LTE in Canada?

[techMology]

That's interesting because the reason I went with Cantel over Bell was that Cantel had better coverage where I needed it. For instance in the late '80s Bell had nothing in Muskoka but Cantel did. Ted Rogers must have had a cottage there or something!

EDIT: In the early 2000's I was working in midwestern Ontario. It seemed you either were in a Bell town or a Rogers AT&T town. Kincardine, for instance, had a strong Rogers AT&T signal, but Bell would barely work. The exact opposite was true in Hanover.

Hah! Ted did indeed have a cottage in Muskoka, and that was one of the reasons Cantel had great coverage there. I'm not kidding.

And yeah, back then, towers were sparse and one town could have a Cantel tower, and another a Bell tower. You're 100% correct when you say you were basically in a Bell town or a Cantel town. If you were to look at the actual deployed cell site maps for each carrier at the time, you would have seen Bell with about 30% more towers overall, and a much better distribution throughout rural areas.

Maybe, but I doubt it. I almost never see outages on my phone and I get them on a very regular basis in my car and they often last for several minutes. There should be no difference between the car and my phone since my phone is on Rogers - except for the fact that my phone is primarily on LTE while the car is 3G. But I doubt that is relevant in the discussion, I think it is due to the fact that the Tesla is using Jasper Technologies so the car is not a native Rogers device so getting authorized on the network can be problematic.

Your car and phone are totally different for a bunch of reasons. Your phone is using a native Rogers SIM, your car is using an AT&T SIM. Your Rogers SIM won't roam on the Bell/TELUS RAN in Rogers coverage areas. Your car is using a different cellular modem & baseband than your phone. The software interfacing with the baseband is different between your phone and your car.

Tesla is an AT&T Drive customer. AT&T Drive has a number of partners in its offering, Jasper Wireless being one of them. Jasper has nothing to do with the radio access network, nor does it have anything to do with authentication to it. Jasper is merely providing the backend infrastructure, management, and billing and rating capabilities for AT&T on their AT&T Drive platform. Think of them as an over-the-top player (SaaS more accurately).

- - - Updated - - -

Same here! I have had the same number now for 28 years! Still a rogers customer for that long. I deserve an award.

Some people would say sympathy. ;-)

 

[Jaff]

This is exactly the same for me...

Maybe, but I doubt it. I almost never see outages on my phone and I get them on a very regular basis in my car and they often last for several minutes. There should be no difference between the car and my phone since my phone is on Rogers - except for the fact that my phone is primarily on LTE while the car is 3G. But I doubt that is relevant in the discussion, I think it is due to the fact that the Tesla is using Jasper Technologies so the car is not a native Rogers device so getting authorized on the network can be problematic.

@ techMology...do you think our cars will eventually get Rogers SIM Cards?

 

[wayner]

@techmology - Why would these car 3G outages last for such long periods of time? Sometimes they are only a minute or two, but I have had them last for as long as 20-30 minutes.

 

[techMology]

This is exactly the same for me...



@ techMology...do you think our cars will eventually get Rogers SIM Cards?

Doubtful, but it's possible. The Canadian carriers have similar M2M offers, but Tesla's relatively low numbers in Canada probably won't make it worthwhile until at least the Model III. By then, global roaming rates are expected to plummet even more than they have over the last year.

From an administrative and logistics perspective it's easier for Tesla to just keep what they're doing.

 

[techMology]

@techmology - Why would these car 3G outages last for such long periods of time? Sometimes they are only a minute or two, but I have had them last for as long as 20-30 minutes.

Again, an educated guess, but I suspect it's all down to the baseband stack that they're using/have written for their infotainment system. I have had the outages too, so I know what you're experiencing.

Because Tesla's engineering team most likely aren't experiencing the problem during their use because they're in the U.S., and they can't likely reproduce it easily, they aren't understanding the severity of the problem. Remember, you're talking about a Linux custom operating system interfacing with a wireless baseband - not a common hardware combination. If you've ever experienced poor performance from a Windows peripheral and then updated the driver to fix the problem, it's a similar thing. You'd be surprised how big a deal this can be.

 

[SmartElectric]

you're talking about a Linux custom operating system interfacing with a wireless baseband - not a common hardware combination

I don't buy the "Linux and wireless is not common" line : Android is a GUI and application environment on top of Linux customer operating system operating on wireless baseband. Pretty common with 1 billion devices.

We are speculating here, so I'll comment that I've had only good experiences with the 3g connectivity in our 2013 Tesla, and we've been roaming in Canada and US during our recent road trips without issue.

That said, we don't do cottage country here in Ontario, but did go to Owen Sound and drove on gravel roads to get to out of the way country destinations on that trip, still had no issues...

 

[cwave1]

I remember that before 6.x we didn't have these connection problems. This makes me think that it is something that Tesla changed and that they probably know the fix.

 

[mknox]

I remember that before 6.x we didn't have these connection problems. This makes me think that it is something that Tesla changed and that they probably know the fix.

FWIW, I've never really had the connection problems that other report. Maybe 2 or 3 times in the last 2.5 years I've had a dropout that takes a couple of minutes to come back. Usually, it's rock solid for me.

 

[Judge Advocate]

I'm hoping the LTE or 4G upgrade will be a free software update, or at least a free retrofit. Perhaps a nice gesture from Tesla to early adopters as a thank you present?
Although, if they were going to do something like thatf or us early adopters, a free or reasonably priced Next Gen seat upgrade would be grand! (Grand as in $1000.00?)

 

[wayner]

The LTE upgrade is $500 in the US and is now available- see the thread in the User Interface forum.

edit - I called the Lawrence SC to ask about this upgrade and the Ludicrous upgrade and they do not have any info on either upgrade - the guy didn't even know that there was an LTE upgrade. He said to call back at the end of the month.

 

[Peter_M]

Every time my 3G connection drops for more than a couple of minutes in a good coverage area, when it comes back, I send in a voice bug report from the car just saying "Bug Report: my 3G connection just dropped for X minutes in a good coverage area". Maybe if enough of us do that, they'll eventually get a sense of how common the problem is (and also get the logs and other info that presumably goes with a bug report).

 

[techMology]

I don't buy the "Linux and wireless is not common" line : Android is a GUI and application environment on top of Linux customer operating system operating on wireless baseband. Pretty common with 1 billion

Not the same thing, I'm afraid. Keep in mind also that the modem in use by Tesla isn't in a single Android phone, and the infotainment system isn't running Android (even if Android is a Linux fork, they are significantly different).

I'm not pointing fingers at Linux; I'm suggesting further optimization could solve the issue.

 

[mnx]

Every time my 3G connection drops for more than a couple of minutes in a good coverage area, when it comes back, I send in a voice bug report from the car just saying "Bug Report: my 3G connection just dropped for X minutes in a good coverage area". Maybe if enough of us do that, they'll eventually get a sense of how common the problem is (and also get the logs and other info that presumably goes with a bug report).

Thanks for the idea... I'll try it whenever I see my connection drop.

 

[mknox]

Every time my 3G connection drops for more than a couple of minutes in a good coverage area, when it comes back, I send in a voice bug report from the car...

Maybe it would be better just to send it once, then again if the problem persists after a firmware update and so forth. Sending repeated bug reports for the same problem will likely not win you any favors with Tesla.

 

[Roadrunner13]

...

Because Tesla's engineering team most likely aren't experiencing the problem during their use because they're in the U.S., and they can't likely reproduce it easily, they aren't understanding the severity of the problem....

(If they're reading this)...

Using a Canadian SIM card from Rogers from their test cars in California should yield similar problems?

 

[Dakkor]

I get most of my dropouts after work. Finish at midnight and most of the time get 2-3 minutes of dropout until i'm on the highway. This is so anoying -_-

 

[Peter_M]

Maybe it would be better just to send it once, then again if the problem persists after a firmware update and so forth. Sending repeated bug reports for the same problem will likely not win you any favors with Tesla.

Fair point, but until they acknowledge the problem (or fix it), it seems that they need data showing when, where and how frequently the dropouts occur, so they can follow up with their cellular data provider. I'm assuming it's a problem with the provider, not the car, since it seems to be Canada-specific.

This probably isn't really a bug in Tesla's eyes, so I'll use the "Note" voice command from now on rather than "Bug Report" - you're right that we should only need to report bugs once.

 

[techMology]

Fair point, but until they acknowledge the problem (or fix it), it seems that they need data showing when, where and how frequently the dropouts occur, so they can follow up with their cellular data provider. I'm assuming it's a problem with the provider, not the car, since it seems to be Canada-specific.

This probably isn't really a bug in Tesla's eyes, so I'll use the "Note" voice command from now on rather than "Bug Report" - you're right that we should only need to report bugs once.

It's not a problem with the providers in Canada. It's the car, or more accurately, the software in the car.

I do agree hitting them with bug reports every time it happens is a good idea, however.

 

[RAM_Eh]

It's not a problem with the providers in Canada. It's the car, or more accurately, the software in the car.

I do agree hitting them with bug reports every time it happens is a good idea, however.

I agree its with the car, started happening only after an update (can't remember the one). Just because we are not complaining about it does not mean we don't want it fixed. I switched to always connected but during the winter we need all the KW we can use. Loosing 5-7 KW cause it is connected all night does not work for me.

 

[mknox]

I do agree hitting them with bug reports every time it happens is a good idea, however.

Still curious to know why I don't seem to have the problem nearly to the extent of others. I've had maybe 5 dropouts in 2.5 years, and I'm in the car a lot. I have no problem whatsoever when my car flips over from WiFi in my garage to 3G as others have reported. The only time I have had a dropout as described by others here is when I'm in an area that I don't usually frequent, and that's why I think it has something to do with signal strength or the cell tower you're connected to.