Network Vision/LTE - Dakotas Market (including Fargo, Grand Forks, Alexandria MN)

[S4GRU]

I have learned to not listen to them when they try fill me full of sunshine and lollipops, but when they have some potentially bad news, that caught my attention.

The bad news had a glimmer of truth to it. Most likely they misunderstood what they were told, or the person who told them misunderstood. The issue near the Canadian border only affects 800MHz deployments. And only in areas where there is a Canadian narrowband license holder across the border.

 

The only reason why there is no 1900MHz LTE in Grand Forks on Sprint now is because of waiting on completion of backhaul to sites. When a few of them are complete, they will come back and integrate LTE to go live at the completed sites. There will be a long, long wait on 800MHz LTE though.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

[tyvarga]

 

Unless you are running Signal Check, your phone won't tell you you are on 800Mhz now. It will still just say 1x.

You might notice improved signal inside buildings

though. I don't think they have any LTE on that site yet.

Tower is now live. Was worth the wait

[mozamcrew]

Tower is now live. Was worth the wait

Ty, are you getting LTE from the tower in the middle of town? It is showing as accepted on the map, but I haven't gotten a sniff from it at all lately.

[Watch This]

Pretty pumped here, finally seeing some Grand Forks LTE love showing up.

[Watch This]

So far, only a couple towers in GF broadcasting LTE. But what surprised me, was B26 started showing up randomly. Comes and goes. I am guessing they are testing it?

I don't really know what all the numbers mean (GCI, PCI, TAC etc) Can someone help me out? is there a easy way to tell what tower its coming from? I know when on evdo/ehrpd SCP gives me the address of the tower, but not on LTE.

 

Any lessons for a dummy would be appreciated.

 

 

 

 

[ase500]

Seeing the same thing here in bemidji. Oddly here one tower went live with lte but only on b26.

[Flompholph]

So far, only a couple towers in GF broadcasting LTE. But what surprised me, was B26 started showing up randomly. Comes and goes. I am guessing they are testing it?

I don't really know what all the numbers mean (GCI, PCI, TAC etc) Can someone help me out? is there a easy way to tell what tower its coming from? I know when on evdo/ehrpd SCP gives me the address of the tower, but not on LTE.

 

Any lessons for a dummy would be appreciated.

Mikejeep has pretty good definitions under help in his app scp. Pretty much GCI is the LTE ID with the last two digits for sector. PCI is used for sector ID some markets like to keep track of gci and PCI. TAC is an area code. So if it was a telephone number it would look like TAC-GCI-PCI.

 

There is no easy way to find the towers with LTE some think if a signal is strong enough it should be the closest tower some feel you need to triangulate by circling the tower to map the gci and grab the 3 sectors.

[Watch This]

Seeing the same thing here in bemidji. Oddly here one tower went live with lte but only on b26.

By using signal strength as an indicator, i have deciphered that 2 towers are broadcasting LTE. Only the one tower seems to broadcast B26. That tower stays on B25 until i get far enough away from it, then it switches to 26. I am assuming this is the case with my limited knowledge though. The GCI goes from 08804700 to 0880470F when it switches to 26. So I am thinking it is the same tower unless someone can correct me on my thinking.

[mjplaetz]

Anyway I can find out about a new Tower in Vesta MN, sprint has panels up but it hasn't been turned on yet. its in the middle of a roaming area, they recently placed a new tower in Minneota, Minnesota.  which is awesome because I take that way home to South Dakota a lot. but the Vesta, MN tower is near where I live and would be awesome to see if anyone knows a way of digging into finding out info on that tower. They added a rack to an AT&T tower there, same as they did in Minneota.

[mjplaetz]

BTW.. I know its sprint panels up there because I talked with the farmer (my neighbor) about it and he said when the crews showed up at his place he was out talking to them said its for the sprint network.

[mjplaetz]

so today i turned on my old Samsung SII  that i have in the drawer. (i currently have an iPhone) and i signal check pro keeps saying I'm connecting to Vesta, MN via 1x800 and damn near a full signal. but it shows up for 2 seconds then goes away. does that mean they are working on it currently to have it up and running? what are the time lines on these kind of things with new towers. 

[mozamcrew]

so today i turned on my old Samsung SII  that i have in the drawer. (i currently have an iPhone) and i signal check pro keeps saying I'm connecting to Vesta, MN via 1x800 and damn near a full signal. but it shows up for 2 seconds then goes away. does that mean they are working on it currently to have it up and running? what are the time lines on these kind of things with new towers. 

If Sprint can't authenticate the device then it probably kicks it off the network?

[mjplaetz]

They did put a new tower up in Vesta, MN about 3PM it went live today!!! Now I have coverage at home and from redwood falls mn to marshall! Pretty awesome! Happy guy right here. Too bad they didn't light it up with LTE.. But I got 3mbps on 3G but I'm sure it's cause I'm literally the only person in my area with sprint.

[Dkoellerwx]

They did put a new tower up in Vesta, MN about 3PM it went live today!!! Now I have coverage at home and from redwood falls mn to marshall! Pretty awesome! Happy guy right here. Too bad they didn't light it up with LTE.. But I got 3mbps on 3G but I'm sure it's cause I'm literally the only person in my area with sprint.

 

A completely new site? 

[Paynefanbro]

Wow, that's crazy. Sprint actually building out coverage again.

[mjplaetz]

They put it on a ATT tower. They just did the same thing in Minneota Minnesota north of Marshall. It's great. I can't believe they actually are building out. Gives me hope

[Dkoellerwx]

They put it on a ATT tower. They just did the same thing in Minneota Minnesota north of Marshall. It's great. I can't believe they actually are building out. Gives me hope

Are these on our sponsor maps? If not, can you provide more information (exact locations, pictures if possible) in a sponsor thread? Thanks!

 

Sent from my Nexus 5

[mjplaetz]

Yeah I took some pics of the tower and my signal check pro. Where should I post them?

[mjplaetz]

 

 

This is a pic i took of my old samsung that has signal check pro on it since i have an iPhone. shows that I'm connected to Vesta, MN its pretty awesome they decided to put a tower 6 miles from me. i was in roaming before this. picked up very faint signal from a tower 20 miles south. (very flat around here) 

[mjplaetz]

and I'm getting extremely impressive speeds off the 3g.. but I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in the area with sprint since it was roaming here prior. 

[Dkoellerwx]

Yeah I took some pics of the tower and my signal check pro. Where should I post them?

 

This thread would work for the specific information.

[mjplaetz]

This thread would work for the specific information.

i put the pic up of my signal check pro screen for the tower already. tomorrow morning ill swing up with my camera and take some pics of the tower. its kinda hard for me to get close to the base since its practically in a farm yard. but ill use my real camera (not my phone) and try to get good pics of  the panels and such. 

[Dkoellerwx]

i put the pic up of my signal check pro screen for the tower already. tomorrow morning ill swing up with my camera and take some pics for it.. its kinda hard for me to get close to the base since its practically in a farm yard. but ill use my real camera (not my phone) and try to get good pics of  the panels and such. 

 

Since it doesn't give an actual address, we can't use the SCP screen to confirm anything.

[mjplaetz]

Since it doesn't give an actual address, we can't use the SCP screen to confirm anything.

 mmk, what can i do to confirm address and such? 

[Dkoellerwx]

 mmk, what can i do to confirm address and such? 

 

Pictures of the structure and your physical location would work. The site currently doesn't register on network.sprint.com, so we would need you to actually go to it and confirm.