01/29/2003 Recently, "XFF" wrote in message news:3E37549F.BFEF482B@austin.rr.com : > I haven't heard of any new EN areas going live lately. Which regions > are supposed to come online next and when? I've seen the 1XRTT indicator go on and off along I-81 in PA north of I-78 (ex Alltell markets?) up to Scranton, however, I am never able to connect and establish a session. This is what happened in Vermont before service was initiated in Vermont over the summer, so perhaps it is in the works in ex-Alltell sections of PA as well. Although some of the Verizon maps don't seem to show this yet, most if not all of the ex-GTE Richmond system seems to be up and running, and 1XRTT worked pretty well all the way down to Newport News and along the US-13 and I-64 Bridge/Tunnel projects. (CDPD is generally decent in all these areas as well so data-wise this isn't any groundbreaking new service ;) ). The Vermont/00300 system actually works all the way up to the Canadian border now; I was able to log in from whatever the little town is just west of the I-91 crossing (it straddles the border and you can more or less walk across the street to Canada/PQ) at a Mobil station on US-5. (This IS new data service; there was never CDPD service in VT and in the Northeast Kingdom area, lacking Nextel's packetsream and Sprint's 1XRTT products, Verizon is the only wireless mobile data service around.) You can now more or less be in continuous data coverage (with resets and drops, though, see below) from Boston to Burlington, VT and north to the Candian border (I-93/I-89), or up to St. Johnsbury all the way to Canada via I-93/I-89/I-91. There is about a 10 mile section of off/on coverage along I-89 in the US Cellular system, but otherwise there is pretty much continuous coverage. Central interior New Hampshire also has decent 1X coverage; a recent trip along NH-104 from Waterville Valley (where regular cellular coverage is great all along NH-49 from I-93 to the Ski areas; an improvement from last year where there was no though coverage between I-93 and Waterville) had respectable 1X coversage all the way to JCT US-4, where all coverage dropped until I-89. On the downside, the Express Network/1XRTT coverage drops/resets (where the session/connection is abruptly terminated and you need to generally close your Express Network client software and re-start the session and then re-establish all of your sessions, such as FTP, telnet, SSH, POP, etc. ) is becoming an increasing problem. These resets do NOT occur where there is poor coverage (indeed, you'll have better luck in keeping a connection in areas with poor coverage than in these "drop" corridors). Verizon in Bedminster seems to want to ignore this; after we reported that there were problems in Staten Island along the west shore and the Outerbridge Crossing we were told "Well, there is a new tower in Westchester, maybe that will help..." (We mentioned a number of areas, some along I-287, but how a new tower in Westchester will address an apparently much more systemic problem I dunno...:( ). I reported about these mainly in the NY/00022 market a few weeks ago, and it's been getting worse, and occuring in other markets as well. I'm working on a list at: www.wirelessnotes.org/verizon-and-express-network-drops which will detail all of the 1XRTT/Express Network drops which we encounter (as well as voice/circuit switched drops in a separate section); any additional areas where readers notice this happening on a *REGULAR* basis please let me know so I/we can test and/or include it on the list. We also list some areas with very decent coverage and good signal stregnth where it is impossible to maintain an Express Network connection for long (I note Perth Amboy, NJ, as an example on the list; more will be added to the list as time/experimentation permit.) > What is VZW's schedule for > providing 1xRTT on their entire network? I've heard 3Q 2003 or 4Q 2003, but I am not sure this will happen. There are *plenty* of areas which are still not even digital, so even if they add 1X to all of their digital markets/market segments there will still be areas of no 1X coverage in Verizon's footprint (unless they digitize these as well). The product needs work; speed is generally not great (better than CDPD for sure), and it's robustness is lacking due to the drops and resets (as compared to CDPD which never has these problems). If I were a police agency or emergency service provider, I'd stay with CDPD (where available) since this technology, IMO, is not fully ready just yet:( . (This post and SID list are also available at http://www.wirelessnotes.org) Regards, Doug d2@interpage.net Interpage(TM) Network Services Inc. / http://www.interpage.net