2024-02-18, 03:08 PM
(2024-02-17, 06:20 PM)Beardilocks Wrote: Currently cell service in the main valley & SPW is 3G only and comes off the repeater on Mormon Peak above Butte Valley.
How sure are you of this? There has been a cell base station in SPW for a few years. The antenna is by the employee housing but at the side closest the hotel, and near the restaurant. I assume back haul is via the microwave link from the little hill near the mouth of Little Bridge, back to FC (same link goes up to Grapevine). I definitely see a mobile operator there which is a string of digits and I can't get data without roaming. My wife, same carrier (T-Mobile) gets data there. My friend Eric with AT&T used to get great data there but it was marginal a year ago. Even if there is data, the channel is over used when the guests are awake, and it chokes.
I see the same mobile operator, string of digits, within a mile or so of FC. I believe it is the same carrier which operates a few sites along 95 through Beatty, but I also recall seeing that carrier as having a name, not the string of digits, which I hit it. I used to get data off that, e.g. when I was up in the Panamints.
I don't get any signal in most other places in the park but I've not been in a year so coverage may have changed.
T-Mobile coverage map claims to have "partner" coverage from FC along the North Road and over to Towne Pass. I did have phone, not data, last year at the vault toilets by the Mud Canyon / North Rd junction when I called in some campers well off the road.
It seems to vary from year to year. Down in the Owlsheads I hit a cell in Ridgecrest some times.