But you still had Verizon coverage, ergo the call was never dropped. I
was not aware that a roaming call was supposed to auto-terminate just
because a SPCS tower happens to come into range. (Though I suppose that
wouldn't be too bad if you were actually paying for roaming--no F&CA.)

By design, it doesn't work that way. Would you really want it to?

Really makes no difference to me, I have F&C and either way roaming is
the same as in network. Now I *would* be unhappy if it did drop my call
in that part of the county...but it doesn't and I'm not (unhappy).

As long as you have a good roaming signal the call will continue on
that network until ended regardless of whether or not you're back in a
Sprint area.  Then it will look for Sprint service again.

Shouldn't be, anyhow. But, I don't know how familiar you are with Los
Angeles, but I don't believe Ventura Boulevard is considered part of the
basin... it's up in the San Fernando Valley on the other side of the
Sepulveda Pass.

Delayed billing (due to roaming) still *normally* shouldn't be an issue
because you would normally not be roaming. I'm just picking nits here. :)

Just for the record text messaging when roaming on Verizon now works in
the Los Angeles market.  But this also depends on which phone you have.
Some phones have a software bug that won't allow them to even attempt
to send a text message when in roaming mode even though the feature is
available.

That's entirely true Bob, and that's exactly the problem.  If someone
makes a roaming 100 minute call on the last week of their billing cycle,
thinking they have all of those minutes to burn, there is NO guarantee
at all that those minutes are actually going to show up on that month's
bill.  In fact, it's very likely you'll get dinged for at least some if
not all of those 100 minutes on the NEXT bill, leaving you with 100
minutes that were never used previously and 100 minutes LESS time that
you have on the new month.

This is why I was saying that if this is going to be a frequent
occurrence, then it might behoove her to switch to something different
where she will not be roaming.

She's not going to be the only person reading this post, you of all
should know that.  Other people may be in the same pickle and NOT
driving.  If she doesn't use Vision, great!  But I like to be thorough,
and I like to point out what WILL work, and what won't.

How not?  F&CA doesn't eliminate roaming, Bob, it just lets you apply
your home minutes to roaming calls.  Roaming carriers often don't have
the facilities in place to immediately pass on billing info for a
roaming call; they often wait a few days; a week; sometimes a month
before they say to Sprint "hey, this person made x number of calls."  As
Sprint doesn't have a crystal ball, it can't bill you for those calls
UNTIL it has that billing information.  So if it happens a lot, you'll
start to see calls that thought you made last billing cycle show up on
future ones.

Steve, stepping for the lady here:

She divided her postings into 3 threads, 'Don't quite know why, but
her posting of Sept 6th. I copy it for you for your convenience :

"Thanks all, I add this to a light thread line that has not evolved
into arguments....

The PCS outage condition continues today, Wednesday, September 07,
2005. I did finally reach someone at Sprint and was informed that the
area (between Lookout Mountain Road north almost to Ventura Blvd.) is
a "heavy/intense usage area" (as in cell phone usage). And that the
Nextel inclusion is a possible or likely reason that what was, for
years, a Sprint PCS "gold medal" road, is now reduced to Analog and
Digital roaming. Except at the base of the road on the city side,
north and south.

Again, this is the second most trafficked route through/over the hill
from LA to the San Fernando Valley, where one finds Studio City, etc.
Per the Dept of Transportation - over 50,000 cars per month.

He was friendly, but could not start to predict a resolution on a time
basis.

I can see that Digital Roaming is available on part of that stretch of
road. But that leads me to wonder to which carrier the roaming would
switch to. Presumably Verison. Which leads me to further wonder how it
is that Verison presumably has service but Sprint does not. He said
that 300,000 new Nextel users are now utilizing Sprint towers.
Presumably the 300,000 number is a national number. Also in that my
group/company had to switch from Nextel in order to have cell phone
access on this main artery in the year 2001. And that if Nextel users
had not gained the ability to use cell service on this main artery,
since then, that they would obviously not be now using the Sprint
towers.

Ooooppsss. Then again, perhaps that is exactly what is happening. All
those Nextel users in LA now find that they can jump on the Sprint
towers along this very busy road and the word is out and they are
using their Nextel phones on this road and thus overloading the Sprint
towers and PCS service basically crashes on this heavily trafficked
artery.

The Microcell element is interesting. I did not know about that, and
it makes sense. It also makes sense that these microcell units could
get more easily overloaded with new users, if the Rep is to be assumed
to be correct. Late last night I used voicemail up and down the road,
and the connection did not cut out. Thus I assumed it was resolved.
Today, total disaster. And thanks Bob, I did also send off an email as
per your link.

To have ones ongoing calls killed at a relatively important points in
the conversation and not be able to get the person back on the phone
for 10-20 minutes, is indeed frustrating.

Veronica.
/////

Best, Fred