VZW giveth, taketh away

When we watch British detective shows on TV, I regularly marvel at the quality of cell phone coverage available to all. They can be in the catacombs of some office building, out in the barrens and moors, or on the North Sea coast. The cell phone rings. They talk.
Around here, and certainly at the cove, an unaided phone struggles to gain one bar of 1G service. Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint all have the same reception. Other folks in the lake may fare better, given the variability of terrain and the amount of granite between their locations and their carrier's towers.
With a MiFi gadget from Verizon, we could get passable Internet connections, provided that the receiver was set in the proper location, high on a north-facing wall.
Last year, we tried something different, a network extender from Verizon. The device sits on a window sill and fetches the faint signal from the tower over the hill, just enough to make the connection. The rest of the call is routed through our cable Internet service (Comcast).

It works well. All calls are clear and steady. Occasionally, we'll miss a call and it will go straight to voicemail.   Sometimes, the GPS setting is way off. My phone may report that I'm in  Gloucester. (When we use it in Holden, the location can show up as Cambridge.) Overall, though, we've been pleased with the performance. It's more than paid for itself.
That we need it at all is a point left for another discussion, having to do with the way that our national telecommunications policies have built an expensive, inefficient, and unreliable wireless system. (Imagine if you could drive your car only on certain highways; to drive on others, you'd have to change cars.)
Mark Gibbs writes in Forbes about several dubious features in the way that Verizon has implemented this much-needed product:

• Even though calls are routed through my Internet service from Comcast, Verizon charges me for the minutes and/or data that I use over the extender. The data shouldn't be an issue (I hope), because I use WiFi connections on my phone. 
• Any Verizon Wireless customer can connect to the network extender.It would be more of a concern if we lived in a more densely-populated area. The nearest neighbor is more than 150m away.  In theory, someone fishing just offshore might be able to connect and make calls.
  It's possible to give priority to selected numbers, but there's no way to whitelist just the phones in the household. 

AT&T. and Sprint have network extenders You can restrict access to certain phones to use them. Verizon has delivered a product that makes their bad coverage better, but manages to dent that outcome with bad policies. 

More on 4G wireless

The advent of 4G wireless for our mobile phones is changing the ways we work and play. There are many times when the 4G speed is faster than what I'd typically get in a coffee shop or other public WiFi location. That's goodness.

Availability of 4G is, however, quite uneven.

The other day, I pulled over to the side of the road on Route I-190 in Sterling, Mass, a place devoid of houses or businesses. Here's what I got on my phone:

Here's what it looks like on Google Earth:

I later stopped at an intersection in our part of town.

Here's the view from up top.

Keeping WiFi awake on my Android phone

The other day, I described a problem I was having with my Android phone. When the phone went into sleep mode, the WiFi connection would break. Even after setting the Wi-Fi Sleep Policy to Never, the connection would drop when the display shut off. It made listening to a music or radio stream or downloading anything pretty much impossible.  Security settings on my wireless router didn't matter. The only consistent workaround was to keep the phone plugged into a power source (wall connection or USB). When away from home, the WiFi connection seemed to work as intended.

None of the keep-alive apps had any effect, nor did reinstalling the phone's operating system.

I called Verizon tech support. Their conclusion was that there was probably something amiss with the phone. There were other reports in various forums around the 'net that supported this idea. Because my phone is out of warranty, I couldn't get a replacement. I started thinking about a new phone and gave the iPhone serious consideration.

One Android app, WiFi Analyzer, showed that the neighbors have a couple of access points that occasionally reach into our yard. All of the access points were broadcasting on channel 1.

With nothing better to do and nothing to lose, I switched my router to use channel 6.

Joy.

Since making the channel change, my WiFi connection has not dropped when the phone sleeps. Declaring the problem solved to the extent that anything is ever solved.

Configuration notes

Phone

HTC Incredible on Verizon Wireless
Android 2.3.4. (Gingerbread)
Build version 4.08.605.2 CL185897 2011

Router

SURFboard SBG900
Software version: SBG900-2.1.15.0-SCM00-NOSH 
Hardware version: 3

Bridge

Linksys WRT54G/GL/GS 
DD-WRT v24-sp2 (07/22/09) mini - build 12548M NEWD Eko

I hate computers, little ones even more

For a while, my phone (HTC Incredible) hasn't been able to keep a wireless connection when it goes into sleep mode. I've set the Wi-Fi Sleep Policy to Never, but it's had no effect. When the screen goes dark, the WiFi connection drops out. If I ping the phone from another system, I can watch it go away.

I've tried various configurations on my routers with no consistent good result. Y'see, sometimes it works as intended. The screen goes to sleep, but the WiFi stays connected and I can listen to music or news or whatever. Most of the time for the past few weeks and constantly now, there's no joy.

I've done several reinstallations of the phone's operating system (Gingerbread, for those who care).

Now, sitting in NuCafe, it works fine. Now, using an open access point, the furshlugginer thing works fine. I have less of an idea why it works here than why it didn't at home.