Re: Wrong time zone sent by tower

At 19 Jun 2007 14:29:30 -0400 Harlan Messinger wrote:
> I just checked something that was causing a problem a couple of months
> ago and it's still there. I'm in Northern Virginia, in the Eastern US
> time zone (GMT-5) and we're currently on daylight savings time, so
> we're four hours behind GMT. Originally I had my Treo 700W set to use
> the network's time zone--and found consistently that my phone thought
> it was in the Caracas (GMT-4) time zone, which produced the correct
time but which was still wrong.

Why does it matter? Caracas doesn't observe DST, so the phone is GMT-4
either way. I just teste
on my PPC phone, and it didn't cause an appointment shift Because there
is no absolute time difference between DC and Caracas right now.

> I finally figured out that I had the option to have just the time and
> not the time zone set from the network, so I switched to that option,
> and manually set my time zone to Eastern Time.

Nice. My phone doesn't have that option- it's time and zone or nothing.

> Today I momentarily turned back on the option to have the network set
> the time zone, and it immediately switched back to Caracas. End of
> experiment.


And again, what's the problem? Essentially it's the difference between
Eastern Time being called "New York" or "Orlando" time- it'sthe same time
either way (at least until DST ends.)

When I'm in Denver, my T-Mobile MDA switched to "Saskatchewan." Both are
the same time, and don't mess up my appointments, so why would I care?

> Are other people in my area getting the same signal? Is it possible
> that Verizon's towers would be announcing the time zone as Caracas Time
> for months without anyone fixing it?

Why not- since it's not a problem for anyone!

I even have a theory why it might be intentional: since so many
smartphones probably weren't properly patched for the DST changes this
year, Verizon probably thought it'd be simpler to switch to a true GMT-4
zone for the east coast when DST kicked in than stay on GMT-5 and hope
every Treo, Blackberry and VX-6700 owner properly applied their
respective patches. That way, even unpatched phones would display the
correct time. I suspect that's why T-Mo chose Saskatchewan for Mountain
time as well- it's a non-DST area that happens to match US MDT.

Just a theory anyway. If they are also using Indiana for Central,
Saskatchewan for Mountain, and Arizona for Pacific Time, I'll wager my
theory is spot-on.