Network Vision/LTE - Myrtle Beach market (Myrtle Beach, Wilmington, Florence, Jacksonville NC, New Bern)

[thewezgrays]

I dug deep and saw no Myrtle Beach market post -- so figured I would start one -- delete if this is not proper. Any word on the status of a late market such as mine? I have seen things about being behind a quarter -- how will that influence our market here? 3G is almost unusable in about half my area so I am anxious and desperate... Thanks!

[Dkoellerwx]

I dug deep and saw no Myrtle Beach market post -- so figured I would start one -- delete if this is not proper. Any word on the status of a late market such as mine? I have seen things about being behind a quarter -- how will that influence our market here? 3G is almost unusable in about half my area so I am anxious and desperate... Thanks!

 

Don't think we've had a thread yet, so this'll do!

 

We don't have any fresh information lately other than what we've got posted in the NV Running list thread. Myrtle Beach should still be on track to start in Q1 or Q2 of next year as it is a 3rd or 4th round market. Sprint is about a quarter behind in production, but that shouldn't affect the start of new markets. More information will be posted when we know anything!

[S4GRU]

An update for those of you in the Myrtle Beach market. There are six sites that have been posted as complete with 3G Network Vision upgrades in this market to date.

 

I just uploaded 1 more site as In Progress in the Myrtle Beach market over in the NV Sites Complete maps. It is located west of New Bern. This sites is actually accepted as complete with 3G NV upgrades and will appear in next week's update.

 

Robert

[VSouthIV]

Is Charleston, SC in this market as well?

[S4GRU]

Is Charleston, SC in this market as well?

 

No. Charleston is in the GA/SC Coast market. We are not aware of any work starting yet in this market. But probably will this Spring.

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

 

 

[thewezgrays]

Thanks for the update. Not a sponsor yet, so I am curious if any of these towers are in myrtle beach proper or surfside. Recently I have had horrible service in a few areas that recently have been smoking fast. I am curious if it is NV or lack of tourists. If it is the NV, I am excited.

 

Unrelated, but I am in Downtown Vegas this week and Sprint has been 99% unusable (except one time when I woke up around 5am)...

[S4GRU]

Thanks for the update. Not a sponsor yet, so I am curious if any of these towers are in myrtle beach proper or surfside. Recently I have had horrible service in a few areas that recently have been smoking fast. I am curious if it is NV or lack of tourists. If it is the NV, I am excited.

 

Unrelated, but I am in Downtown Vegas this week and Sprint has been 99% unusable (except one time when I woke up around 5am)...

 

Vegas is not a good 3G market to begin with. Add hundreds of thousands of tourists for New Years and it gets worse.

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

 

 

[thewezgrays]

 

 

Vegas is not a good 3G market to begin with. Add hundreds of thousands of tourists for New Years and it gets worse.

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

 

Tourist(from a tourist town lol).... that would be me.... Thanks for all you do and Happy New Year... Heading out of my room into Fremont Street in a few...

[gfurr24]

I live in MB near the Coastal Grand Mall and I have noticed a significant difference in the data speeds (both peak and off-peak hours). Normally get consistently over 1mbps down and 700kbps up. Those are usually the slowest I get now. Highest would be 2.5mbps/1.5mbps. When I check the Sprint tower upgrade map on sprint.com it shows the towers in this area have been getting significant upgrades. Cant wait till they get the ultimate LTE upgrade! This market has needed this for a while!

[thewezgrays]

I live in MB near the Coastal Grand Mall and I have noticed a significant difference in the data speeds (both peak and off-peak hours). Normally get consistently over 1mbps down and 700kbps up. Those are usually the slowest I get now. Highest would be 2.5mbps/1.5mbps. When I check the Sprint tower upgrade map on sprint.com it shows the towers in this area have been getting significant upgrades. Cant wait till they get the ultimate LTE upgrade! This market has needed this for a while!

 

I am back from Vegas now and I can not wait to check out some of the speeds around town... I am still curious if the increased speeds we are seeing are the lack of winter tourists or the patchwork upgrades or the new NV on the towers we have seen. If it is the patchwork it is probably combined with the lack of tourists though... anything that is not on NV by April or May will be crippled again. At some point I am going to have to start monitoring the sponsor maps to see where they are upgrading (the awesome 3G speeds I got right before vacation were around 38th Ave North and Kings Hwy..)

[thewezgrays]

I see that towers in some markets (such as Myrtle Beach) are getting only 3G... is there a reason for this? Why not do it all at once (or if it is all being done, why not turn it on?)... I could see if the 800 band was still in use for Nextel -- leaving that off until this summer but still do it and the 4G along with the std 3G stuff at one time...

 

(edited out specific location information from post)

[gfurr24]

I see that towers in some markets (such as Myrtle Beach) are getting only 3G... is there a reason for this? Why not do it all at once (or if it is all being done, why not turn it on?)... I could see if the 800 band was still in use for Nextel -- leaving that off until this summer but still do it and the 4G along with the std 3G stuff at one time...

 

(edited out specific location information from post)

 

It would have made sense to do all of the upgrades at once but I'm thinking the same things your thinking. Why would they make two installs and have teams go up and do the work on towers twice, unless (a. They didn't have the LTE equipment with them when they did the NV 3G upgrades, or b. they didn't have the work order to do the LTE upgrade at that time, or c. The towers do have LTE installed but its not accepting connections and is blocked). Either way, it's good news for our market. I know that when I first started following this forum around the time the NV press conference was a ways back. When the initial information came out and Robert got his hands on all of the plans and timelines, Myrtle Beach was never listed anywhere. Now we magically show up as a third round market! I was so excited when I saw that! I couldn't believe we would be getting LTE and NV before Columbia, Charleston, and Greenville! That's kinda how Sprint rolls though, very spontaneously!

And from what I saw, I did fairly frequent testing on the NV upgraded tower near my house that also services the mall. This tower held up very well during the busy holidays. And we all know what kind of traffic that mall gets during the holidays!

[Dkoellerwx]

I see that towers in some markets (such as Myrtle Beach) are getting only 3G... is there a reason for this? Why not do it all at once (or if it is all being done, why not turn it on?)... I could see if the 800 band was still in use for Nextel -- leaving that off until this summer but still do it and the 4G along with the std 3G stuff at one time...

 

(edited out specific location information from post)

 

Different OEMs in different markets seem to have different ways of doing the NV work. Sometimes 3G is first, sometimes LTE is first, sometimes they both get done at the same time. I don't know if anyone knows why it is done this way, it certainly seems like it would be more efficient to do everything at once. We do know there have been equipment shortages, most notably 3G equipment for Ericsson markets, which is why almost all of their sites started off as LTE only. Either way, they'll get around to doing everything eventually.

[S4GRU]

Don't assume that because 3G is accepted as complete first, that they have completely left and have to come back and visit a site. First, Alcatel Lucent typically installs 3G and 4G hardware at the same time. However, they don't fire up the LTE in the beginning of their deployment. It's just the way they deploy.

 

Second, when they work on a site, it's not like 5 guys show up on a site and stay there until they are done and leave. And then they would have to come back later and do the LTE. There are different people with different companies doing different things. The backhaul folks are different from the electricians who are different than the tower climbers who are different that those who configure cabinets and who are different from the tech who provision it all. They come and go. Each may be working on several or dozens of sites at once. It's a flurry of activity.

 

They may have done all the work except for provisioning of LTE. I know that at Shentel sites, there is one guy that goes around and fires up all the LTE. So the 3G upgrades go live immediately, but there is more work for LTE to go live in AlcaLu markets. Samsung and Ericsson do things differently.

 

Robert

[gfurr24]

Robert,

 

Is it safe to assume that the sites that have already had the 3G NV upgraded will more than likely be the first sites in the area to also go LTE since they have possibly been provisioned, or could it be totally random in the selection of which tower goes live with LTE first?

Thanks again for all your insight and everything you do here on the site!

[S4GRU]

Robert,

 

Is it safe to assume that the sites that have already had the 3G NV upgraded will more than likely be the first sites in the area to also go LTE since they have possibly been provisioned, or could it be totally random in the selection of which tower goes live with LTE first?

Thanks again for all your insight and everything you do here on the site!

 

If like other AlcaLu markets, the very first LTE sites will come from within these 3G complete sites. And most of the LTE sites will come from then pool of complete 3G sites. It is rare for an AlcaLu site to go from nothing straight to LTE.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 on Tapatalk

 

 

[thewezgrays]

If like other AlcaLu markets, the very first LTE sites will come from within these 3G complete sites. And most of the LTE sites will come from then pool of complete 3G sites. It is rare for an AlcaLu site to go from nothing straight to LTE.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 on Tapatalk

 

That is kinda what I figured... What seems to be happening in the CLT market. SO if you were to be forced to place an over/under on time until first LTE in our market, a few weeks -- months -- days? CLT seemed to get going in that regard quickly (but then again that is not my market with me waiting for a go live)...

[gfurr24]

 

 

If like other AlcaLu markets, the very first LTE sites will come from within these 3G complete sites. And most of the LTE sites will come from then pool of complete 3G sites. It is rare for an AlcaLu site to go from nothing straight to LTE.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 on Tapatalk

 

Would it be safe to assume that the equipment installation may already be complete on the sites for LTE and maybe we are just waiting on an LTE switch to be flipped? Or would you think maybe more equipment and panels may need to go up for LTE? I was looking at this picture that digiblur posted on identifying nv equipment and it looks as if sprint panels operate evdo/800/LTE all from one panel if I'm not mistaken.

[gfurr24]

Here's the photo I was referring to. Hope it's okay to repost this here for questionary purposes

[Dkoellerwx]

 

 

Would it be safe to assume that the equipment installation may already be complete on the sites for LTE and maybe we are just waiting on an LTE switch to be flipped? Or would you think maybe more equipment and panels may need to go up for LTE? I was looking at this picture that digiblur posted on identifying nv equipment and it looks as if sprint panels operate evdo/800/LTE all from one panel if I'm not mistaken.

 

Yes, once 3G has been signed off, we know that NV equipment is in place, and that they are capable of NV 3G/4G/800, but either the LTE team hasn't been there yet, or some component for LTE hasn't arrived in that market. Once LTE starts going live, the flip over to LTE goes quicker than the original 3G install (or so it seems).

[gfurr24]

Got bored this morning and rode by the tower near my house, near the 501 and 17 Bypass interchange.

 

 

I took some pictures with my iPhone 5 that turned out decent from the distance I could get to the tower. My main purpose was to see if someone on here could help me determine which equipment might possibly be the Sprint NV 3G equipment. I know that the pictures might not be clear enough from the zooming I had to do, but hopefully something will be noticeable. This is the tower that is closest to my house. I live about .5 miles from it and generally get 2-4 bars of 3G inside my home. Cant wait to test it once they let the LTE loose on this bad boy!

[thewezgrays]

I am less than a mile from a NV tower in the Red Hill community of Conway today... Two months ago i could not get dial up speeds with near full bars. Well, today I am getting a consistent 800 to 900 Kbps... I was hoping for 1.5 Mbps, but am going to presume that the tower was so over loaded that even now it is feeling some heat? I totally can not wait for 4G to be turned on, especially with some of these new towers being in my daily travels...

 

Edit: it's the next tower over that is NV not this one, so to get these speeds now is awesome, can't wait for more (I am going to go by the NV tower and check it out today if possible though)..

[S4GRU]

I am less than a mile from a NV tower in the Red Hill community of Conway today... Two months ago i could not get dial up speeds with near full bars. Well, today I am getting a consistent 800 to 900 Kbps... I was hoping for 1.5 Mbps, but am going to presume that the tower was so over loaded that even now it is feeling some heat? I totally can not wait for 4G to be turned on, especially with some of these new towers being in my daily travels...

 

It is common when a 3G site goes live and is an island with no other NV sites around, they typically get overloaded and can under perform than it would normally. Other under performing sites adjacent end up shunting more traffic to the new NV site. It will equalize and get a little better when other sites adjacent are upgraded.

 

However, a normal operating NV 3G site runs 1-2.5Mbps,depending on time of day and load. So 900kbps is pretty close to normal during peak times.

 

Robert

[dwb084_5709]

Is there any action going on here in Wilmington, NC yet? Averaging about 200 kbps. 400kbps is a good day.

[S4GRU]

Is there any action going on here in Wilmington, NC yet? Averaging about 200 kbps. 400kbps is a good day.

 

Yes. Wilmington is in the Myrtle Beach market. Work has started in your area.

 

Robert