Should everyone reprogram phones before climbs?

[Jens]

The verizon guy told me the other day that if I am ever on vacation or at a new area for a little while, I should reprogram my cell phone (*2289 send). He said it optimizes your cell phone to best pick up the local towers. Would it then make sense to reprogram your phone at every new parking lot before heading into the mountains? Anyone in the industry know?

[pink]

i thought just turning it on and off would reset your mobile.

[OlympicMtnBoy]

I've been told that, and I occasionally update mine (I thought it was just *228 which seems to work), but I think it has more to do with billing than reception. I think it tells your phone to give greater priority to verizon towers, instead of just using the nearest tower. It will still use the nearest tower if a verizon one isn't available, either way.

 

As for the billing, it turns out that if your phone uses another tower (even if you are on the nationwide no-roaming plan), it just uses your minutes as normal. However, the other company has 3 months to bill verizon, who has a month to process it, then they apply your minutes retroactively and bill you for overage accordingly. My girlfriend got hit hard when a couple hundred minutes suddenly appeared retroactively on her bill, since she tracked her usage online and was close to the max for that month without the mystery minutes. Thus verizon urges you to update, although you'd think they could figure out a more automatic method.

[ketch]

It is not so much the optimization of the phone. It is an optimization of there service. Phones have to search out a tower and for inbound calls the network need to find you. In much the same way as using a GPS if you have the current almanac loaded the boot takes considerably less time. For a phone once it knows where the towers are for it's location it reaches out quicker. For inbound calls if you have moved from the last tower cell since the last call the network will sometimes have to search for you. (ever get one of those messages that appears even when you have been in service?)

 

You can do that location bit by making any call to any number. By calling Verizon it does help then give you better service but it will be no real assitance if you are considering potential trouble in the backcountry.

[Couloir]

It also acts as an upgrade that improves the ability for the GPS system that helps whomever is curious of your whereabouts to see it more clearly.

[Ade]

optimize => leave at home