Southern RI 1xEV-DO

Since the
delightful surprise I received the other day when I fired up my EV-DO
card, I’ve learned a bit more about the support for EV-DO in Rhode Island.
Somewhere over the past couple of days, I got the impression that I was
getting a signal that was bleeding over from a tower to the north of me.
After spending some time on the phone with Verizon data support, I learned
that the towers down here are indeed EV-DO capable.

I was running into trouble getting online at my home, and was flipping
between 1xRTT and 1xEV-DO mode. So, the data support folks sent me out an
FRU for my PC5220 (P8 model) that brought me up to P8a. However, I
couldn’t activate the card, and ended up driving out to the Kingston train
station parking lot to get as close to the tower as possible. I spent about
40 minutes on the phone, and they even had me get into the Engineering Menu
(in Mobile Connection Manager, select Help/About, right-click twice, then
type ##DEBUG into the box and click submit. But if you change anything in
there, kiss your warranty goodbye). While I was on hold, I poked around the
menu, and noticed that Test Mode was inexplicably enabled. Ever cautious, I
held on the line and waited for the level 3 tech to come back on. I
explained the situation, he told me how to reset it, and bingo! I was
getting a signal and activated OK.

Next, I decided to go for a drive, and ran some tests (downloading a 384k
file) in a few key spots around South County (not bad–the only place I hit
1xRTT speeds was on Saugatucket).