VanguardLH wrote:

> Personally I have to wonder why micky is going off onto trails to go
> hiking, but has his cell phone on. Isn't the point of venturing into
> wilderness to get away from the din of civilization, not to have a phone
> making noise and interrupting the experience?

I think micky made it clear the point is 911 _emergency_ communications.

But even outside an emergency, there's nothing wrong with sending updates to
your parents, your grandparents, your children, your mom, your aunt, etc.

Look at this thread which shows a perfectly valid use of a cellphone,
although, this perfect apropos usage doesn't require "cellular" signal.
*Using a cell phone for navigation & bearings during backcountry hiking*
<https://groups.google.com/g/alt.comp.microsoft.windows/c/5c_iaS01eHM>
> Oh yes, there's the emergency feature of a phone to call when you need
> help. Um, handholding you in the wilderness takes away from the risk of
> you going there. What would be the point of bungie jumping if there
> were a quater-mile square 100-ft high air pad below? If he really is
> enjoying wilderness, and he is turning off his phone to use only for
> emergencies (especially since the phone's battery is crucial for that
> intended emergency-only use, not to blather to friends or family), why
> would he need an app to tell him when he's out of tower range while his
> phone is off?

While some of the above may be tongue-in-cheek chastising micky, I will say
that my battery on my free Android phone is a whopping 5 amp hours, which,
let's be frank, lasts forever even with the radios running full time.

> When we go camping, and if any kids are attending, we say before leaving
> that they either agree to keep their phones off their during the entire
> trip, leave them at home, or they stay home. The only noise I want to
> hear when camping or hiking are the birds screaming to wake me before
> the sun rises. I don't even want the people on the trip talking since
> the point is to be in nature, not yakking away which can be done back
> home.

That's fine but micky was asking about _emergency_ coverage, and not about a
staid quiet simple family camping trip where the worst thing that happens is
you get bitten by a mosquito.

I, for one, hike with climbing gear and clippers, where there is no way to
hike out here without ending up in a steep ravine, where you then have to
climb back out.

It's not the same thing as a picnic table tentsite campout for sure.

> Just imagine how stupid it would be to go a scuba trip to suffer the
> boobs that managed to use their phones underwater. Gee, how was the
> trip? Oh, so-and-so texted me about their cat having kittens. Um, what
> did that have to do with the scuba trip? Oh, I saw videos of the
> Ukraine invasion. Um, did you see anything of the ocean when diving?

I think the most fantastic use of a smartphone while hiking is
a. It's fantastic for photos (and for communicating them to others)
b. It's fantastic for navigation (and for identifying stellar objects)
c. It's fantastic for plant & animal & sound identification
etc.

Here's a screenshot of just my backcountry "nature" folder, by way of
example, where you can see a compass, a bearing indicator, various geoPDF
apps, starmaps, heading calculators, gps-to-sms emergency apps, mushroom
identifier, bird sound identifier, plant identifiers, etc.
<https://i.postimg.cc/Y0MZd55k/nature01.jpg>
--
The job of a Usenet post is to add useful value each time we communicate.

nospam wrote:

>> Right, of course not. More generally, you can't make *any kind* of
>> cell phone call if there is no cell service by any carrier.
>
> you can via wifi calling, which is intended for areas with weak or no
> cell coverage.
>
> voip apps can be used on smartphones, also via wifi.

*As with Mayayana and Vanguard, what Ken Blake said was just dead wrong*.

In this case, nospam is correct, although there is already a recent thread
in exactly which VOIP situations allow 911 calls in the USA and under what
conditions, so I'll just say that Ken Blake was simply ignorant of that.

It's amazing actually, how such people are so ignorant, and yet, people like
Ken Blake, Vanguard, and Mayayana are so very _confident_ in their
ignorance.
--
All of them are clearly to the left of the first quartile in DK, which means
they are supremely ignorant and yet supremely confident in their ignorance.

On 3/4/2022 8:22 AM, VanguardLH wrote:

<snip>

> Nice you decided to pay an actual carrier for cellular service, and that
> carrier gave you a repeater (booster) and femtocell for free. That's
> not true in many cases.

Well IMVAIO it's not that smart to intentionally choose a carrier which
doesn't have actual coverage at your home in the first place, especially
when other carriers do have coverage!

In the area where "Andy/Dean/Arlen/etc" lives, he could have chosen a
carrier where a micro-cell is completely unnecessary. And of course, as
I pointed out, a micro-cell is even less necessary these days since
every carrier, including most MVNOs, offer Wi-Fi calling. You're doing
VOIP with a micro-cell connected to your broadband just like you're
doing VOIP with Wi-Fi calling.

> When did this mutate into a discussion about cellular coverage at home?
> Micky "lives" on the trails he treks? How is micky going to use a
> booster or femtocell on the trails? What you have available, and what
> you got for free, depends on to whom you are a customer, and what you
> have at home is irrelevant to the discussion of cellular coverage for
> micky on the wilderness trails.

Not sure, since I have our favorite troll filtered out, but actually,
with Wi-Fi calling, coverage at home is of little importance in general,
unless you're using mobile broadband in which case it matters a lot. At
home your phone will connect via Wi-Fi if there is no cellular signal,
even without a micro-cell.

I've seen the narrative of "my carrier's poor coverage doesn't matter
because in an emergency I can still call 911 no matter what." I don't
think that it's a very valid narrative since there are often urgent
calls that are not necessarily an emergency but still pretty important.

The important thing when choosing a carrier is to check coverage on the
FCC web site
<https://fcc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=6c1b2e73d9d749cdb7bc88a0d1bdd25b>
so you know the _native_ coverage you can expect.

You can also use the Whistleout web site
<https://www.whistleout.com/CellPhones/Guides/Coverage> if you want to
see where 5G coverage exists, but remember that 4G is a superset of 5G,
there are no places with only 5G coverage. The Santa Cruz Mountains,
near me, is one place I compared 4G and 5G on T-Mobile, Verizon, and
AT&T, see <https://i.imgur.com/sigt8Xg.png>. I point this out only
because I recall in the past someone was upset that the FCC web site
only shows 4G coverage and they insisted that this was unfair to
T-Mobile, but that person's narrative had no validity.

R.Wieser wrote:

> I've seen a story of a restaurant which used such a jammer so their
> coming-in-together guests would actually talk to each other and enjoy their
> meals. They where found out as the jamming spilled over (far) outside the
> establishment.

Addressing Rudy's point about restaurants jamming gsm, I'm not sure that
jamming cellular frequencies would be considered legal, but since this is a
technical newsgroup, I'll try to add value to his tangent by suggesting apps
which can detect anomalies such as IMSI catchers and radio jammers perhaps.

Rudy brings up a point that micky and others can run an app that logs into a
file the signal strength of all the accessible towers where it would report
any anomaly that may occur when signal strength suddently changes greatly.
*NetMonster* by Michal Mrocek, 1M+, 4.3, free, ad-free, google-free, FOSS
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.mroczis.netmonster>

Also to Rudy's point of "fake cell towers", I tested all free IMSI catchers
at one point (along with hidden-camera detector apps), some of which are:
<https://play.google.com/store/search?q=imsi+catcher>

I don't know how you'd detect jamming, but I suspect your graphical wi-fi
apps would all of a sudden have fantastic signal strength perhaps.
*Cellular-Z* by Jersey-Ho, 100K+, 4.0, free, ad-free, google free, etc.
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=make.more.r2d2.cellular_z>

If you suspect an IMSI catcher, you can see if snoopsnitch alerts you first:
*SnoopSnitch* by Security Research Labs, 500K+, 3.9, free, ad-free, etc.
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.srlabs.snoopsnitch>
But it hasn't ever detected any (but maybe they just aren't where I am).

If others know more than I do on the tangent Rudy brought up, let us know
since Usenet is a team sport where good people try to help others learn.
--
Usenet is an assemblage of purposefully helpful people teaching each other.

R.Wieser wrote:

> But for a GSM tower to "never reject" such a number it ofcourse has to be
> able to receive the phones signal. When it can't ...

Which requires a few things, perhaps the most important being:
a. If the tower doesn't have 3G and the phone is only 3G, it won't work
(I would think - but see my question below please)
b. If the signal isn't of sufficient quality, mostly signal strength too
(You need roughly around about -115dBm just to make the connection.)

My question to the group came up while I was answering Vanguard, which is
what are the implications of 3G service dropping in terms of micky's
question?
--
Every Usenet post should strive to add value in the body (not the headers).

sms wrote:

> Not sure, since I have our favorite troll filtered out,

Stop your childish troll crap Steve.
Just stop it.

You lied in this thread.
And you call me a troll?

Act like an adult, if you can, Steve.
a. I get it you _hate_ that I showed you lied for years about FCC maps.
b. I get it you _hate_ me for showing you to be a liar and a fool.

And yet you _lied_ about that coverage yet again in this very thread!
Regardless, I'm not trolling, and, in fact _you_ are being the troll here.

I posted _plenty_ of detailed relevant facts to this thread Steve.
You posted lies using FCC calculated maps which don't say what you claim.

You get paid by Verizon for heavens sake, Steve.
And you don't _tell_ everyone that?

You don't even pay for a Verizon cellular service, Steve.
And yet you shill for them, day after day, year after year.

And you call _me_ the troll?
Stop it.

Grow up.
--
I don't mind ignorant people like Steve existing, but for them to get paid
by Verizon to shill for Verizon at the expense of the truth bothers me.

On 2022-03-04 16:29, VanguardLH wrote:
> Mayayana wrote:
>
>> "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote
>>
>> micky wrote:
>> |> Please settle an argument I have with a friend. She wouldn't take my
>> |> word for it. I went hiking today, short hike, off road, away from
>> |> cities and towns, sometimes no cell service** even on parts of the
>> |> highway leadintg to the hike,, and there was no cellular service on the
>> |> trail.
>> |>
>> |> My friend insists you can still make emergency phone calls. I keep
>> |> telling her, only if there is cellular servie on an cell company you
>> |> don't subscribe to, or if you have no sim card at all. She pauses and
>> |> thinks, and then doesn't believe me. But if you all vote, she'll
>> |> believe you.
>> |
>> | There has to be coverage from at least one company. If no company has
>> | any coverage, you are stuck, isolated.
>>
>> That's what he's talking about. No coverage is common in the US. I
>> have a brother in New Hampshire who has no cell service from home.
>> Urban geeks believe the world lives by cellphone, but the carriers
>> have no interest in putting up towers in areas of low population
>> density.
>>
>> I'm guessing Micky's friend is just one of those ninnies who wears a
>> helmet to go hiking and feels confident that safety services are
>> always at hand. Surely, wilderness is illegal? This is the 21st
>> century!
>
> Personally I have to wonder why micky is going off onto trails to go
> hiking, but has his cell phone on. Isn't the point of venturing into
> wilderness to get away from the din of civilization, not to have a phone
> making noise and interrupting the experience?

No :-)

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 3/4/2022 7:29 AM, VanguardLH wrote:

<snip>

> Personally I have to wonder why micky is going off onto trails to go
> hiking, but has his cell phone on. Isn't the point of venturing into
> wilderness to get away from the din of civilization, not to have a phone
> making noise and interrupting the experience?

Yes and no.

It's often nice to have coverage for a multitude of reasons even if
you're not involved in a gabfest. And most hikes are not "in the
wilderness."

• Downloading trail maps, especially in areas you're unfamiliar with.
• Finding other hikers in your party if you get separated
• Contacting emergency services if you, or someone you come across,
needs help.
• Keeping track of the distance you're traveling and the number of steps
• Finding the trailhead in the first place, though with offline mapping
you can still do this.

One week a month my wife is on-call and needs to be reachable 24/7. We
can still go hiking even on those days but she has to be in an area with
coverage. Fortunately her employer provides her with an iPhone on
Verizon so it would be rare for her not to have coverage in the areas we
hike.

On Fri, 4 Mar 2022 09:29:25 -0600, VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:

>Mayayana wrote:
>
>> "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote
>>
>> micky wrote:
>>|> Please settle an argument I have with a friend. She wouldn't take my
>>|> word for it. I went hiking today, short hike, off road, away from
>>|> cities and towns, sometimes no cell service** even on parts of the
>>|> highway leadintg to the hike,, and there was no cellular service on the
>>|> trail.
>>|>
>>|> My friend insists you can still make emergency phone calls. I keep
>>|> telling her, only if there is cellular servie on an cell company you
>>|> don't subscribe to, or if you have no sim card at all. She pauses and
>>|> thinks, and then doesn't believe me. But if you all vote, she'll
>>|> believe you.
>>|
>>| There has to be coverage from at least one company. If no company has
>>| any coverage, you are stuck, isolated.
>>
>> That's what he's talking about. No coverage is common in the US. I
>> have a brother in New Hampshire who has no cell service from home.
>> Urban geeks believe the world lives by cellphone, but the carriers
>> have no interest in putting up towers in areas of low population
>> density.
>>
>> I'm guessing Micky's friend is just one of those ninnies who wears a
>> helmet to go hiking and feels confident that safety services are
>> always at hand. Surely, wilderness is illegal? This is the 21st
>> century!
>
>Personally I have to wonder why micky is going off onto trails to go
>hiking, but has his cell phone on. Isn't the point of venturing into
>wilderness to get away from the din of civilization, not to have a phone
>making noise and interrupting the experience?

Perhaps that's the point for some people, but certainly not for
everyone.
--
The real, original Ken Blake, not some other newcomer

In article <svtrh0$jni$1@dont-email.me>, sms
<scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:

> Well IMVAIO it's not that smart to intentionally choose a carrier which
> doesn't have actual coverage at your home in the first place, especially
> when other carriers do have coverage!

different people have different needs, a concept you do not understand.
some people are not interested in cell coverage at home, where they
have a landline. others have ditched their landline and use their cell
for everything. some use a mix of both.

>
> The important thing when choosing a carrier is to check coverage on the
> FCC web site

maps are well known to be wrong.

the best way is talk to people who live and work in the areas where you
plan to use the phone.

some carriers offer trial periods, which is also an option.

Andy Burnelli wrote:

> That's fine but micky was asking about _emergency_ coverage, and not
> about a staid quiet simple family camping trip where the worst thing
> that happens is you get bitten by a mosquito.

Remember micky noted an app that made noise to alert him when he was no
longer in reach of a cell tower. He is leaving on his phone during his
entire hike, not powering it up when he has an emergency.

sms wrote:

> Contacting emergency services if you, or someone you come across,
> needs help.

Every app I suggest on this ng is almost always going to be free, ad free,
login free, often gsf free & almost always works offline, just so you know.
[It takes more effort but any idiot can suggest an app with ads and login
requirements but it takes intelligence to find the best apps that don't.]

To add value to what Steve kindly noted for smartphone usefulness hiking,
let's say while you were moseying along, you run across an injured person.

Instantly, you need to know an accurate coordinate location which apps like
this GPS-to-SMS app are designed to do for you at a single button tap.
*GPS to SMS - location sharing* by Tralchonok Labs, 100K+, 3.6, free
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.perm.trubnikov.gps2sms>

> Downloading trail maps, especially in areas you're unfamiliar with.

To add value to what Steve kindly noted for downloading useful park maps,
what's _extremely_ useful is to download a PDF (even better, a geoPDF) of
the local park you're hiking in, as it may have more detail than the USGS
topographic geoPdfs, and that gives you the ability to use _that_ park map
with your GPS navigation on your phone (if you use the right apps).
*Avenza Maps: Offline Mapping* by Avenza, 4.7, free but limited to 3 maps
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Avenza>

*Paper Maps* by Abbro, 5K+, 2.8, free ad free & unlimited number of maps
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.abbro.androidmap>

You can even draw your own track on a geoPDF and your navigation software
will let you know at all times where you are in relation to the track.
*All-In-One Offline Maps* by Psyberia
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.psyberia.offlinemaps>

> Finding the trailhead in the first place, though with offline mapping
> you can still do this.

To add value to what Steve kindly noted for finding old trailheads,
what's really neat is downloading _historical_ geoPDFs from the USGS, which
will show you where you are in relation to long lost cities & trails.

For example, in the Santa Cruz mountains is a reservoir over an old town
from the 1940s, where you can tell where you are on the water with this.

Or you can find the old location of silver mines and cinnabar mines by
loading a geological USGS 1:24K topographic map (they're always free).
<https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/>

> Finding other hikers in your party if you get separated

To add value to what Steve kindly noted for finding the rest of the group,
one way to do that _without_ having to log into anything is the GPS-to-SMS
app listed above where you simply create a group and schedule periodic
sending of the messages (or send them ad hoc) of your location.

I don't use these but there are plenty of friend-location apps such as:
*Whizz (SMS Locator)* by Green Machines
<https://whizzap.wixsite.com/whizz/downloads>
Note the Google Play app is just a placeholder.
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.greenmachines.way.whereareyou>

> Keeping track of the distance you're traveling and the number of steps

To add value to what Steve kindly noted for step counting & profiles,
I tested most of the free pedometer apps where very few had the privacy you
need which is required for all apps (if they need a login, they're no good).

The best one I found is from the privacy team at Secuso, which is this one:
*Pedometer (Privacy Friendly)* by SECUSO Research Group
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secuso.privacyfriendlyactivitytracker>

> One week a month my wife is on-call and needs to be reachable 24/7. We
> can still go hiking even on those days but she has to be in an area with
> coverage. Fortunately her employer provides her with an iPhone on
> Verizon so it would be rare for her not to have coverage in the areas we
> hike.

To add value to what Steve kindly noted for local coverage, there are
crowd-sourced cellular coverage map apps, but I don't use these apps myself:
*Coverage Map* by RootMetrics
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rootmetrics>
--
The job of a Usenet post is to add useful value each time we communicate.

VanguardLH wrote:

>> That's fine but micky was asking about _emergency_ coverage, and not
>> about a staid quiet simple family camping trip where the worst thing
>> that happens is you get bitten by a mosquito.
>
> Remember micky noted an app that made noise to alert him when he was no
> longer in reach of a cell tower. He is leaving on his phone during his
> entire hike, not powering it up when he has an emergency.

Vanguard,
Remember?
WTF?

Of course I remember.
Don't you remember what happened?

No?
Really?

Well, I do.

BTW, I'm completely different from most people on this newsgroup.
a. I'm intelligent and purposefully helpful & I have a kind heart
b. Yet, I can't stand the morons who abound, and the trolls
c. Even so, I provide _tremendous_ value to this group in many ways.
As do some others, such as Andy Burns and even Frank at times.

Regarding your sadly hilarious question of whether I remember...

I'm the guy who _suggested_ that alert app to micky in the first place.
You don't remember that?

Here is the thread. Read it _before_ you reply, and when I say read it, I
mean read it (as the iKooks always deny all facts without even reading it).
*An app to tell me when I'm entering the no-signal-zone*
<https://groups.google.com/g/comp.mobile.android/c/mi80JxUj1x0/m/JLX8U9pdAwAJ>

I spent _hours_ on those tests for micky, which I suspect nobody but Steve
spent any time on (certainly not the trolls like Frank, Carlos & Joerg).

I tested about a dozen apps for micky in that thread, in fact.
<https://i.postimg.cc/Njw312j1/lostsignal01.jpg> Testing alert apps

And I settled on the one app that I suggested for him that day.
<https://i.postimg.cc/x1Y5Tv6L/lostsignal02.jpg> Play Store client ratings

When he originally asked, people _tried_ to answer for days.
I felt sorry for him that everyone was giving him the wrong answers.

Just as they did here.
Most people, you have to remember, are incredibly ignorant.

So I dug into it and found out why people were having problems.
It wasn't easy to find a good free ad free app that claimed to do the job.

As you must be aware, especially when the keywords are generic, it takes
knowledge, skill, perseverance, etc., to find a 'good' app, where we can
define good first and foremost that it does the job, but then it has to do a
lot more (like not be obnoxious, not scoop your data, etc.).

The app that micky and Steve and I tested isn't perfect, but it's "OK" in so
much as it doesn't have a minimum decibel setting, which would be ideal.
<https://i.postimg.cc/8zRjbV12/lostsignal03.jpg> Custom verbal alert

I even wrote up a separate tutorial to help people set _custom_ alerts.
a. They type what they want the alert to say
b. And then save that audible alert _directly_ to a wav file
c. And then they set the app to use that custom speech as its alert

To Steve's credit, Steve tested that app using a home made Faraday cage.
It worked for Steve, but it didn't work for micky.
I haven't run out of cell coverage in days so I haven't tested it much.

In summary, stop insulting my intelligence by you being clueless and
therefore by you trying to tell me I don't remember what I spent hours on
just a few days ago for micky.

I own a kind and purposefully helpful heart, but all you remember are my
responses to the many worthless pieces of shit childish iKooks & trolls.

Look for the value of the gift instead of the pretty wrapping paper.
--
Usenet should consist of courteous kind-hearted people helping each other.

"VanguardLH" <V@nguard.LH> wrote

| Personally I have to wonder why micky is going off onto trails to go
| hiking, but has his cell phone on. Isn't the point of venturing into
| wilderness to get away from the din of civilization, not to have a phone
| making noise and interrupting the experience?
|

I'm with you. I see so many people who are just never where
they are. It must be very numbing. But maybe that's why they
want service: They can just no longer imagine life without that
contact. Some younger people have never truly been alone.

There was a sad story a few years ago. A CNet tech worker,
26 I think, went camping with his wife and 2 or 3 kids. They
drove 25 miles up a logging road in California and got stuck on
ice, unable to get out. No cell service. They sat there for 2 or 3
days, burning tires to stay warm. Finally the young man wandered
off into the woods to look for help. He was found dead of exhaustion.
The rest were eventually saved.

They could have walked out of there in maybe 8 hours. They
should have had camping supplies to last several days. There
must have been something they could have done to free the car.
But this was a geek with little experience of physicality, much less
camping.

"VanguardLH" <V@nguard.LH> wrote

| Either you intended to diverge the discussion to what may be available
| and usable at home (free or not), or you forgot the focus of the
| discussion of micky's predicament. Seems you were more interested in
| your stalking of Mayayana.

He's mad because I ignore or block his posts. I do
find it interesting, though... this usage of "racist".
It's a strong accusation, yet it's become synonymous
with "jerk": "You don't like apples? What a racist!"

.... This is all just too triggering for me. :)

"sms" <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote
| | While there certainly are rural areas of New Hampshire with "no
| coverage" it's not quite accurate to call it "common."
| | Look at the FCC maps of coverage at
|
<https://fcc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=6c1b2e73d9d749cdb7bc88a0d1bdd25b>.
| | I captured the maps for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, see
| <https://i.imgur.com/PmHNPYb.png>.

They may claim that. It's not necessarily true. There's
also an area of VT I know of with no service. If you can't
expect to be able to use a cellphone then it doesn't much
matter if the carriers claim you can. I imagine part of the
issue might be the mountains, but I really don't know.

The point being that it's not so unusual in rural areas for
people to have no service. Micky's friend apparently thought
that was impossible. I actually know someone in an urban
apt building -- brick exterior and metal lathe interior
walls -- who only gets a signal in certain areas of his apt.

In article <svu6qp$cnl$1@dont-email.me>, Mayayana
<mayayana@invalid.nospam> wrote:

> The point being that it's not so unusual in rural areas for
> people to have no service. Micky's friend apparently thought
> that was impossible. I actually know someone in an urban
> apt building -- brick exterior and metal lathe interior
> walls -- who only gets a signal in certain areas of his apt.

carriers offer femtocells for that purpose.

some commercial buildings also install femto and picocells if coverage
is weak to non-existent.

sms wrote:

> Mayayana wrote:
>
>> That's what he's talking about. No coverage is common
>> in the US. I have a brother in New Hampshire who has no
>> cell service from home. Urban geeks believe the world lives
>> by cellphone, but the carriers have no interest in putting up
>> towers in areas of low population density.
>
> While there certainly are rural areas of New Hampshire with "no
> coverage" it's not quite accurate to call it "common."
>
> Look at the FCC maps of coverage at
> <https://fcc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=6c1b2e73d9d749cdb7bc88a0d1bdd25b>.

The first FCC map doesn't show cell coverage at all. It's just a map of
locations, not cell signal strength and by which carriers. The initial
overlay page says "This mapping tool is provided to assist in viewing 4G
LTE coverage". You click OK to get past the popup overlay page, and
nothing on the map that shows coverage no matter how much you zoom in.
There is no overlay I could add to include cell coverage. Presumably
you were able to get cell coverage (also presumably by different
carriers as denoted by the different colors) using the FCC map for your
screen capture. I couldn't get this map to show cell coverage.

As for coverage maps by the carriers, those are so inaccurate as to be
near lies. They make it look like there's great coverage in most areas,
but that's not true when actually measured.

The coverage maps by the carriers are not only worthless but misleading.
They'll show an area as red (high coverage), but actual testing shows
there are many dead spots in their professed high coverage areas, and
many dead spots are not small. Every carrier and their coverage map
show that I am in a red (high) coverage area. WRONG! At my mother's
house, I could even go outside, but signal strength there was still poor
making the choice of a cell phone a poor one to replace a landline, and
her house is in a very populated northeast area of a metropolis of
500,000 (another 300,000 in a neighboring adjacent city, and 3.4 million
in the "greater metropolitan" area which includes the adjacent suburbs).
The reason they won't zoom in beyond some magnification is that it
becomes obvious that they are averaging the coverage across overly large
areas. Zoom in too far, and if their maps were accurate, you'd see
there are lots of areas they haven't actually measured, or are
deliberately omitting.

There are apps that provide community reporting of cell strength as the
users move around. Their results are uploaded to provide more realistic
cell coverage data. OpenSignal is one of them. That shows I'm in a
dead zone that is about 3 city-blocks in radius. There are lots of
similarly-sized, or even bigger, dead spots in those so-called high
coverage maps by the carriers, and this is FAR from arguing about what
happens out in the rural areas or hicks. User data is uploaded at a
rate of 100 reports per day, but if a user mostly sits in one place,
like at home, then most of their reports is just for one spot. Really
only helps if the volunteers move around a lot during the day, even if
only around their neighborhood, to reflect more accurately what is
getting measured for signal strength in and around those areas.

Carriers tell me that I'm in a great area for signal strength. Their
maps say so, too. There is what they claim. There is what is true.

Pretty hard to determine what is "common" for all cell phone users. The
carriers are lying, or, at least, misleading by showing coverage across
overly large expanses. The OS app shows even in Boston there are dead
spots as reported by users. As I move the OpenSignal map more north
(without changing the zoom level) to hit New Hamsphire, Vermont, and
Maine, the number of dead or poor spots increases - but, alas, so does
the density of user reports.

> What people in some rural areas do, if they have broadband service, is
> to install a micro-cell in their house. Of course this is less
> necessary than in the past since most every carrier and MVNO provides
> Wi-Fi calling. I told my neighbor, who is on T-Mobile, to install a
> micro-cell and that T-Mobile would provide, see
> <https://www.t-mobile.com/support/coverage/4g-lte-cellspot>. But
> instead he's changing to a Verizon MVNO.

I had considered getting a booster, but there was the expense and labor
to install a tall antenna to make it worth the effort and cost. My
cellular provider is an MVNO, so no free femtocell available (not even a
paid one). Wifi calling to the rescue, but none of which is a choice
for micky on the trails.

Hmm, satellite phones are still doable, but fall outside the free 911
calls possible with cell phones. Satellite phones require a service
plan; e.g., https://satellitephonestore.com/isatphone-pro-service (more
at https://satellitephonestore.com/services/satelliteService).
Considering what folks are paying monthly for cellular service, doesn't
look like satellite service is much different in price - until you look
at the quotas regarding usage (minutes/month). Wonder why they are
illegal in some areas.

If I were in out-of-coverage areas a lot, like I went hiking, fishing,
camping, hunting, and exploring, where there was little or no cell
coverage, and I did those activities a lot, a satellite phone makes more
sense if you feel the need to tie yourself to civilization while
supposedly getting away from it, or if you feel compelled to have
emergency services contact - bbut if you're in the Northwest
Territories, how long will it take for help to arrive, and if it really
were an emergency would you still be alive when they arrived?

Mayayana wrote:

> There was a sad story a few years ago. A CNet tech worker,
> 26 I think, went camping with his wife and 2 or 3 kids. They
> drove 25 miles up a logging road in California and got stuck on
> ice, unable to get out. No cell service. They sat there for 2 or 3
> days, burning tires to stay warm. Finally the young man wandered
> off into the woods to look for help. He was found dead of exhaustion.
> The rest were eventually saved.

Oh Jesus. Where do I start?

People like Mayayana are dangerous not because they're ignorant and racist,
but because they are too stupid to realize they are as stupid as they are.

*Almost every single statement in Mayayana's post is patently dead wrong.*
a. He wasn't camping - he was just driving home after Thanksgiving
b. He wasn't found dead of exhaustion - it was hypothermia
c. They simply missed a turnoff and decided to follow a secondary road
etc.

Note there was no incompetence in terms of camping.
No lack of preparation in terms of camping.

*Everything Mayayana thinks he _fabricated_ for his own sick purposes.*

The entire _point_ is that people like Mayayana do not own adult cognition.
That's _why_ they are avowed racists.

They take the fact that they were stuck in the snow, and then this avowed
racist manufactures an entire story around irrespondible camping.

WTF?
There was no camping.

He simply made a wrong turn and didn't know the secondary was blocked.
Every single thought out of Mayayana is fabricated in his own mind.

It's _why_ Mayayana is a racist.
a. Mayayana said most black people are criminals at one point.
b. Mayayana said most jews are trying to steal your money at another.
c. Mayayana said most Mexicans are in the crime cartels at yet another.

What Mayayana does with racism is exactly what he did just now.
A. He takes the bare minimum facts
B. Then he fabricates his own narrative out of those facts
C. In order to support his already-foregone conclusion about the event.

And yet, as always, Mayayana is _completely_ wrong on all the facts.
Every single one.

The problem with utter ignorant morons like Mayayana is, is that
_everything_ they say is dead wrong in almost every way possible.

Who is _that_ stupid as what Mayayana just proved himself to be?
Personally, I've never met anyone in the flesh as stupid as he is.

Seriously.
They're left of the first quartile in Dunning Kruger in that they don't even
_realize_ how fantastically ignorant they are about just about everything.

Yet Mayayana is oh so very confident in himself, even as he's always wrong.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim>
--
People like Mayayana are dangerous not because they're ignorant and racist,
but because they are too stupid to realize they are as stupid as they are.

Andy Burnelli wrote:

> Yet Mayayana is oh so very confident in himself, even as he's always wrong.
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim>

Even though Mayayana pulled yet another racist move by building his own
nefarious back story about James Kim going camping & being irresponsibly
unprepared for that, there is always some good value to be gotten out of all
Usenet topics.

Here's a cut and paste from the cited article which shows that, in emergency
situations, there is hope in understanding _how_ the cellular signals work!

Although the Kims had a cellular phone with them, their remote location in
the mountains was out of range of the cellular network, rendering the phone
unusable for voice calls. Despite being unusable for voice calls, their cell
phone would play a key role in their rescue. Cell phone text messages may go
through even when there appears to be no signal, in part because text
messaging is a store-and-forward service. Two Edge Wireless engineers, Eric
Fuqua and Noah Pugsley, contacted search and rescue authorities offering
their help in the search. On Saturday, December 2, they began searching
through the data logs of cell sites, trying to find records of repeaters to
which the Kims' cellphone may have connected. They discovered that on
November 26, 2006, at around 1:30 a.m., the Kims' cellphone made a brief
automatic connection to a cell site near Glendale, Oregon, and retrieved two
text messages. Temporary atmospheric conditions, such as tropospheric
ducting, can briefly allow radio communications over larger distances than
normal. Through the data logs, the engineers determined that the cell phone
was in a specific area west of the cellular tower. They then used a computer
program to determine which areas in the mountains were within a
line-of-sight to the cellular tower. This narrowed the search area
tremendously, and finally focused rescue efforts on Bear Camp Road.[11]

On the afternoon of December 4, John Rachor, a local helicopter pilot
unaffiliated with any formal search effort, spotted Mrs. Kim and her two
daughters walking on a remote road. After he radioed the family's position
to authorities, the three were airlifted out of the area and transferred to
a nearby hospital.[12]

Law enforcement officials said that the discovery of the cellphone
connection, and the subsequent analysis of the log data, was the critical
breakthrough that ultimately resulted in the rescue of Kim's wife and
daughters by helicopter.[11]

Am 04.03.22 um 16:29 schrieb VanguardLH:
> Personally I have to wonder why micky is going off onto trails to go
> hiking, but has his cell phone on. Isn't the point of venturing into
> wilderness to get away from the din of civilization, not to have a phone
> making noise and interrupting the experience?

Wilderdness starts where cellphone-coverage ends.
For micky's safety I would recommend a satellite service.

https://www.satelliteinternet.com/resources/satellite-phone-service/

--
De gustibus non est disputandum

On 3/4/2022 3:19 PM, Mayayana wrote:

<snip>

> They may claim that. It's not necessarily true. There's
> also an area of VT I know of with no service. If you can't
> expect to be able to use a cellphone then it doesn't much
> matter if the carriers claim you can. I imagine part of the
> issue might be the mountains, but I really don't know.

Actually, I've found the FCC maps to be very conservative. Their maps
are based on actual cells, not on carrier claims. There is often
sufficient signal strength, at least for a voice call or slow data, even
where the maps show none. The carrier maps are often overly optimistic
showing coverage where there is none.

My sister-in-law lives in the Bay Area, up the hill from San Francisco
International Airport. Her data on Verizon and T-Mobile is very slow,
despite the carriers' maps showing excellent coverage. But when you look
at the FCC maps, it's an "aha moment," especially for T-Mobile, see
comparison between FCC and carrier map for T-Mobile in her area at
<https://i.imgur.com/y66Fcjd.png>. The reason I was looking is because
her broadband service, on a municipally-owned cable company is terrible,
and there is no competition. So I checked her address for 5G home
internet on T-Mobile or Verizon.

But yes, there are definitely areas of Vermont and New Hampshire where
you don't have coverage. We were constantly using our phones on a
vacation in New England last year. The only place we lost coverage was
in part of the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Even in Acadia National
Park in Maine we never lost coverage.

> The point being that it's not so unusual in rural areas for
> people to have no service. Micky's friend apparently thought
> that was impossible. I actually know someone in an urban
> apt building -- brick exterior and metal lathe interior
> walls -- who only gets a signal in certain areas of his apt.

True, that's why Wi-Fi calling can be so useful. Some buildings are
especially bad, and especially for carriers using higher frequency
bands. I recall back in the olden days when the U.S. had only 850 MHz
and 1900 MHz, with AT&T and Verizon being mostly 850 MHz and Sprint and
T-Mobile being 1900 MHz. In-building coverage was much better on AT&T
and Verizon, besides better coverage in general because AT&T and Verizon
needed 1/4th the number of cells to provide coverage.

Mayayana wrote:

> "VanguardLH" <V@nguard.LH> wrote
>
>| Personally I have to wonder why micky is going off onto trails to go
>| hiking, but has his cell phone on. Isn't the point of venturing into
>| wilderness to get away from the din of civilization, not to have a phone
>| making noise and interrupting the experience?
>|
>
> I'm with you. I see so many people who are just never where
> they are. It must be very numbing. But maybe that's why they
> want service: They can just no longer imagine life without that
> contact. Some younger people have never truly been alone.
>
> There was a sad story a few years ago. A CNet tech worker,
> 26 I think, went camping with his wife and 2 or 3 kids. They
> drove 25 miles up a logging road in California and got stuck on
> ice, unable to get out. No cell service. They sat there for 2 or 3
> days, burning tires to stay warm. Finally the young man wandered
> off into the woods to look for help. He was found dead of exhaustion.
> The rest were eventually saved.

Um, why couldn't the wannabe camper use the same road to walk out? Why
didn't they have weather-appropriate apparel for all of them to take the
logging road to walk back out instead of any getting stranded behind?
In 8 hours, they could've trekked the 20 miles to get back out. The
question is how far away the logging road was someplace to get help. In
3 days, they could've trekked 60 miles, or more. They were going
camping, so they obviously had food stores. They would've have tents
and sleeping bags for the nights between day treks back to safety. They
would have had the supplies to trek out. Without those supplies, just
what did they expect to do for "camping" at their intended destination?

This was a family that should never had gone camping beyond those
alongside the road (e.g., Jellystone state parks aka family
entertainment camp resorts). Sounds like another candidate for the
Darwin Awards web site.

The story sounds a bit fishy. If they had been burning tires for 2 to 3
days, the rangers would've spotted and reported the black smoke. Maybe
the "the rest were eventually saved" was due to the rangers spotting the
black pyre of smoke, but the "the young man wandered off into the woods"
sounds fishy instead of taking the logging road back.

> They could have walked out of there in maybe 8 hours. They
> should have had camping supplies to last several days. There
> must have been something they could have done to free the car.
> But this was a geek with little experience of physicality, much less
> camping.

Was this guy named Barney Fife?
(https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x86f2us)

Not using cell phones is also a withdraw symptom in urban areas. People
have become grafted to their cell phones. It's the new legal heroin.

At a friend's house, we had a bonfire and a Halloween maze. We had to
confiscate the phones upon entry to the maze, because the kids agreed
but couldn't comply with not using the flashlight on their phones. At
the bonfire, we played the actor-movie game where you picked a movie,
named an actor in the movie, pick another movie with that actor, pick a
different actor in that other movie, and kept chaining together movies
through their actors. What did the kids do instinctively? Grab their
phones. No, no phones. This is a memory game, not a test of using
Google.

Try going on a fishing trip, and tell the kids they can't use their
phones in the boat. Moan, moan, moan. I paid for everyone to go on a
Disneyworld trip (flights, resort, rental cars, theme park tickets,
dinner theater tickets, and everything else). What did the kids do at
restaurants? Yep, texting. I told them if they didn't want to be with
their family in the restaurant that they go sit in the car to be just as
much by themselves as they were at the table. What did they remember
about the theme parks? Some texts with bogus friends, and what was
happening elsewhere.

There is a definite and massive problem with phone addiction (nomophobia
= no mobile phone phobia), and making excuses proposed as reasons for
why they just must have their phone with them all the time, and it must
always be powered on, and they just must reply to a text when received.

Don't send the kids to their rooms as punishment. Also take away their
phone(s), unplug the RJ45 cable at the modem going to their computer,
and take out the TV. Give them a paper book as salt on the wound.

Andy Burnelli wrote:

> BTW, I'm completely different from most people on this newsgroup.
> a. I'm intelligent and purposefully helpful & I have a kind heart
> b. Yet, I can't stand the morons who abound, and the trolls
> c. Even so, I provide _tremendous_ value to this group in many ways.
> As do some others, such as Andy Burns and even Frank at times.

As evidenced by your history in Usenet, anyone that disagrees with you
or holds a differing opinion just must be a troll. Uh huh.

In article <svudl6$nn5$1@dont-email.me>, sms
<scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:

> > They may claim that. It's not necessarily true. There's
> > also an area of VT I know of with no service. If you can't
> > expect to be able to use a cellphone then it doesn't much
> > matter if the carriers claim you can. I imagine part of the
> > issue might be the mountains, but I really don't know.
>
> Actually, I've found the FCC maps to be very conservative. Their maps
> are based on actual cells, not on carrier claims.

the most accurate metric are user reports.

> There is often
> sufficient signal strength, at least for a voice call or slow data, even
> where the maps show none. The carrier maps are often overly optimistic
> showing coverage where there is none.

very much false. carriers have a vested interest in exaggerating their
maps. if there is a measurable signal, it shows up on the map, even
though it's weak or unusable in real life.