Rogers Service in Square One

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A number of people have asked me how I can make certain assumptions about the band on which a phone is operating when I test it at Square One. The following photographs show you the Field Test information taken from a Motorola RAZR in various places at the mall. Each demonstrate a different assertion.

Assertion 1: The site inside of the mall does not carry 850 MHz channels (in other words, it is a 1900-only site). The following two photographs were taken sitting at a table in the food court approximately 50 feet away from the indoor site antenna:

The first row contains the serving channel both at idle and during a call. In both cases this was channel 726 with a cell ID of 2847. This is the internal site inside of Square One shopping mall. The second row contains the Neighbor List and the signal strengths of each of those neighbors. The display on the bottom-left is while the phone is at idle and the the display on the bottom-right is during a call.

As you can see, the strongest 850 MHz channel (those in the 100-200 range) is extremely weak compared to the primary signal at 1900 MHz (-64 dBm vs -103 dBm during idle and -73 dBm vs -102 dBm during a call). Clearly there are no 850 MHz signals coming from the indoor site.

Assertion 2: The only voice channels seen at the end of the infamous Hall of Shame are 1900 MHz. The following photographs demonstrate this:

Here we see two different channels (during a call) that are commonly seen in the Hall of Shame. The first is channel 726 from ID 2847, which is the internal site at Square One (seen in the samples from the food court, above). The second is channel 578 from ID 3734. This is the old Fido site at the corner of Duke of York & Burnhamthorpe. During countless tests carried out at many varied locations in the Hall of Shame, these were the ONLY voice channels seen on the RAZR.

Assertion 3: 850 MHz channels are the dominant signals at the southeast corner of the lower level of Sears. The following photographs demonstrate this:

The signals are very weak, but those in the 100 to 200 range are the only ones seen downstairs in Sears.

Each of these 3 assertions is used to make certain assumptions about the types of tests that can be performed on phones that lack Field Test Mode. As all three assertions are true, we can trust the results when I test phones against my 6310i in the Hall of Shame (as only 1900 MHz channels are available there anyway), and we can trust that when I test phones against my Siemens A56, in that both phones are operating at 850 MHz in the lower level Sears.

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