antenna to get four bars of signal on your cell phone. Three carriers have begun to offer this product in recent months. It’s an attractive option if your phone works fine almost everywhere, except at home. You must have a broadband internet connection, which you probably have if you’re reading this article. But it’s not cheap.

These devices are called network extenders or femtocells. Verizon’s is called the Network Extender, while Sprint’s is the Airave. T-Mobile’s @Home operates like WiFi rather than a cell site, and it requires specific phone models. AT&T does not offer this option yet, but may by year-end.

The next segments of this series will detail the antenna locations and weak/strong areas of the four major carriers. First, Verizon, then T-Mobile, then AT&T, and lastly, Sprint.

Finally, we give one more award, for ugliest antenna installation, to the church at Redwood Road and Mountain Boulevard that has numerous antennas hanging at various angles from its steeple. Unlike other churches that do a good job of concealing or disguising antennas, this one stands out like a sore thumb. In this case, it’s thumbs down.

I invite you to share information on weak signal areas. Post comments below.