GPS Outage in East Texas?

sbcoats

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Nothing since 7:30 this morning...not a single satellite. The local store in Henderson gives the same story we've all heard. They claim this all happened when the Alltel towers were fully converted to Verizon towers. Now that the conversion has taken place, Verizon is waiting for Google to somehow implement new data for the converted towers. It makes no sense to me. If this were the case, how in the world does it ever work at all? How are they able to prevent the gps transmission frequency from reaching our phones? Could Verizon possibly be adjusting the reception sensitivity of the gps chip on our phones...on the fly? Airplane is not even working.
 

jonakin

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Nothing since 7:30 this morning...not a single satellite. The local store in Henderson gives the same story we've all heard. They claim this all happened when the Alltel towers were fully converted to Verizon towers. Now that the conversion has taken place, Verizon is waiting for Google to somehow implement new data for the converted towers. It makes no sense to me. If this were the case, how in the world does it ever work at all? How are they able to prevent the gps transmission frequency from reaching our phones? Could Verizon possibly be adjusting the reception sensitivity of the gps chip on our phones...on the fly? Airplane is not even working.

Same here. Worked fine Saturday night through Monday morning. Went out Monday after lunch, came back Monday night. Tuesday morning, it was out, and it's still out, and even with all my tricks the only way I can get a fix is airplane mode which takes a few minutes. (Note, I have Thunderbolt but I've never seen the airplane mode trick work on one of the Motos if that's what you have.)

I wonder if there is a way to close this thread and the one on XDA and get everybody on the one you added to the VZW forums. That way, it's clearly the East Texas issue, all in one place, and we avoid the people at XDA that keep coming in saying "download GPS status, it fixed my problems!!!"
 

sbcoats

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My wife and I both have the Thunderbolt. I would like to keep the threads open for now if that's okay. I just emailed a solutions consultant with Verizon and provided links to the threads. His office is in Lewisville, but East Texas is in his territory. After speaking with him on the phone this morning and bringing him up-to-date on our GPS outage, he is going to include our issue as an agenda item in a regional meeting tomorrow. He said that a regional network engineer will also be at the meeting. He knew nothing about our outage, but promised to take our issue to people that can make things happen.

By the way, I was able to get a gps fix while at the house for lunch at about 12:50. Now that I'm back at the office, I stepped outside...no fix, but I do see a couple of satellites.
 

Caddoview

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Ok, just got a call back from Latoya at the regional Verizon office. Once more I got the “it’s a Google problem and we don’t support third party apps” line. She talked me into trying VZ navigator and gave me a $10 credit to try it out. Here is the result. VZ navigator found my location with GPS when I went outside. I closed it and opened Google maps and it found me to the spot. When I came back inside where there is no GPS signal, it lost me and is putting me at a tower location. I really despise Apple and AT&T has poor coverage here, but I never had this lack of customer care when I was with them.
 

Caddoview

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My wife and I both have the Thunderbolt. I would like to keep the threads open for now if that's okay. I just emailed a solutions consultant with Verizon and provided links to the threads. His office is in Lewisville, but East Texas is in his territory. After speaking with him on the phone this morning and bringing him up-to-date on our GPS outage, he is going to include our issue as an agenda item in a regional meeting tomorrow. He said that a regional network engineer will also be at the meeting. He knew nothing about our outage, but promised to take our issue to people that can make things happen.

By the way, I was able to get a gps fix while at the house for lunch at about 12:50. Now that I'm back at the office, I stepped outside...no fix, but I do see a couple of satellites.

Find out where the meeting is, we may need to make a showing.
 

Snake007

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Hey all...reporting from Longview..this problem is not just affecting droids, it also affects Blackberrys. I have around 100 Blackberrys on an enterprise server and none I have tested can get a lock through blackberry maps, google maps, or vz crapigator. I spoke to 3 reps in different departments today and they all say call Blackberry or call Google. The lack of ownership with this crap is mind boggling. Im at my wits end with this!!

Sent from my DROIDX using DroidForums
 

Caddoview

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Any idea how to contact Google? Verizon wants to lay this all on them and I would like to hear their side of things.
 

sbcoats

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I finally made contact with a top level engineer named Travis. He posted to the Verizon Community Forum Site the notice/ticket that we've all heard about:

VZ Navigator and GPS Not working in East Texas - Verizon Wireless Community

He is going to visit our thread on a regular basis to get input or feedback on our GPS issues. He also stated that the ticket I have open is priority 1 because my phone is a Thunderbolt. Not sure why that's the case, but he said I should get a call from the engineer assigned to the ticket soon.

I encourage everyone with the GPS Outage issue to post to the Verizon forum. Travis has the screenname of VZWTravis.

The notice/ticket reads as follows:


From ticket created April 26th

VZW performed network integration work in this area on 4/6/11. the issue the customer is experiencing is due to the delay of Google updating their database with our new SID/BID/NID for the area. Google states that this issue normally clears up within 2-4 weeks once VZW network changes occur. please advise customer of the timeframe for resolution.

This is where the retail stores are getting their information. I made it clear to him that we are long past the 4 week mark and that I expected him to take ownership of our problem by finding a solution. :) We'll see what happens.
 

Caddoview

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Latest update - VZ navigator worked for a short period of time and after opening VZN, Google maps also worked fine and tracked me as I drove. However, once I went inside a building and came back out a few hours later, neither VZN nor Google maps could get a GPS lock. I am getting rather feed up. It really appears that Verizon is absolutely refusing to take any responsibility for this. I tried to tell Latoya that VZ navigator would not work any better than Google maps and that others had already tried it, but it seems that Verizon customers are idiots and don’t know that they are saying. I had to have CS call the local manager before they would even believe that there was a problem at all. This has gotten way out of hand.
 

Caddoview

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My second email to the Southwest President

Mr. Danfield
Once more I am writing to you in an effort to gain a resolution to his matter. My first email elicited a response from Latoya who stated she would look into the matter and then called back with the same response “Its’ a Google maps problem and we don’t support third party apps”. She also graciously credited my account ten dollars if I would give VZ navigator a try. I tried to tell her that others had tried and it did not work either, but she was adamant that I was wrong. I consented and guess what, it does not work either. The issue is not that the third party apps are not working. The issue is that the apps, regardless Verizon or third party, are not getting the location data from the network. Now, I have been told that this will be resolved when Google does their update in two weeks. The problem is that I have been told that for the past four weeks. We are to the point that it seem that Verizon does not know what is going on in its own company and if not for the fact that your paid navigation program isn’t working either I would suspect that you are blocked this data from third party apps and I would be filing complaints with the FCC and the FTC. But that does not seem to be the case. It seems that after a tower update, something went wrong and now no one wants to take responsibility of this matter.

I am pleased that my first email garnered a response, even if that response was from someone with little or no technical knowledge. I would like to hear from someone who acknowledges that there is a problem and preferably has the knowledge to understand what the issue might be.

Thank you for your time

Robert Henderson
 

sbcoats

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GPS services seem to be stable this morning. Worked throughout the night as well. Still averaging around 30 on snr, but not sure what I should expect.
 

Caddoview

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Started working in Marshall about 7:25 and went back out at 7:40. VZ Nav had me in the Pacfic for awhile this monring.
 

Caddoview

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GPS services seem to be stable this morning. Worked throughout the night as well. Still averaging around 30 on snr, but not sure what I should expect.

Keep us posted on how long you stay up and where your located.
 
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