Part VI: Cell-phone reception in the Oakland Hills: The inside story on Sprint

June 4, 5:08 PMOakland Hills ExaminerMichael Libbey

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Sprint is an also-ran in our six-part review of cell-phone reception in the Oakland Hills, and unlike T-Mobile, it is losing ground to the largest competitors, Verizon and AT&T.

Verizon and T-Mobile are co-winners of this review, and they also ranked first and second in a recent Consumer Reports survey of Bay Area coverage. Sprint ranked third; AT&T fourth. Although Sprint has a few strengths noted below, it has too many gaps in the hills to compete overall with the others.

Like most other carriers, Sprint’s web site has a coverage map that is less than forthcoming about its weaknesses. The “Coverage Tool” shows color gradations for best, good and fair coverage, but my tests of Sprint signals indicate that many areas labeled ‘fair’ probably get borderline service or none at all, especially inside a house.

Sprint and T-Mobile employ the 1900 MHz frequency band, which needs more antennas to cover a given area compared with the 850MHz band, which is used by Verizon and mostly by AT&T. But Sprint hasn’t kept up with T-Mobile in the antenna race.

To be fair, some of Sprint’s weak areas mirror the other carriers because of our difficult terrain. An example would be the slopes between upper Broadway Terrace and Snake Road, where all carriers are spotty.

In addition to that area, Sprint’s weaknesses include:

• Lower Broadway Terrace near Clarewood Drive;

• Moraga Canyon;

• Portions of central Piedmont;

• The upper reaches of Shepherd Canyon Road;

• Pockets along Skyline Boulevard.

• The hills stretching southeast from upper Keller Avenue past Golf Links Road to the San Leandro border.

Sprint has one strength that others do not – Thornhill Drive. Its antenna sites include:

• Thornhill Drive: near the 7-Eleven at Grisborne Avenue; near the Thornhill Nursery at BeauForest Drive;

• Highway 13 area: Mountain Boulevard at Snake Road; Mountain Boulevard near Joaquin Miller Road; the church steeple at Mountain Boulevard and Redwood Road (photo at right); Junction with I-580;

• Grand/Lakeshore: an apartment atop Warfield Avenue hill;

• Interstate 580 area: Keller Avenue at the Sequoyah Community Church; 3700 Dorisa Ave. near Golf Links Road.

Sprint was the least forthcoming in discussing its service, saying information about sites was “proprietary” and “can’t be shared for competitive reasons.” This made it more difficult to identify all Sprint sites. None of the other carriers took that position.

For world travelers, Sprint is less suitable than T-Mobile and AT&T, which employ the GSM technology used in 220 countries. The nearest Sprint PCS store is downtown at 1221 Broadway. An Emeryville store is at Powell Street Plaza.