Sprint towers 4 & 5 miles away - any use trying?

cwebb · EVDO Newbie Joined: 21 Feb 2006 Posts: 5 Location: WNY

I've found out more details about my 'local' Sprint towers.

One Sprint tower is 4 miles away, down in a 500' valley.

The other Sprint tower is 5 miles away and in a bit less of a valley.

(I dunno why they'd put them in the valleys - more people there, maybe?)

My house is on top of a hill. I expect to need an outdoor antenna.

Is there any point in even ordering the Sprint EVDO package to trial it, or is this not likely to reach me at all? Should I see if I can borrow a Sprint cell phone to see if it can get PCS up here?

The Verizon towers are closer (and on hilltops!), and my Verizon cell works up here, with one bar. I'd prefer Sprint, b/c they might expand their Broadband - as it is, I'll only get 1xRTT with Verizon - with no indicators to suggest any further deployment of Verizon EVDO.

Is there any possiblity that the Sprint towers will reach this far with an outdoor antenna?

Is the only real way to know, for me to order both services for their trial periods, and send one back? (I'd feel kind of sleazy doing that, but I really don't know what else to do and it might save me shipping - Maybe Michael would know? Confused

)

Thanks for any help...

xchpstang · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:01 pm Post subject:

I don't really think 1900MHz towers have that long of range so the card alone will probably be out of the question. I'm not sure if amplifiers only amplify an existing signal or can pull a non existing signal due to distance limitations. Yeah, I think you should use the trial period.

MaximumSignal · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:08 pm Post subject: