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GRRRR
Placebo effect at work, as any of you who ACTUALLY know what the PRL is would know. Hint - it's not a tower list. It's a "preferred roaming list"
Your phone has a home SID programmed into it - a SID is more than a single tower - for example, Alltel here in Montana uses the SID 1441 for the whole state plus Yellowstone in Wyoming - well over 100 cell sites ("towers")
The PRL also specifies what TYPE of service a SID will have (analog/digital/EVDO) and what channel blocks it'll be on.
A PRL update ONLY changes anything in your home area when a new service type is available (going from analog to digital or 1X to EV) - and that's all done years ago now that every SID is flagged for EV; or when new frequencies are in use (after mergers, buyouts, etc).
Your Sprint phone, on Sprint's native network, will NOT see signal strength improvements as a result of a PRL update. It just won't happen. Unless Sprint buys out someone else and adds them to the PRL.
What DOES change periodically - and the reason for most PRL updates - is the list of roaming partners to use. This can be good OR bad - carriers often REMOVE roaming partner SIDs when they believe they have that area covered fairly well with their own new towers. For example, there was a time when almost every Sprint SID was in the Verizon PRL - now there are only a handful.
On the other hand, when Verizon bought Alltel, suddenly EVERY Alltel SID was added to the PRL or increased in priority. Since Alltel has great coverage, that was a huge benefit for Verizon people.
If a carrier adds a single new tower though, that doesn't require a PRL update - the new tower will be added to an existing SID.11-18-09 03:13 AM
