OT: Cell phone service providers

[Mord Behar]

On Apr 20, 2014 11:46 AM, "geoffrey mendelson" <geoffreymendelson at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> 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.

The results are combined, both my 5 y/o Nokia candy bar and my wife's brand
new Samsung. My phone had slightly higher problem rates, but not by much.
About what you'd expect from an old phone.

>
> 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).

I set my "watch" (cell phone clock) by the Linux internet time on my
laptop. And that is several minutes ahead of Golan's clock.

>
>
>
>> 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.

Some of my wife's apps updated the time properly, those with hardcoded time
settings. The Android OS which was set to network time did not update.

>
>
>
>> 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.
>
>
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