Re: (NSW) Rail coverage

["Ivan Smith" <ivsmith11@hotmail.com>]

One of the worst black spots on the NSW rail network has to be the Illawarra
Line at Sutherland.

I have tested this on 3 GSM phones on two networks. Ericsson GH688 and 1018s
and Nokia 3210, Telstra and Optus.

Cell towers are directly adjacent to the Station, on the western side (3
panels - I assume it's MobileNet and perhaps Vodafone/Optus).

On MobileNet:

The Ericssons both totally lose signal/network and display "112 Only" or
"Emergency calls only" from Platform 3 on the Eastern side all the way down
the line to Caringbah, unless manually rebooted. Manual network selection
has no effect.

The Nokia will on occasion (the last few days) drop network in the same
place, display a bar "searching" and them comes back on line about the first
road bridge over the line on the way to Kirrawee (Dolans Bay).

The Nokia is superior in this case.

On Optus:

Ericssons both display '112 Only' or "Emergency Calls Only" from Kirrawee to
Jannali with no, or low signal. Strangely though, Optus works well at
Sutherland Station Platform 3 where MobileNet loses out. Rebooting the
phones fixes the problem.

Nokia just hangs on to the signal and displays no problem receiving Optus
anywhere from Miranda to Como and beyond.

Ivan.
"Wollongong Quokka" <quokka@zip.net.au> wrote in message
news:G4ns5.37$x65.8306@news0.optus.net.au...
> John Philips wrote:
> >On Fri, 1 Sep 2000 12:46:00 +1100, "Dave Proctor"
> ><daproc@spambait.ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> >>"John Philips" <ansa999@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> >>news:39ad13a3.28888679@news.dingoblue.net.au...
> >>> I suppose that beats coverage along the line... The number of
> >>> drop-outs I get between Chatswood and Wynyard on Telstra is
> >>> ridiculous.
> >>
> >>Not when you consider the topography of the line. There is also the
little
> >>matter of short tunnels.
> >
> >Yes, admittedly they're hard to cover, however some of the black-spots
> >I encounter really are quite silly - I can't make it across the Bridge
> >without a dropout, for example. Voda has far less black-spots along
> >the way. Can't comment on Optus since I've never tried making a call
> >the whole trip in using an Optus SIM.
>
> I've held calls over the bridge on Optus.  Eastern Suburbs line coverage
> is surprisingly good.  You can't quite make it between Bondi Junction and
> Edgecliff, but most of the time you can hold calls anywhere between
> Edgecliff and Martin Place, tunnels included.  In standby the phone will
> often drop into Network Search along this part of the route, but in use it
> apparently does a better job.
>
> --
> Robs the Sydney Wollongong Quokka
> http://www.zipworld.com.au/~quokka/