Batboard

I have posted in the past about increasing my range on CDMA and/or GSM networks, but I haven't been able to find much on the cell phone forums. They often focus on "ring tones" and the like. Anyway, are most of the coverage charts from Verizon, AT&T, etc. pretty accurate? Do they predict the "footprint" based on HAAT, ERP, etc. or do they actually test coverage in the field?

My other questions is, assuming the coverage charts are based on a handheld cell phone, how much further can I expect to increase my range to using a Motorola M800 on CDMA or a Motorola M900 bag phone?

The maps are fairly accurate so they can get your business, if your house is not in coverage you aren't buying their service.

Increasing your range may sound nice but the outcome may not be worth the $ 2-20,000 grand you may have to spend to see any usable results. Not to mention, any change to a cellular providers system, which is what you would be doing, can bring you alot of angry people if there is interference.

Most cellular systems work somewhat like voted trunked systems and changing the ability to select one site or the other due to a stronger signal from a far away site that was engineered to not be there can cause calls to drop and data to become corrupted.

Check the performance specs on a new bag phone, most are still the low mW output similar to a regular cell but with the external antenna that the regular does not have.

CoM

Maybe I am wasting my time, I just found this here http://www.boxcarcabin.com/m800bp.htm

"*.25watts digital Is easily usable over 40 miles form the tower, if tower is configured for extended range.

A note on digital performance with the m800 or any digital phone. Most all digital tower have hard distance limits, power, antenna or phone cannot get around this. If the towers limit is 20 miles and your rural home is 22 miles from the tower, the phone will not register on and will not be usable. This is noted when the phone cannot complete a call in digital and defaults to analog. This is an issue that has been popping up more often. "

I found this here about the GSM version http://www.m930.com/m900bagphone.html

"The original Motorola M900 bag phone has been serving the fleet and corporate market for over 4 years. It features a sturdy construction,exceptional hands-free voice recognition and microphone, 2 Watt booster, USB port for data support and more. It is the mainstay of the Motorola car-phone series.

Expand range by over 30 miles even in mountainous areas. A must for road warriors and persons serious about in-vehicle communication.

The M900 is easily carried to any environment. Charges rapidly by way of the enclosed car charger or standard wall charger. Used by the military, federal, state and local government, forestry services and emergency management agencies. The unit's physical design, technology and specially designed vehicle interfaces are dedicated to delivering communication so that homeland security and emergency management professionals can stay connected when carrying out mission-critical tasks.

Motorola's M900 delivers extended network coverage over standard portable cell phones through a 2-watt radio frequency (RF) amplification for enhanced connections in urban and remote locations."

Jim - I worked in the cellular industry for 10+ years and did muucho drive testing and I can promise
you there is a lot of hype in those advertisements for those bag phones regardless of their power rating.
I have NEVER known any phone in a vehicle even with a vehicle mounted antenna to be able to propagate
a signal out to 30 or 40 miles on flat terrain - but if a mobile phone is used while mountain topping it is
possible in a cellular system with sites that are far and few in between. Most systems have hand off,
LNA, and receiver parameters that are designed to prevent that.

Thank you very much for the replies.

Fineshot1, considering what my needs are, am I best off to just forget about a bag phone and simply have both a CDMA and GSM phone to increase my chances of being able to make a wireless 911 call just in case?

Also, I may just bring along a field programmable VHF portable with me. Although my agency has switched to a P-25 trunked system, we are still licensed on NLEEF. Granted, a 4 watt portable might not be heard very far, but something is better than nothing!