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.

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. Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

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.

Close proximity to Canada doesn't have anything to do with it, however the local town planning board, as well as Sprints network engineering department both do. Just like the rest of the region the proximity to Canada only prohibits Sprint from running anything on SMR (be it 1X or LTE) as this is still considered an IBEZ. The grid in neighboring Lewiston needs work too though. Its rather sparse (for T-Mobile too, their site locations are nearly identical) and they have options there. There is a Crown Castle owned site with AT&T and VZW owned equipment right near Modern that would make a nice addition to Sprint's grid as they're rather weak in the Model City area.

Oh ok then yes, I'd agree with you, Youngstown is rather tiny, and what's funny is that said tower is really in Porter (which is even smaller) rather than Youngstown proper. Unfortunately that whole area is rather under served by both T-Mobile and Sprint, as that site is the only one in the area for both carriers. AT&T and VZW both broadcast LTE from the water tower right in Youngstown. T-Mobile should improve somewhat this year once they deploy band 12 LTE (now that they have the license) but I would still like to see them along with Sprint colocate on the water tower.

Tiny? LOL that colocation tower that Sprint is broadcasting off of (on balmer road) is 260 feet tall!!! Great to see them still doing upgrades in WNY. Lockport has had band 41 for a while now, but Niagara Falls and Buffalo still need some work. Some areas are excellent and others are rather dismal.