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chamb

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Everything posted by chamb

  1. chamb
    You are mostly correct above, however, you can use 800 in heavily populated area. Just point the antennas downward and drop the signal down rather than aim it out toward another site. This has to be done very carefully. You might need to have 2 sectors pointed downward and the third sector aimed higher to get out to a rural area. Each site has to be individually optimized to avoid interference to the adjacent sites. If this it done correctly, it results in a very strong signal near the cell site on 800. If this is done correctly, the signal will penetrate into extremely difficult spots in buildings. However, as you said, there still can be issues if you have too many sites all with a very strong 800 signal. You may have to skip the addition of 800 on a site somewhere if other sites are just too close.
  2. chamb
    This all takes "TIME". Yes, the current cell sites may be owned by third parties or nTELOS. Either way, new leases have to be set up. Brand new backhaul needs to be established. Sure, an overbuild by Shentel or anybody else can be done. But it sure is not going to be easy or cheap. When you are upgrading your own old sites, you have all the records. You have total control. Doing an overbuild, you have almost nothing when you start the process.
  3. chamb
    I would suspect that you are going to have a one year wait no matter how they go about fixing your area. nTELOS is just slow and messed up no matter how you look at it. Shentel is probably in the best position to step in and upgrade the area, but they sure would have a multitude of issues to sort through. It would be very hard & very expensive. Fixing somebody else's mess is much harder than upgrading your own sites.
  4. chamb
    This is exactly how it should work. I would suspect that a call might drop when it does the transfer if you happen to have a call established on 1900 as you walk toward your office. You should be able to establish a call on 800 in your office and walk out just fine. In your travels, you may find some strange situation that will cause you to go back to 1900. It can happen. If it does, you will stay there until you go back into your office or some similar place.
  5. chamb
    Yes, this does seem the way to set it up. Keep 800 1X sort of idle for the people that happen to be someplace on the fringe of service. Sprint does need to have the threshold set up correctly that controls what band is going to be used for your call. If Sprint requires a cell phone to connect to 1900 at a level from -100 to -105, they will be shooting themselves in the foot. When the level is that bad, they need to allow that phone to connect via 800. Put the call on 800 so it stays connected and leave it there for the duration. After that call is done, that phone can go back to 1900 for a future call if the level is -99 or better.
  6. chamb
    Digiblur, You need to pack up and move to South Central Pennsylvania. We have some Amish farms that need somebody to milk some cows. The barns do have LTE & CDMA1X 800 so you will be better connected here than in NOLA. As you come north, you will pass Shentel's Headquarters. You probably should stop in and treat a couple of the employees to lunch.
  7. chamb
    Yep, the city is somewhat normal, but the country around Lancaster is quite heavily Amish. Great place to visit. I live about 90 minutes from there and visit the area often. It sure is worth it to stay overnight and make it a trip where you see unique things. So many good restaurants that are Amish in some manner (Many are Buffet style and you will add a few pounds to your gut). Lots of places to tour. If you have kids or young adults that like amusement parks, stay another day or two and go to Hershey park.
  8. chamb
    Lancaster, Pa is another trouble spot. Going from Harrisburg or York into Lancaster has been a real wake up experience. Shentel has had about perfect service in Harrisburg/York for almost a year. Only recently has progress been made in Lancaster. It sure did put a foul taste in your mouth as you transferred from Shentel service to Sprint Corporate service there. And before anybody jumps on this --- The foul taste was not Fried Chicken.
  9. chamb
    A new site with few users should yield a 30 meg download speed. 11-12 is good, but not where it should be.
  10. chamb
    Shentel would probably be able to over-build the nTELOS territory better than anybody else. The problem would be the money. Somebody has to pay for it and it would be an expensive project. Some of the territory is rural and back-haul would not be cheap to install. Surely Shentel could make it work. It was mentioned in an earlier post today that nTelos LTE was 11-12 Meg download speed. What kind of LTE is that??? Not built to Sprint Standards for sure. Does anybody know if the nTELOS LTE is running on Sprint owned spectrum or are they using nTELOS owned spectrum???? If I were the nTELOS CEO, I would not have any "color" to add to a discussion either. If I were the Sprint CEO, I would not buy nNETOS. I would over-build them and take their current customers. Hand the nTELOS CEO a bucket to help bail out the sinking ship.
  11. chamb
    I wonder what might happen if a Shentel customer would drive out of Shentel territory to a Sprint corporate store in Frederick or Baltimore and try to change their plan to the Framily.
  12. chamb
    I have no proof of this, but I would bet that you are correct. Makes sense to do it that way with some possible exceptions.
  13. chamb
    Your S3 & S4 was able to acquire the 3G quickly as they were still seeing a fairly good 3g Signal when the 4G dropped. They held on to the 3G for a long time as they did not have much of an alternative. Your S4T phones was able to hold on to the 4G longer, but when the 4G did eventually drop, the 3G was about worthless. Yes, your old S3 & S4 were still holding on, but probably just barely. It is easier to hold on to a very weak data signal than it is to acquire it.
  14. chamb
    I would suggest that you probably are about the only one connected to the site and you are seeing the maximum speed that you are going to see from the site. All your speedtests are almost identical, so nobody else appears to be in the picture with any serious download occurring. As more band 41 capable phones arrive in the area, you will probably see a slight slowdown.
  15. chamb
    Brad, If you still have the two EVO LTE phones, they are well known as Poor Performers on LTE. I had one for about 5 days and I was so frustrated that I took it back to Sprint before my 14 days was up. Your next phones SHOULD surely be better.
  16. chamb
    Lots and lots of situations to consider and get right. Consider the "strip" in Vegas. You are walking the strip, You are idling on 800 LTE and have maximum bars on the top. You attempt to use LTE. You get shunted to 1900 or 2600 and are fine. You stop the data session and revert back to the 800 LTE to camp. Now you walk into a Casino. Your 800 LTE starts degrading. You walk further back into the Casino. Your 800 LTE gets worse. Just WHEN do you boot this guy off the 800 LTE and onto the 2600 DAS in the Casino?? This needs to be really researched and configured correctly. You would not want to idle on 800 LTE that is now weak when the 2600 is strong within the Casino. Even though 2 bars of 800 LTE might be there and work, you need to move this guy to 2600 and maximum bars for physiological reasons. How this works or does not work is going to determine how the Spark network is perceived in the users mind. If a Sprint Spark handset has 6 bars of 2600 LTE, the customer will be extremely happy even if the 800 LTE might have also worked well. Vegas has bars everywhere, but Sprint needs to have more bars than anybody else.
  17. chamb
    There is one VERY VERY GOOD reason to allow everybody to camp on 800 LTE. This will cause 18 bars to display on the top bar signal strength. While the users on this site are well aware of the silliness of using the signal strength bars for any real serious judgments, the average person will praise Sprint to everybody when they have more bars than they can count. Do not underestimate the value in Sprint being able to pack the top bar with a whole pile of signal strength bars.
  18. chamb
    They can not ever add any capacity to the 800 LTE, but they can to 1900 and 2600. The advantage of 800 LTE is its penetration into poor areas and buildings. This is the reason to idle on the 800 LTE. However, since it has limited traffic capability, they need to boot abusers or even heavy users off of the 800 when possible. It may not always be a good idea to boot a user to 1900 or even 2600, but when it makes sense, they need to do it. Maybe Sprint should be checking the usage on the 800 LTE and start booting users when the 800 LTE starts to get about 70% loaded. They need to figure this out and make sure they have it right. Surely they have the capability to monitor this traffic and make this happen, On the flip side, they also need to monitor the 1900 and 2600 traffic and detect a user that is struggling with low signal and slow speed. This phone needs to be transferred to 800 LTE if it is the better connection. If Sprint fails to get this right, they will pay a price for the screw up. The thresholds for this need to be carefully configured. If somebody is siting around trying to use 1900 LTE with a -120 signal level, they need to be automatically transfered to 800 LTE or even 2600 LTE if either one will work better. Sprint needs to do this without any aggravation to the user.
  19. chamb
    Exactly. Idle on 800 LTE so you can reliably communicate with Sprint and know when you have a call to handle on the 3G network. Maybe allow short bursts of data (like an e-mail check) to continue on the 800 LTE. However, if any significant amount of data starts occurring, Sprint should look at 1900 or 2600 and see if a suitable path can be used there. If 1900 and 2600 are both fairly weak, allow the 800 LTE connection to continue. How this is managed is going to determine Sprint's reputation over the long term. They must not allow everybody to use 800 LTE to watch Netflix or anything like that.
  20. chamb

    LG G2 Users Thread!

    chamb replied to koiulpoi's topic in LG

    Maybe Sprint is checking the levels on the 3 bands and making your phone choose the band that is going to work the best at your location? Maybe if you take a drive out of your home area and look again, it may show something different???? Just a thought on my part.
  21. chamb
    Now this sounds about right. Your experience is fine with me. Nothing there that would sound unreasonable. We need a few more users to verify that their S4T works like yours. If we get that, then there is some unusual situation with the phone or the location of the S4T that will not grab 3G when LTE service drops.
  22. chamb
    I do not want to wish any bad luck on to you, but I hope you have a bad S4T and it can be exchanged for a good one. The lack of a fast transfer to 3G when LTE drops is a totally undesirable trait. I will soon be looking for a Tri-Band phone and if this is confirmed on other S4T's, I probably would look at another Tri-Band. I can see it now, you walk into a building with somewhat poor coverage, and you need to use your data for some important reason, and you have no LTE or 3G. Not good. That is FRUSTRATION. Nobody needs that. I can not believe that Samsung would put a device out that acts this way. It is a very simple task to scan for 3G anytime LTE is not available. We need to have this verified by somebody else with a new S4T.
  23. chamb
    If the info in the "Chat" is correct, then it does not look good. HOWEVER, if NTELOS does upgrade all their sites to 4G, even though Sprint customers may not be able to use it, the 3G at those NTELOS sites will probably start getting real good. When they upgrade the backhaul for their 4G, the 3G should perform much better. 3G can actually be fairly good if the backhaul is not constrained. Another thought, they may actually have an agreement with Sprint for 4G that the CS rep is not aware of or allowed to announce. It actually may be better to withhold access to this 4G from Sprint Customers for awhile until they get all the technical issues worked out. Turning up one 4G site in a sea of non-upgraded sites is not always wise. Looking at this situation from a distance and without all the facts, I do not think anybody can figure out how to straighten out the mess. I would predict that the upgrade to 4G will be unsuccessful for NTELOS if they do not have an agreement with Sprint. They need the traffic and finances involved in a Sprint agreement. Going it alone is not going to work well for them, Too much expense and too few customers.
  24. chamb
    Shentel has their own backhaul in some of Virginia where they are headquartered. They are a local telco and also cable TV provider there. In Hagerstown, Md, they are very very close to Antietam Cable, a local cable TV Internet provider. The co-operation there is fantastic for both companies. Antietam/Shentel has access to fiber optics all over the county. In Pennsylvania, it is more difficult. I see more microwave there as both Century Link and Verizon are the local telcos and probably more of an issue. I am not really aware of how it works around Martinsburg in WV, but they had Frontier and Comcast cable to deal with there. So Shentel probably has some easy sites to cover, especially near their home office, but on the other hand, they had some very very difficult sites to cover too. Some of the area is very rural and the sites are located where broadband never existed before. One thing for sure, Shentel did whatever it took. It did not matter if it was easy or hard, they got it done on time and the whole system works great. They surely get the award for the best and most trouble free upgrade to Network Vision in the whole country. We do not need to have a re-vote on the award either. They win the award no matter how you look at it.
  25. chamb
    Once they turn up 800 LTE, I doubt that you will EVER lose LTE in Shentel territory anyplace. Right now, it is very rare to see LTE disappear from your phone. As for churn, sure you will always have some people churn out. But they sure will not be churning out because of poor signal quality unless they work or live in a cave.
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