OT: CSpire north of Jackson

[Lettucexxxx]

CSpire dawgs....What’s the deal with the coverage from batesville to Senatobia ...hwy 51...

Did some fishing at Sardis this weekend and didn’t have service for 3 days. I stayed 1 mile off the interstate 55.

What am I paying for again?

 

[HamSammich]

Was a CSpire customer back when they were Cellular South (over 18 years). Coverage in the area you are referring to is where I have lived my entire life. It’s absolutely horrid and always has been. To make matters worse my wife travels for a living and could not use her phone on ANY trips unless she connected to a WiFi network somewhere. Switched to Verizon and ultimately went to AT&T (due to their plans for healthcare workers)

CSpire is a joke to me, and is always looking to the “next big thing” instead of investing towers and coverage to their footprint

 

[Motodawg]

Y’all do realize that cspire owns EVERY 4g tower in the state of Mississippi and all the other providers rent from them, right? lol at footprint

 

[vhdawg]

Y’all do realize that cspire owns EVERY 4g tower in the state of Mississippi and all the other providers rent from them, right? lol at footprint

As someone in the wireless engineering field in the state of Mississippi, this is patently incorrect. This is incorrect to the degree of Sly Croom thinking he can get the West Coast Offense to work at MSU.

 

[Jaxdog]

Uh, that’s totally incorrect.

 

[She Mate Me]

Gotta say, at this point I'm quite interested in what is correct concerning tower ownership.

 

[SheltonChoked]

This might help

http://www.cellreception.com/towers/

 

[ababyatemydingo]

Y’all do realize that cspire owns EVERY 4g tower in the state of Mississippi and all the other providers rent from them, right? lol at footprint

Who in the world informed you of that information? Whoever it was, give them a swift kick in the nuts. Because they just made you look like a moron

 

[dawgman42]

^^^Wants to be called "Rosebowl"

 

[garddog]

Just depends where you live and work. Cspire is by far and away the best provider in east central MS if you live rural.

 

[047Dog]

I had CSpire in the Jan area on an iPhone and my gf at the time had an Android. We couldn’t even have a text conversation because the texts would come in out of order. Cspire is crap and I’ll never go back.

 

[catvet]

Had CSpire for several years. The gaps in the State were awful so I switched to AT&T. Looking at their coverage map 14 years later shows they really are poor at fixing holes in the coverage and thats a shame because they are a Mississippi company. Won't ever buy any of their services.

 

[msstatelp1]

Cspire has terrible coverage north of Batesville. From what I understand they don't have much spectrum to work with and are down to one store in Desoto County and one store in Memphis.

 

[pmack3641]

Have had Cspire for years in Starkville and now in olive branch along with fiber one never a
problem and excellent service

 

[vhdawg]

Gotta say, at this point I'm quite interested in what is correct concerning tower ownership.

Lazy marketing by the wireless carriers in general has made the public think that towers are something more than tall metal structures capable of holding antennas and radios, but that's all they are (don't get me started on CSpire's ads about putting more towers in Davis Wade or Vaught Hemingway....they may have added more antennas but ANTENNAS ARE NOT TOWERS). Any given tower can generally hold several wireless carriers at different heights but it's up to each carrier to design their network as they best see fit. Most cell towers nowadays are owned by one of three big tower companies, Crown Castle, American Tower, and SBA, with a number of mid-sized tower companies out there and a few mom-and-pops. Most of these companies will build a tower to suit one or more carriers that's interested in locating in a particular location and hope to lease out space later to others. It's generally pretty rare for a wireless company to build and own their own towers anymore, because that means you have to also be in the real estate and leasing business, and most of them would prefer to not do that. CSpire had held on to a lot of theirs for a long time, outsourcing the management of them for several years, but recently even they have started to sell off some of their towers to a tower company.

That's way more information than you wanted to know, but you asked.

As to the original statement about CSpire coverage north of Panola County, I don't work for CSpire, but I'm familiar with their spectrum holdings, and they've sold or traded away of a lot of spectrum in Desoto, Tate, Tunica, and Marshall counties in the past couple of years, and what they have left is higher-frequency and doesn't cover terribly well. In the old days (20 years ago), they didn't have a network north of Panola and Lafayette Counties, and it costs a lot of money to build and operate and upgrade a wireless network, and I can only assume their market share north of there was not such that it justified deep investment going forward. They've done the same in most of Alabama and northwest Florida as well; they've mostly consolidated their spectrum to their traditional service area of the lower 78 counties of MS. It's probably cheaper to them to roam on somebody else and devote their network investments in places where they have a stronger foothold.

 

[Lettucexxxx]

Y’all do realize that cspire owns EVERY 4g tower in the state of Mississippi and all the other providers rent from them, right? lol at footprint

 

[johnson86-1]

Just depends where you live and work. Cspire is by far and away the best provider in east central MS if you live rural.

CSPIRE used to be the only provider that had coverage at Neshoba County fair I think. Always had good luck with CSPIRE in Starkville and Oxford in school and traveling back and forth between them compared to other cell phone companies. Not sure when it was though, but at some point they were apparently passed by every other major carrier. Just awful coverage now. Wife has cspire through work and she essentially has to have a personal phone to supplement it so she can still access email when she is traveling.

 

[SwampDawg]

Cspire has terrible coverage north of Batesville. From what I understand they don't have much spectrum to work with and are down to one store in Desoto County and one store in Memphis.

Cspire, Google Maps or something is bonkers between Batesville and Memphis. Used to tell us to turn East about halfway between the two and keep on going.

 

[Phil Wenneck.sixpack]

I was very familiar with the 2 dead spots in Tate county along I55 before switching carriers.

 

[The Peeper]

That's not just a CeaseFire problem, that was happening to me about a month ago. AT&T's answer was to tell me I needed a new updated phone, even though mine is only 18 months old. I think its a 'Droid/iPhone problem, wasn't happening to me w/ other 'Droid users. I disabled native Samsung texting app and loaded Google Messages, hasn't happened once since doing that.

 

[vhdawg]

CSPIRE used to be the only provider that had coverage at Neshoba County fair I think. Always had good luck with CSPIRE in Starkville and Oxford in school and traveling back and forth between them compared to other cell phone companies. Not sure when it was though, but at some point they were apparently passed by every other major carrier. Just awful coverage now. Wife has cspire through work and she essentially has to have a personal phone to supplement it so she can still access email when she is traveling.

Can also confirm this is not true at the Neshoba County Fairgrounds. They may have had better service at times but they were not the only provider with service during the event, going back at least 20 years.

 

[She Mate Me]

Too much info my ***...that's exactly the kind of detail and accuracy I was looking for. Thanks much!

 

[johnson86-1]

Can also confirm this is not true at the Neshoba County Fairgrounds. They may have had better service at times but they were not the only provider with service during the event, going back at least 20 years.

Probably around 2003 or 2004, we were all passing around a cell south phone when we needed to make a call and when we were in groups, at least one person had to have a cell south phone for us to be able to communicate where we were. Maybe everybody in our group had cell south or one other carrier like ATT, and there were other carriers that were as good as Cellsouth, but whatever the issue, we couldn't get a call that was understandable except for on cell south phones. And I guess we didn't spring for the $10 unlimited texting or pay the $.05 a text or whatever it was then?

 

[sandwolf.sixpack]

CSPIRE used to be the only provider that had coverage at Neshoba County fair I think. Always had good luck with CSPIRE in Starkville and Oxford in school and traveling back and forth between them compared to other cell phone companies. Not sure when it was though, but at some point they were apparently passed by every other major carrier. Just awful coverage now. Wife has cspire through work and she essentially has to have a personal phone to supplement it so she can still access email when she is traveling.

I had the same experience. I was with Cellular South/CSPIRE for 20 years and I finally switched to Verizon a couple of months ago because of how bad CSPIRE's coverage has gotten.

 

[vhdawg]

Probably around 2003 or 2004, we were all passing around a cell south phone when we needed to make a call and when we were in groups, at least one person had to have a cell south phone for us to be able to communicate where we were. Maybe everybody in our group had cell south or one other carrier like ATT, and there were other carriers that were as good as Cellsouth, but whatever the issue, we couldn't get a call that was understandable except for on cell south phones. And I guess we didn't spring for the $10 unlimited texting or pay the $.05 a text or whatever it was then?

I'm not going to dispute your story, but it's a lot like service at a football game....there's only so much you can do when you have that many people crammed into such a small area. Coverage may be there but the capacity isn't. It's like trying to send the traffic on Los Angeles's 405 highway down a two-lane road. You just cannot add enough lanes to serve everybody with the quality of service they normally expect.