From: lee@unixg.ubc.ca (W Lee)
Subject: Re: Comments on Fido in Vancouver Canada please (and 6190)
Date: 1997/12/24
Message-ID: #1/1
Sender: lee@cpa131.axion.net
References:   
Organization: Internet News
Newsgroups: alt.cellular,alt.cellular.gsm,fido.phones,van.general


I was the one that started this topic and I ended up buying a Fido
Nokia 2190.  Today was the first day of using it.   

As a test, I called their customer service while I drove from home
(central Burnaby) to Cambie and Broadway.  According to the
greeting/hold mesage  "Due to the large number of new customers and
their activations...", I was on hold pretty much all the way there and
so it was a good test of travel along a big chunk of Kingsway.  The
sound was clear and I didn't dropout along the way.

re: dead spots:

"Ted Lee"  wrote:

>Oh yeah, today I drove down Victoria Drive at 57th where Fido had the
>antenna inside the cross on top of the church. The signal was strong. So
>they must of moved it near by. And yes it was across the street from a
>school yard. But the antenna was 150 feet in the air!

Victoria and 57th  is within 5 blocks of my parents place.  I was
there briefly and the signal inside the house was weak.  The Fido
symbol cut out a couple of times and I gather that this means the
carrier was lost briefly.  I did receive 2 wrong number calls while I
was there and so when it was working, it worked well.  This was the
first time I experienced call display on a cell phone.  I didn't know
who the number that was calling me belonged to, but at 20cents/min
billed by the second, I figured it wouldn't break me to answer it
anyways.

Sadly, the other iffy spot is near my home in central Burnaby.  A few
blocks west, the signal becomes clean and strong and holds all the way
to Cambie and Broadway like I said earlier (and likely further
downtown of course).  But it is not great in my home.  There, the
signal can start stuttering and sometimes, I get cut off.  

I reported both trouble locations to their customer service.  In doing
so I asked if they will be putting any more sites up in Burnaby and
they said in the first quarter of 98 they will.