OT: Cell phone service providers

[geoffrey mendelson]

On 4/20/2014 10:29 AM, Mord Behar wrote:
>
> After two months on Golan, my results are as follows:
> About 1 in 3 calls has a "problem". A problem is either garbled audio, 
> a lack of connection or a disconnect. There seems to be no correlation 
> between problems and the carrier at the other end. Obviously garbled 
> audio is more common than disconnects. The ratio is approximately 1:7.
>
Sounds to me like your phone. Several people with really cheap phones 
have had much better luck with new ones. For example, the really cheap 
samsung phones replaced with cheap (250 NIS or less) Nokia, or in one 
case a used Crackberry. I do get an occasional disconnect.

I have lost communication completely about 4 times in the last 2 or 3 
months. I rebooted my candy bar type phone and it was fine.

> Text messages are unreliable. I receive them 3-4 minutes before they 
> are sent (the timestamp from the server) and they often (unfortunately 
> I have no numbers for this) take several hours to arrive.
>

I have my computer which has a USB dongle connected to Asterisk send me 
an SMS at 6:59 every morning (except shabbat). You can set your watch to 
it,  it arrives at about 6:59:05. everyday. (both computer and phone on 
Golan).


> The cellular internet is noticeably slower than our previous provider 
> (Pelephone) and coverage is worse.
>
No idea. My family and friends with it have no noticable problems, 
except in the corner of our apartment which has no radio coverage at 
all. It's hidden behind a mountain, and even a cell-com cell, less than 
100m away is "spotty". My sons use it on their android phones all over 
Jerusalem, and my wife with an iPad. Except for my candy bar phone, 
which I carry as a "medic alert" button, all of our phones are 3g capable.

I have a friend who lives in a dungeon, a one room apartment below 
ground with a small window. The kind where there was some empty space 
next to the miklat, so the owner put in pumbling, lights, and a small 
kitchen and calls it a "studio" apartment. Almost no cellular coverage 
and no land line, so I bought her a Huwai USB modem stick with an 
antenna socket, and she has a cellular antenna out her window for data 
use. For voice, her phone works ok near the window. When she is not home 
she leaves the antenna but takes the modem along with her computer.


> The network time does not work. At all. Not even a little bit. Neither 
> my Nokia candybar nor my wife's Samsung II s2 updated the DST.
>

Funny (as in strange). Not only did I get a note about the time change 
via SMS from Golan, it works fine. My Nokia candybar updated 
automatically. If I take the battery out it will default to some very 
old time, and then in about a minute come up to the correct time.


> In summary: you get what you pay for. The 10 NIS a month plan is great 
> for me, since my phone doesn't really do internet. For that price I'm 
> willing to accept service problems. The 60 NIS plan for my wife is 
> borderline okay. If the service gets a little bit worse we'll need to 
> reevaluate.
>

Note that I am in Jerusalem and we are always within two kilometers of a 
Golan cell. My candybar phone is 2g only and connects via cell-com.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson 4X1GM/N3OWJ
Jerusalem Israel.