Network Vision/LTE - Buffalo Market

[jg424]

coverage in the town of Lewiston is excellent compared to Youngstown. Model city though is weak. I work right across from Lewiston town hall and model city coverage is hit and miss, however, with my iPhone now it's much better than it was with my note 5. I love how you seem to be commenting on all the areas I frequent lol. So what would take sprint to make these areas as dense as Verizon and AT&T have? Is it just not worth the money to supply service in areas where probably only a handful of people would benefit?

You're on the right track as far as looking at it from the prospective of being an investment that might not pay off for a rather extended period of time.  Neither AT&T nor VZW are as dense as you think though.  In Lewiston, AT&T has 4 site locations, VZW has 5, and both T-Mobile and Sprint have 2.  The real advantage that AT&T and VZW (and later this year, T-Mobile) have is that they're running 700 LTE on all of those sites.  The extended reach and better building penetration really show their colors when you live or work in an area that isn't in (relatively speaking here) close proximity to a serving site.  Take Model city as an excellent example, whilst colocating on the already existing tower would be the best solution to improve the spotty coverage, having 800 LTE (and a nice little 1X channel for voice) on the Center Street site would change the service from spotty to reliable.  I believe this (SMR deployment in the North) will transpire before Sprint starts adding some serious density to their grid.

[ajr0203]

You're on the right track as far as looking at it from the prospective of being an investment that might not pay off for a rather extended period of time. Neither AT&T nor VZW are as dense as you think though. In Lewiston, AT&T has 4 site locations, VZW has 5, and both T-Mobile and Sprint have 2. The real advantage that AT&T and VZW (and later this year, T-Mobile) have is that they're running 700 LTE on all of those sites. The extended reach and better building penetration really show their colors when you live or work in an area that isn't in (relatively speaking here) close proximity to a serving site. Take Model city as an excellent example, whilst colocating on the already existing tower would be the best solution to improve the spotty coverage, having 800 LTE (and a nice little 1X channel for voice) on the Center Street site would change the service from spotty to reliable. I believe this (SMR deployment in the North) will transpire before Sprint starts adding some serious density to their grid.

800 coverage would be awesome around here but from what I understand we're not going to be getting it from the IBEZ area. Are they still working on this with the Canadians or is it basically an S.O.L kind of situation?

[jg424]

As for that its anyone's guess. But there was a small update on this that happened rather recently: Telus ceased operations on the old Mike iden in late January of this year. The significance of this is that eventually Telus will want to use this spectrum and for such a thing to occur they need to negotiate rebanding with the Canadian public safety operators that are still broadcasting narrow band operations on the SMR band. Unfortunately Telus isn't exactly in a crunch for spectrum (lol kind of the opposite actually) but its a pretty safe assumption that at some point the Canadians will reband in the same way we did. In short I wouldn't go as far as saying SOL but there's more less no telling how long the whole thing could take. I'm rather curious to know how much negotiation actually transpired between Sprint and the Canadian operators. I should hope that it wasn't/isn't a similar scenario to what happened with VZW and the cable operators when VZW stilled owned the 700a spectrum. VZW sat on a large amount of beach front spectrum without even bothering to contact the cable operators to attempt to negotiate a concurrent operations agreement.

 

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[Deval]

I'm up in Buffalo right now, specifically Cheektowaga and seeing all 3 B41 carriers on my devices. Service is very usable at the hotel near the airport.

[mirskyc]

I'm up in Buffalo right now, specifically Cheektowaga and seeing all 3 B41 carriers on my devices. Service is very usable at the hotel near the airport.

 Great to hear that, especially since there isn't any B26 if I remember correctly.  Did 1x800 Voice ever go live in Buffalo?

[Deval]

 Great to hear that, especially since there isn't any B26 if I remember correctly.  Did 1x800 Voice ever go live in Buffalo?

 

I forgot to check, wasn't paying attention on my voice calls

[jg424]

Also, band 25 is 10x10 in Buffalo market after trading spectrum with T-Mobile.  I saw definite improvement in Niagara Falls, speeds went from near unusable a lot of places indoors to a steady 3-4 mbps down.  Still no band 26 lte but at this point I think what I'd really like to see is improved density to take some load off of band 25 and get more people on band 41.

[Deval]

Also, band 25 is 10x10 in Buffalo market after trading spectrum with T-Mobile.  I saw definite improvement in Niagara Falls, speeds went from near unusable a lot of places indoors to a steady 3-4 mbps down.  Still no band 26 lte but at this point I think what I'd really like to see is improved density to take some load off of band 25 and get more people on band 41.

 

Good to know.

 

I'm back in town for an event, enjoying the sweet B41 3 carriers at the hotel near the water.