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Network Vision/LTE - Georgia Market (Warner Robins, Macon, I-75 Corridor))


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I haven't seen any evidence of any more band 41 deployments beyond the mystery site in Warner Robins, which still defies my efforts to definitively locate it.

 

Ok, I'm a complete moron. A bit of searching on the Internet finds that the LTE timing advance value for TDD LTE is adjusted by the equivalent of ~20 microseconds, which works out to be about 3 km round-trip or ~1.5 km (just under 1 mile) one-way. So the reason I could never get within a mile of the site is because... I was already right on top of the site.

 

Thus I can say the band 41 site is definitely the one on Moody Road at the intersection with Feagin Mill Road. It's the only one I've spotted so far around here, and seems like an odd choice since it doesn't seem to cover a lot of people - it is probably the closest one to the old protection site, so maybe that's why Sprint decided to upgrade it as opposed to one in a more critical location.

 

As for indicating Mini Macros and Magic Box sites, I'm happy to add the necessary code if it can be done without adding too much extra clutter - although at some level if SCP already does it I'm not really sure duplication in my app is worthwhile.

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  • 3 months later...

Someone at Sprint apparently knows it's my birthday, because it seems like they flipped a switch today and my phone is suddenly picking up at least two new band 41 sites in the Macon and Warner Robins area (one in each); there's probably more but I haven't noticed any obvious tower work so I had no reason to look to see if things were moving or not until today. Maybe I'll have time tomorrow afternoon to go poking around.

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3 minutes ago, lordsutch said:

Someone at Sprint apparently knows it's my birthday, because it seems like they flipped a switch today and my phone is suddenly picking up at least two new band 41 sites in the Macon and Warner Robins area (one in each); there's probably more but I haven't noticed any obvious tower work so I had no reason to look to see if things were moving or not until today. Maybe I'll have time tomorrow afternoon to go poking around.

I drove thru Macon earlier this year. That area had 10x10B25 which is better than 5x5. If they are starting to add B41 on top of that, that is awesome.

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4 minutes ago, lordsutch said:

Someone at Sprint apparently knows it's my birthday, because it seems like they flipped a switch today and my phone is suddenly picking up at least two new band 41 sites in the Macon and Warner Robins area (one in each); there's probably more but I haven't noticed any obvious tower work so I had no reason to look to see if things were moving or not until today. Maybe I'll have time tomorrow afternoon to go poking around.

Happy birthday!

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  • 2 months later...

It seems like Sprint has finally decided to roll out band 41 around Macon and Warner Robins; so far there are band 41 deployments on 3 existing sites in Macon and 1 in Warner Robins beyond the replacements for the old WiMax protection sites that went live a few months ago.

For some reason, Sprint has also put band 41 mini-macros on the tower right by the intersection of US 23 and SR 18 near the Plant Scherer power station east of Forsyth... basically the middle of nowhere. All I can figure is they changed the tilt of the antennas to get some more range on band 25 and figured they'd need to fill in the coverage around the tower as a result.

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  • 7 months later...

Band 41 is coming to Milledgeville, GA it looks like. This site (top rack...bottom rack is VZ LTE only) was a LTE GMO site with legacy  antennas until last Friday. This tower is located by the lake on the border of Baldwin and Putnam. Only band 25 being broadcast currently. Speeds of ~25 Mbps on an iPhone 6. The congested site in town has yet to be updated. They also need to invest in mounting antennas on some of the water towers that are currently still LTE holes  

A74D2713-9C2D-4073-AE21-91D76C7CF6A5.jpeg

Edited by czfi
Incorrectly identified previous antennas as NV
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Band 41 is coming to Milledgeville, GA it looks like. This site (top rack...bottom rack is VZ LTE only) was a LTE GMO site with NV antennas until last Friday. This tower is located by the lake on the border of Baldwin and Putnam. Only band 25 being broadcast currently. Speeds of ~25 Mbps on an iPhone 6. The congested site in town has yet to be updated. They also need to invest in mounting antennas on some of the water towers that are currently still LTE holes  
A74D2713-9C2D-4073-AE21-91D76C7CF6A5.thumb.jpeg.714185c1ed9a336a4307f26e245938e8.jpeg
If the tower had the ruus on the ground but NV antenna it is not called a GMO. It's called a GMR(Ground Mount Radio). GMO is only when they use old legacy antenna to turn on b25 LTE.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

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20 minutes ago, Terrell352 said:

If the tower had the ruus on the ground but NV antenna it is not called a GMO. It's called a GMR(Ground Mount Radio). GMO is only when they use old legacy antenna to turn on b25 LTE.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
 

It had the old legacy antenna until last Friday not NV my bad  :) 

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Here's something weird... I'm sitting down in Cochran, Georgia this afternoon miles away from the nearest Sprint tower I know of, and while I'm waiting for the right SIM to show up in my mail for the Pixel 3 XL I stuck my UK SIM (from Three) in the phone just to keep it active and see what I could find.

On the network list I'm seeing LTE network 311-490, which is a Sprint PLMN (but not listed as Sprint); it seems to be the same site as a T-Mobile site, as the signal strength bars on the "Choose network" screen are fluctuating in sync with each other. But my Pixel 2 XL (with a Sprint SIM in it) isn't connecting to that network; not sure if it's an issue of band support or just the network rejecting connections. I don't know if this is preparation for T-Mobile roaming going live, perhaps for only certain devices (i.e. VoLTE and data-only devices?), but it seems interesting.

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38 minutes ago, lordsutch said:

On the network list I'm seeing LTE network 311-490, which is a Sprint PLMN (but not listed as Sprint); it seems to be the same site as a T-Mobile site, as the signal strength bars on the "Choose network" screen are fluctuating in sync with each other. But my Pixel 2 XL (with a Sprint SIM in it) isn't connecting to that network; not sure if it's an issue of band support or just the network rejecting connections. I don't know if this is preparation for T-Mobile roaming going live, perhaps for only certain devices (i.e. VoLTE and data-only devices?), but it seems interesting.

As a bunch of folks have been finding out. Sprint is repurposing 311-490 (originally Clearwire B41 PLMN) as Tmobile roaming to increase its priority over other roaming partners, and in fact, in some cases even taking some priority over Sprint's own native signal.

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We also have the nTelos plmn showing up in strangle places likely serving the same purpose:

 

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Now that my Pixel 3 XL is activated on Sprint, it's roaming on T-Mobile in Cochran today. Not sure if something changed at their end or it's down to provisioning or something else being different about this phone compared to the 2 XL.

651ea29994af74d3835b2009daecb3b2.jpg5de40b0954577bb722ae03ce9b55d9c6.jpg

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3 hours ago, lordsutch said:

Now that my Pixel 3 XL is activated on Sprint, it's roaming on T-Mobile in Cochran today. Not sure if something changed at their end or it's down to provisioning or something else being different about this phone compared to the 2 XL.

651ea29994af74d3835b2009daecb3b2.jpg5de40b0954577bb722ae03ce9b55d9c6.jpg

Wow Verizon 1x in combination with TMobile roaming! I guess Sprint has zero service there, not even 1x800. Crazy to see TMobile service and no 1x Sprint.

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Wow Verizon 1x in combination with TMobile roaming! I guess Sprint has zero service there, not even 1x800. Crazy to see TMobile service and no 1x Sprint.
T-Mobile's come very far with coverage. I'd like to see more sprint expansion.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

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On 10/12/2018 at 3:59 PM, czfi said:

Band 41 is coming to Milledgeville, GA it looks like. This site (top rack...bottom rack is VZ LTE only) was a LTE GMO site with legacy  antennas until last Friday. This tower is located by the lake on the border of Baldwin and Putnam. Only band 25 being broadcast currently. Speeds of ~25 Mbps on an iPhone 6. The congested site in town has yet to be updated. They also need to invest in mounting antennas on some of the water towers that are currently still LTE holes  

A74D2713-9C2D-4073-AE21-91D76C7CF6A5.jpeg

Hard to see exactly but looks like original NV dual band + 10 port dual band (B26/B41)?

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On 10/20/2018 at 3:19 PM, nexgencpu said:

Wow Verizon 1x in combination with TMobile roaming! I guess Sprint has zero service there, not even 1x800. Crazy to see TMobile service and no 1x Sprint.

Outdoors I can occasionally get Sprint 1x but the nearest 800 tower on I-16 is pretty far away; the nearer towers are a mix of GMOs and sites that never got 1900 LTE at all. I think the tower T-Mobile is on in Cochran also had Nextel coverage but Sprint didn't bother expanding its footprint there; you'd think having a college campus with 2000 students would translate into enough customers to be worth serving, but apparently not.

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On 10/20/2018 at 3:19 PM, nexgencpu said:

Wow Verizon 1x in combination with TMobile roaming! I guess Sprint has zero service there, not even 1x800. Crazy to see TMobile service and no 1x Sprint.

Outdoors I can occasionally get Sprint 1x but the nearest 800 tower on I-16 is pretty far away; the nearer towers are a mix of GMOs and sites that never got 1900 LTE at all. I think the tower T-Mobile is on in Cochran also had Nextel coverage but Sprint didn't bother expanding its footprint there; you'd think having a college campus with 2000 students would translate into enough customers to be worth serving, but apparently not.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 10/20/2018 at 9:43 PM, Dkoellerwx said:

Hard to see exactly but looks like original NV dual band + 10 port dual band (B26/B41)?

In person, it looks like the traditional Band 41 and Band 25/26 antenna you see a lot in Georgia. They've also added the same Band 41 antenna to the existing band 25/26 site in town.

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On 10/22/2018 at 4:44 AM, lordsutch said:

Outdoors I can occasionally get Sprint 1x but the nearest 800 tower on I-16 is pretty far away; the nearer towers are a mix of GMOs and sites that never got 1900 LTE at all. I think the tower T-Mobile is on in Cochran also had Nextel coverage but Sprint didn't bother expanding its footprint there; you'd think having a college campus with 2000 students would translate into enough customers to be worth serving, but apparently not.

A ground mount site in Milledgeville, GA was upgraded from GMO 1900 LTE to a full Band 25/26/41 setup. Apparently, this tower had one of the lowest utilization rates in GA....given there was zero band 41 within about 40 minutes of that site in any direction, I imagine they're doing some serious expansion in central GA now.

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